Filmmaker Noah Baumbach and the cast of his delightfully eccentric Don DeLillo adaptation White Noise met International Media Venice on Wednesday just hours before the festival’s opening world premiere.
White Noise Centered on University Professor Jack Gladney (driver) and his wife Babette (Gerwig) , as they grapple with a nearby chemical explosion that polluted the air, causing death and family life. Rafe Cassidy, Andre Benjamin, Judy Turner-Smith and Don Cheadle also star. Written by Baumbach, the film was the first project he released that was not based on his own original ideas.
In a press conference, Baumbach reflected on the poignancy of the novel’s story and the language of DeLillo, which he said he reread by accident at the start of COVID-19 Pandemic.
“I couldn’t believe how relevant it was and how relevant it was to the moment, but it also felt that no matter what the moment was, it was going to be relevant to that moment,” he said . “I feel like I’m accepting his language, but I also feel like I’m finding my voice in his language.”
Baumbach points to a particular line in the book , in which the character of the driver says “the family is the cradle of misinformation”.
“I think it’s a good representation of not only this country – America – but the whole world – how we get information today. As you can see in the movie Like kids, they keep saying, “Is this true? “Well, maybe it’s true, maybe not – they never know.”
As a child of 1980, filming When the director pointed out that this decade was a very mature period for him, the films he saw told him and guided him to become a filmmaker himself.
“So I also see [White Noise] as a movie story. Because of genre elements and tonal changes, I can use this language,” he said. “I was close to Bian DePalma and I would say, oh, you used those shots of Hitchcock. He said, no, Hitchcock created a language that we can use now. So I guess I would Take advantage of the film languages available to me in 1980 Film Languages. 1980 Noir. Disaster Films. Romantic Comedies. Vacation Films Family in. There’s a coherence to it all because Derry has it all for me. People say, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen you do that before. But the material from the past doesn’t need it, and this movie does So. So I went there.”
White Noise ends with a dance in the supermarket set to LCD Soundsystem’s For the new track, Baumbach simply asked the band’s frontman James Murphy to write it.
“I told James, basically, if you’re 1985 writing music, you’re going to write a song that you’re going to write, Then write a really catchy, funny song about death,” he said.
White Noise Marriage Story at 30. That film, starring Driver and Scarlett Johansson, also premiered in Venice, before earning six Oscar nominations and a win. “White Noise” is also the fourth film co-starring Baumbach’s wife and frequent collaborator Gerwig.
After Venice, White Noise will return to the United States, opening the New York Film Festival in the United States in September 30 — For the first time, a film has two festivals at the same time, ahead of a Netflix release later this year.
