Due to illness, George Clooney couldn’t make it to this year’s Telluride Film Festival for the North American premiere of Jay Kelly, a film that centers on a movie star (Clooney) who experiences an existential crisis that prompts him to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to Europe to see his daughter and accept a career tribute from a film festival, and his “team,” who are expected to drop everything to support him. But a large coterie of Clooney’s collaborators on the film were in town — among them co-writer/director Noah Baumbach, actors Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup and Patrick Wilson, and composer Nicholas Britell — and basked in the warm reception and awards chatter that greeted the Netflix title at its four festival screenings, two of which followed career tributes to Baumbach.
On Sunday, following one of those screenings, I sat down with the aforementioned group for a wide-ranging Q&A. We discussed why Baumbach and Emily Mortimer wrote the part of Kelly with Clooney in mind, and why it was a gutsy decision for the A-lister to agree to take it on; what Sandler drew upon to formulate his portrayal of Kelly’s manager, Ron, for which the Sand-man is receiving some of the best reviews of his career and looks like a strong bet to land his first Oscar nom; how Crudup, who plays a former acting school classmate of Kelly’s, Timothy, prepared for his brief but complex scene in the film, which elicited mid-movie applause at every screening; plus more.
A transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity, appears below.
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Noah, what was the root of the idea for this film, which you co-wrote with Emily Mortimer? Also, some might wonder: why center it on a famous movie star rather than, say, a famous writer-director who also occasionally receives career tributes of his own?
BAUMBACH Well, we needed some barrier. [laughs] I don’t know, I found it compelling, this notion of a movie star who has some kind of crisis and goes on a journey — an actual journey into the world, and also a journey into himself. I had a bunch of ideas, and I didn’t know quite what to do with all of them, and I was talking to Emily about it. She asked all the right questions, and then, just on a whim, I was like, “Do you want to do this with me? If it goes south, we can always just stop.” But it was such a great collaboration. It was a year or so that we really just worked on and shaped the movie.
My understanding is that you two wrote it with George in mind for the title role, which begs the question: what would you have done if George had said no? I can understand why he might have: Jay Kelly, like George, is an actor from Kentucky, often described as the last “real” movie star, and shares a number of other things in common with him — but Jay also has some attributes that aren’t great, and some people might assume that Jay is George.
BAUMBACH Well, not to mention what he would have to do in the movie. I mean, it’s a character who’s running from himself, and he’s very good at deflecting and hiding, but as we see in the movie, these memories come at him. We described the memories as “headwinds.” The actor who was playing Jay Kelly had to then start to reveal more of himself, which requires vulnerability. But George said yes within 24 hours, and I knew immediately, when he said yes, that he was going to be amazing, because he knew what was in front of him and what he was going to have to do. To answer your other question, I don’t know [what we would have done if George had said no]. I think we wouldn’t have made the movie. The audience needed to have a history with the actor playing Jay Kelly, the same way the people in the movie have a relationship with Jay Kelly. What George does, as he starts to reveal more and more, is just beautiful to watch.
There’s another actor in this film who we’ve known and loved for decades — actually several — and not all of this guy’s movies have gotten the critical respect that Jay Kelly is getting, but he’s brought a lot of people a lot of joy over a lot of years—
SANDLER Patrick Wilson! [laughs]
But I’m not sure that he has gotten the credit that he deserves for stretching himself as much as he has in films like Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me, Noah’s film The Meyerowitz Stories, Uncut Gems and Hustle. Noah, for the part of Ron, why did you go back to Adam Sandler?
BAUMBACH Adam and I fell in love with each other on The Meyerowitz Stories — we became very close; our families are close and love each other; and my son, Rohmer, who’s here, basically lives at Adam’s house half the year. The character of Ron, I wrote for Adam — even though you might think that Adam is more like Jay Kelly [because he’s a movie star] — because of the way Adam is in the world, with his heart and his generosity and his loyalty. The people who work with him have been with him since the beginning, and the way he is with his family is so beautiful. I felt like, “Well, that’s what Ron is like, and Adam, in a way, could play something that is close to him, but in disguise.” That was really exciting to me, and also a way to pay tribute to the Adam I know and love.
SANDLER That’s beautiful. Thank you.
Adam, I’d love to hear what your reaction was when you saw what Noah had written for you. But also, having been in the business for as long as you have, you’ve had an up-close view of the actor/manager relationship, with all of its friend/employee complexities, and I wondered if that particularly informed the way you approached this guy?
SANDLER First of all, thank you to Noah for this part — Noah, you’re a great man, and all of us thank you. What a guy he is. He writes the most beautiful lines, and we get to say them, so thank you. Yes, over the years I’ve had a team, similar to Jay Kelly. I have a manager; I have a publicist; I have an agent; I have my makeup girl, Anne — she’s not here tonight, but imagine being her! Imagine every morning going, “What the fuck can I do?!” But I really loved being this guy who just loves his client and feels that they’re in it together — he feels the same successes, and when something goes wrong he feels the same pain. My team feels that way also. When things go wrong, they are definitely shook up. When we have a nice moment, they’re as excited as I am. So I connected with my guy, absolutely.
Adam, as Noah alluded to, you’ve been exceptionally the opposite of Jay Kelly, in terms of casting people that you’ve known forever in your films and being very present with your family — I think your whole family was in Happy Gilmore 2 earlier this year! But even with that being the case, has being part of this movie, watching it and thinking about it, made you look at your role as a movie star, or movie stardom in general, any differently than you had before?
SANDLER I think what the movie is saying is that not just movie stars, but anybody who wants to do their best, has to put time in to their work, and when you do that, you are away from your family, and you know your family’s still going on, and you want to get to them. I definitely have schlepped my family all over the world wherever I go, but there are times when they can’t come. Jay Kelly not getting to be with his family, and looking back and knowing how painful it was for them, is crushing. Even though I’m with my family a lot, I still have moments where it kills me being away. We all do.
Another person who has some history with Noah — namely, the movie Marriage Story, for which she won an Academy Award — is Laura Dern. Laura, similar to Adam, you’ve been at the highest levels of this business for so many years. Has this film made you think differently about stardom?
DERN What I love — and Adam spoke so eloquently to it — is the question of the cost of any of our journeys in life, what we might miss. So before Jay Kelly can get to, “I want another one,” there’s the cost for Ron, what he’s lost in life by being of service to Jay. And so my character [Kelly’s publicist] is helping Ron’s journey of getting to the place where he’s also willing to get off the train. And getting to stare into the eyes and work with the face that Anne gets to make up every day was the dream of my life!
SANDLER We had fun.
DERN And being back with Noah was a dream because he creates a home, makes you feel the safest you’ve ever been, and gifts you with these people you get to dive right into, even if they’re the very people you’ve been surrounded by your whole life. I, too, have had the good fortune of being surrounded by publicists.
Billy, it seems to me like your assignment must have fet very daunting: you have to come in and, in a relatively short amount of time, provide the motivation for Jay’s existential crisis. You crushed the Method acting scene. Can you share how you prepared for it, and if that process was any different from the process that you use when, as is often the case, you are the guy who’s at the center of a project?
CRUDUP Well, thank you. What a gift it was to have Noah come to me with this composition. You have to understand, I’ve been in New York for over 30 years now, and Noah is a fixture of the independent cinema scene there, and every one of my friends has worked with him at some point or another. I was desperate to be in one of Noah’s movies — I was ready for anything — and then I read this and I was like, “Dude, that’s a very hard thing to do! Something I’m not exactly sure how to do. And it seems like the rest of your movie is predicated on that being successful.” [laughs] So, “Are you sure?” was really my question to him, and we had a lot of conversations. Most of my friends are actors, and result-oriented acting — where you just think, “Oh, this is the scene where my character cries” — is anathema to everything that we do. I thought, “That’s going to be a problem.” Noah was very considerate and understanding that I was desperate to work with him, but that I really did not know how to pull this off. I had a whole other version that I had written down to try, and Noah entertained me. Then, about two or three weeks before we were going to shoot this scene, I noticed that the scene hadn’t changed at all, and that I was going to have to figure out some solution. So I started doing research on Method acting, and sure enough, Noah had constructed this scene in such a way that the scene actually plays itself, it leads you in the right direction. That’s a great writer. I don’t know how many takes we did, but it was probably over 50 on both sides — and there wasn’t a second of it that I wasn’t in absolute heaven.
Patrick, your character, Ben Alcock, another movie star and client of Ron’s, is the antithesis of Jay Kelly in a number of ways. I wonder if you can talk about that, and specifically about the very memorable scene that you shared with Mr. Sandler.
WILSON I only have two scenes, and I knew nothing about the rest of the script — I mean nothing — until I saw the movie this morning. And Ben didn’t know anything, nor did he need to know anything, so that was an interesting exercise for me, but a glorious one, because the words that I had been given said everything that I needed to know. The scene with George on the side of the road said so much about Ben’s family, his values and how he views his own career. And the scene with Adam? Just working with Adam has been this crazy dream of mine, because I don’t live in the comedy space. It was a double-whammy for me to work with Adam and Noah, two people that I revere so much. It can make you feel uncomfortable when you’re only coming in for a couple of days, but I was given such support by Noah and the crew. And then Adam, you were just so glorious on that day, and made me feel so comfortable. We did 30 different versions with shit flying off the table, and I was looking across the table at this guy who was wiped out every single take. I knew I just had to react and be open. I’ve never had a scene like that. I did have to fire an agent once years ago, but it wasn’t like that! [laughs] Anyway, I just love your [Adam’s] work, and I love your work in this movie.
We are going to close with the great composer Nicholas Britell, who everyone knows from the theme of Succession, the scores of Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk and Don’t Look Up, and so much else. Nick, I was fascinated to learn that on this project, perhaps unlike any other on which you’ve worked, your music was in place before some of the scenes were even shot.
BRITELL It’s true. This was something that I’d never done before, getting involved in a project so early. Noah and I met over two years ago, and from the script stage he and I had amazing conversations, and I started trying to imagine the feeling that the movie might have. Then I wrote three of the four main themes of the movie, and Noah invited me to come to Tuscany, and we actually played the music on set for everybody. It was such a special thing for me to sort of absorb the atmosphere. And it was important, I think, for everybody, sort of like osmosis — you feel the world that you’re going to be a part of creating. I just had a blast from start to finish.