Noah Baumbach Quotes

I've always liked working with friends or, you know, people I have outside relationships with.

I like having associations with locations beyond their meaning for the specific movie.

I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.

Nothing that I've turned down do I feel like I should have done. Because I've generated everything I've done, I've never really considered doing something that I haven't originated myself. There are definitely things that I've been brought that someone else made good movies out of. But it's not a path I've followed, so I don't have regret.

I really like my first movie a lot, "Kicking and Screaming." I think it's a - I'm very pleased and proud of that movie, but it wasn't the - it wasn't "Citizen Kane" right out of the box, you know? It wasn't "Sex, Lies and Videotape."

I grew up in the heat of '70s postmodern fiction and post-Godard films, and there was this idea that what mattered was the theory or meta in art.

As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'

I always viewed life as material for a movie.

I've had great experiences or joyful experiences making a movie that people found very disturbing.

Dance is a profession with an expiration date for many people.

I always wanted to write movies that I'd direct. I didn't come at it from a writing standpoint more than a directing standpoint, except that growing up, I didn't have the opportunity to shoot as much as I did to write.

The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.

When I'm editing, I tend to cut, go back over it, cut, go back over it, cut, so by the time I'm done, even with a cut, I don't have a rough cut and then work on it so much. I have a pretty rigorous cut of the movie that's usually in the range of what the final movie is going to be. It doesn't mean I don't work on it a lot after that, but I get it into a shape so I feel I can really tell what it needs, or at least it's ready to show people.

Wes Anderson's films, 6-year-olds are crazy about them.

If you don't feel good about something, you don't shake it off easily.

I like to have memories of a place. It brings something extra. I'm not even sure what it is. I mean, it's the same part of it as I like using friends in small parts or people I know or my doorman.

Will Ferrell's made a lot of brilliant movies.

I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel.

I do like having books on my shelves. I do value that life.

That's the nice thing about collaborating with someone: Your work becomes a conversation.

Peter Bogdanovich is a good friend.

I'm good with a grill. I like to make cheeseburgers - I once read in a David Goodis crime novel that you're only supposed to flip a burger once.

I'm interested in music as an extension of character.

Manhattan is so tailored. It's driven by appealing to the very wealthy and tourists.

Music is like color or acting or whatever. It's really something I think about from the beginning. Not that I always know exactly what I'm going to use, but I don't see it as something like, "Let's find some songs now!" after we have a finished film.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

There's something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don't know what their reaction will be.

When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.

There's always some generational-guys-hanging-out movie that is made every few years, I think, and some of them are great.

I wouldn't say 'Frances Ha' is autobiographical, but it's definitely very personal.

I'm a huge proponent of therapy and analysis, but it's something that, in a nonprofessional way, can be abused.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

My dad was a great movie companion. He wouldn't diminish 'The Jerk.' If I liked it, he liked it. He could see it through my eyes.

Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.

I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it's your friend.

I try to write 'and it's all very funny' after each scene description so that the reader can imagine the movie in their head.

Wes Anderson grew up in Houston, and he and I talk about Manhattan in similar ways, as a kind of fantasy world.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don't actually know what it's going to be, but I'm still striving to get to some place with it.

I'm sure I've said some pretty bad pick-up lines.

I guess I probably took New York for granted. Growing up, playing in the street, going down to the Avenue to the record store and to the grocery store and stuff like that.

I like to try to keep things as relaxed and easy as possible. I mean, movies generally attract a lot of people who like to cause fires, so they can later try to put them out. But I don't like that kind of thing.

I think I was going through a lot of change at 27, but I didn't know it was happening until it was over.

It's near impossible to make a movie in black and white in the system.

[Shwing] the really naked stuff I've dealt with in my own life, my own therapy and relationships - for me it just feels like a film I'm really proud of.

When I start a movie, there will be certain films that I watch again just because the vibe seems right.

I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.