Noah Baumbach
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An independent film writer-director, Noah Baumbach was born in 1969 and raised in Brooklyn. He attended Midwood High School (1987) and Vassar College. He is the son of novelist/film critic Jonathan Baumbach and Village Voice critic Georgia Brown.
He made his writing and directing debut at the age of 24 with Kicking and Screaming (1995), a comedy about four young men who graduate from college and refuse to move on with their lives, each in his own peculiar way. The film, which starred Josh Hamilton, Chris Eigeman, Carlos Jacott, and featured Eric Stoltz, Olivia d'Abo and Parker Posey, premiered in 1995 at the prestigious New York Film Festival to critical acclaim. Baumbach was chosen as one of Newsweek's "Ten New Faces of 1996". The film appeared in several "Top Ten" lists. It later became traditional at Vassar that graduating seniors should watch Kicking and Screaming.
Next he wrote and directed Mr. Jealousy (1997), about a young writer so jealous over his girlfriend that he sneaks into the group therapy sessions of her ex-boyfriend to discover what kind of relationship they had. He then co-wrote (under the name Jesse Carter) and directed (under the name Ernie Fusco) the New York-set comedy of manners Highball (1997). Although many of Baumbach's fans liked Highball, he disclaims it. This trio of dark, talky, witty comedies about young people have been compared to Whit Stillman's mid-90s trio of dark talky movies about the frivolous lives of wealthy and witty young people, Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco
Baumbach is a contributor to The New Yorker magazine's Shouts & Murmurs department, and is one of the commentators on the Criterion Collection version of Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. He co-wrote The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) with Wes Anderson.
His most recent film, The Squid and the Whale (2005), is an autobiographical comedy-drama about his childhood in Brooklyn and the effect of his parents' divorce on the family in the mid 1980s. The film stars Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney in the parent roles. The Squid and the Whale became something of an unexpected sleeper hit and a critical success, earning Baumbach two awards at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. It also received six Independent Spirit Award nominations, three Golden Globe nominations, while the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Board of Review all voted it the year’s best screenplay.
Baumbach and his girlfriend of four years, the critically acclaimed Hollywood actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, got married on September 3, 2005. It was Leigh who suggested casting the child actor Owen Kline in a pivotal role in The Squid and the Whale, as Owen is the son of her best friend Phoebe Cates and husband Kevin Kline.
Baumbach's next projected movie is a comedy-drama starring Jennifer Jason Leigh with Nicole Kidman and Jack Black. As of April 2006 it is shooting in Hampton Bays, and is pencilled in for release sometime next year.
External links
- ["To Wed and To Fail"] - Review of Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, in n+1 magazine, by Christian Lorentzen.
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