"Filmmakers Are Aware of Some Things and Not of Others" | Noah Baumbach Full Screenwriter's Lecture

Writer and director Noah Baumbach discusses his creative process, inspirations, how he got into filmmaking, and more!
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[@baftaguru]

What movies have inspired you the most?

[@GregorBarclay]

Who are you asking? Us?

[@jonfee5081]

Magnolia

[@KenFlanagan]

I don’t know why I find this so difficult to watch. There is something so obvious about what is being said and yet it is presented as if these observations are difficult or profoundly challenging to understand or perceive. It’s a kind of self aggrandisement just to address these most obvious things as if they are not in this kind of forum. As if only a chosen few can see these truths and no one else can. Insight, perception and our own take in being human may feel unique to all of us but maybe it’s the format or something about the delivery that makes any observation or self effacing tone seem fake and oddly self serving. Maybe it’s me. Normally I wouldn’t feel so moved to comment but there is so much wrong with the world at the moment, so much fakery is that’s a word, there is a tendency to want to just stop the bs wherever we come across it. It’s worse when we think it’s coming from our own side. Being mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore usually ends in self harm one way or another. Comments aren’t really made for others to read but more to hear oneself and ones own thoughts when everyone else feels like they are talking at us. I hope everyone can stay safe and stay sane. Take care.

[@DerDelay]

Man, this is just a guy talking about screenwriting and his favorite movie openings. I don't see any pretension here. You're the one making some grand observations about the current state of the world based on this lecture. It's fine and I get what you're saying but I just wanted to put it in perspective for you. (also maybe Noah is just a bit nervous talking in front of these people. Who knows?)

[@KenFlanagan]

DerDelay dude I do understand and as I said under any normal circumstance I wouldn’t bother to comment. I tuned in hoping to be entertained in a pretty innocuous way but within seconds of hearing him talk the banality of the whole thing really started to make my head hurt. The clue is in the title maybe bafta guru. ??? It’s hard to imagine the significance of incrementally small things that don’t chime with us given we are taught to filter most of them out. I’m sure it must have seemed a pretty innocuous thing to have a tv show set up where we have a business tycoon who has the power to fire a group of would be wannabes on tv in a kind of humiliating way. Its light entertainment after all. It’s bad enough that now every country around the world has a syndicated version of the apprentice encapsulating everything wrong with a capitalist me society but who could have imagined that that popularity base and the persona that it created would one day become the most powerful man in the world. The rise of Boris Johnson is just as inconsequential at first but depressingly predictable when an old Etonian journalist is given the public platform that only tv and our celebrity culture can provide. I would love to think he was nervous but his assurance on so many other self promotional channels makes it unlikely. And again he is the product of a certain kind of liberalism that is generally isolated from the consequences of a trump, and that could be discussed another time but that isn’t even the point. How are people given platforms, by whom and for what purpose. The unintended consequences come later. For now there is something hugely amoral about the film industry, it’s power to influence, its perpetual self importance and it’s ability to endlessly award itself with merit and self aggrandisement. There is a system at work and the stories we tell each other soon become the truths we believe. It is important and this is just the tip of something that feels like an iceberg in exactly the same way a celebrity president doesn’t just appear from nowhere. It’s probably too complicated to express here but there’s something about intelligent people with privilege and opportunity using their talents to talk about film intros while children starve that feels wrong. I guess that’s why my head hurts.

[@DerDelay]

@@KenFlanagan Okay, man. I just don't see what you're seeing. And no, the apprentice was never innocuous. Take care.

[@KenFlanagan]

DerDelay you too

[@varmaraviajay]

Watch the video with Dee Rees, she breaks things down so openly, without any hint of creative exceptionalism