Actors, they’re just like us! Noah Baumbach maybe thinks so, but he’s also as interested as we are to dig deep into what makes the top of the cultural elite tick. Well, when you help write Barbie, you can work the system into your favor, and watch George Clooney go inside his own brain to play an an actor inside his own head. And bring along the Sandman to shoot some hoops. Ha, no way Baumbach has picked up a basketball since 9 years old.
George Clooney IS Jay Kelly. Yep, pretty much. Kelly’s a movie star, just ending his latest shoot, a couple weeks away from the next production. In the between time, his daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards) is about to head out on a European trip, right before freshmen year college starts. That, and a tough encounter with an old acting class friend Tim (Billy Crudup) send Jay into a spiral. Empty nest syndrome drives him to leave the movie shoot and head over to Paris and Italy to join Daisy before she lives on her own, with Jay’s publicist Liz (Laura Dern) and manager Ron (Adam Sandler) left to deal with the fallout.
As his star has risen, Baumbach’s gift of empathy remains sharp as ever. No matter what type of movie he makes, we can be sure that the character is looked at with an open, smart, judgment free heart. A worse version of Jay Kelly would have made the actor an insufferable emotional whore taking advantage of everyone around him. But Baumbach (and Emily Mortimer) take seriously the plight of the actor. For Jay Kelly, everyone looks at you like you’re the ideal person to aspire to be. But as people get closer to you, those movie star obligations hinder any possible connections with anyone unless they take 15% of your salary (not ideal either). I don’t know if Baumbach wrote Jay with George Clooney in mind, but in each other the two trusted each other enough to go on the journey together, ready for the challenge. Clooney dives deep into Baumbach’s material, showing the mental knife’s edge a star like that has to walk without going off the deep end into their own mind. But that mental journey is everlasting, necessary to get into the right frame of mind to play a movie…but also very selfish and exhausting, keeping you from really considering the people you care about most in your life. Even Samuel Beckett would be like “geez, that’s a lot!” If movies are truth at 24 frames per second Godard says, Jay Kelly is a shining beacon to that goal, trying as hard as they can to really understand a person we see all the time but never really get to know on a personal level.
And yet, Jay Kelly can be a frustrating experience. In fact, Noah Baumbach might be the filmmaker I’m most frustrated with. His scripts and direction are beautiful in every sense of the world. Basically perfect…except one thing. Yes this movie is called Jay Kelly. But in spending time with Jay, we get to meet manager Ron. And publicist Liz. Old acting buddy Billy Crudup. Or Jay’s oldest daugther Jess (Riley Keough). Baumbach’s heart is big enough to give great stories for these people too. And therein lies the Baumbach fatal flaw. His obsession with becoming a filmmaker has laser focused him on certain types of protagonists in his later films. His leads are people who lead some sort of high profile, low stress professional lives. All the problems those people have are internal, generally self-serving, and very low stakes. Maybe y’all would want to see a movie about a movie star going through an emotional crisis: I’m much more interested in the daughter of a star trying to deal with an absentee dad that everyone else loves. Or a manager trying to keep multiple clients happy and not lose time with his family. Or even that manager’s mediocre lower tier acting talent (Patrick Wilson). If you’re like me, the more time you spend with Jay Kelly’s friends, the less time you want to spend with Jay Kelly himself, as he’s never as interesting as the story makes him out to be.
So Noah, I have a challenge for you. Hang out with Sean Baker for a little bit. There’s a guy that does similar work to you, but finds much more fascinating people that deserve some sort of movie made about them. There’s plenty of content built around what makes a movie star tick. Let’s see what the local liquor store owner cares about. Or the daycare worker who can’t afford to send her own kids to her job. Use that big lovely Baumbach heart to bring some light into the darker parts of the world, please?