Hoffman interviews Baumbach

The meeting of the mensches took place at the Tribeca Film Festival, whose lineup of films is always bolstered by fascinating passel of live events. Sitting on a mostly unadorned stage, save for a pair of comfortable looking chairs and a small table with a couple of water bottles between them, Dustin Hoffman wore a dark suit and black shirt, sans tie, and writer- director Noah Baumbach, sported a dark suit slightly too large for him, and a long, skinny tie which gave him the air of anxious English graduate student nervously attending a Modern Language Association conference. The result of their exchange made for fascinating conversation. Less an in- depth interview — at one point, Baumbach looked at Hoffman’s notebook of questions and noted “That book’s just empty” — than a friendly exchange between a cinematic titan and an indie darling whose career has now spanned more than two decades.

Baumbach’s first film, the critically adored Kicking and Screaming ( no, not the one with Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall) debuted in 1995, but his best- known work, The Squid and the Whale, nominated for an Oscar for its screenplay, didn’t come out for another 10 years. Since that relative triumph, Baumbach has been churning out films obtuse ( Margot at the Wedding, Greenberg) and greatly amusing ( While We’re Young, Mistress America), with a cavalcade of memorable characters likable and otherwise. A frequent collaborator with Wes Anderson, the pair co- wrote Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Hoffman, meanwhile, has had a legendary career from his first huge break — when Mike Nichols went entirely against type and cast him as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate — to a sterling run in the ’ 70s and ’ 80s, with unforgettable turns in Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, All the President’s Men, and Straw Dogs. He’s a two- time Oscar winner and a Hollywood icon, as likely to be seen courtside at a Lakers game as Jack Nicholson or the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea.

The reason they were on stage together is because Hoffman is starring in Baumbach’s forthcoming film, The Meyerowitz Stories, but it’s still more than a little peculiar for Hoffman to be sitting in the interviewer’s chair. “Wouldn’t this be better if I was talking about my stuff?” he queried at one point to great laughter. Nevertheless, he did ask some questions, along with his own anecdotes (“one thing we could talk about which maybe you could segue into Midnight Cowboy or something,” Baumbach sarcastically suggested at one point). Here are 10 things we learned about the duo in the course of their far- ranging discussion.

1. Of all his films, Baumbach feels his second film, Mr. Jealousy, was the hardest to make.

When queried about his most difficult film, Baumbach didn’t hesitate: “In a way, the second one was probably the most difficult. It’s the one that I usually don’t talk about as much. Making the first one, I’d never really been on a movie set before. I had grown up going to lots of movies and I had parents who loved movies, and I had this sort of idea that I wanted to make movies, but I’d never seen a movie get made. I didn’t know anyone who made them. I think I knew a little bit more and I didn’t have the kind of naivety and confidence of going into my first movie. I don’t know how to say it exactly, but I think there was kind of a built in self- consciousness going into the second movie that I struggled with. I was trying to do something more structured and almost more traditional and I think it wasn’t as personal. But, I didn’t really know that, and I just wasn’t as in control of the material.”

2. Parts of the 1986 Mike Nichols film Heartburn were filmed at Baumbach’s parents’ house in Brooklyn.

In the household of two film writers — his mother eventually became a critic at the Village Voice — it seems perfectly fitting that a film was actually made there: “They had scouted our house in Brooklyn, in Park Slope, which was so thrilling for our family back then. Now that I’ve made movies, the idea of having a movie shot in your house is horrible. But at the time it was like being in a movie. There’s a scene at the end where Meryl Streep puts a pie in Jack Nicholson’s face and that was the house I grew up in. I actually watched it again recently, and there are photos of my brother playing little league.”

3. Barry Levinson’s Diner was a huge influence on Baumbach and his first film, Kicking and Screaming.

You might not have made the connection, but now that Baumbach points it out, it all makes perfect sense: “Yeah, I loved Diner. I saw it at the Waverley, which is now the IFC. My older brother took me to it and I couldn’t believe that I liked it so much. I thought that with every movie I liked at that time. But I think when I got a little older and I started to think about what kind of movie I would actually make, something like Diner, as opposed to say, Raiders of the Lost Ark — which I also loved and made me want to make movies — something like Diner seemed more inside of me, I guess.”

4. Hoffman found Baumbach’s insistence on the actors speaking every word of the script as written a huge challenge.

This was a pet topic between the two of them throughout the evening. Hoffman kvetched about Baumbach’s process — utilizing a script editor to literally keep track of every word on the page — and it never failed to be amusing. “When we worked together, it was only the second time in 50 years for me, that I worked with a director who wanted me to say every single word that was on the page. The last time a director asked to do that was The Graduate and the script supervisor would come up to me after a take and say, ‘ That’s not a period, those are three dots.’ And, your script supervisor did the same … thing.”

5. But at the same time, he doesn’t get why actors take such exception to being given line- readings.

Dusty is at least consistent. “I’ve never understood actors that don’t want line reads. If the person who’s written it has an ear for what it sounds like, sometimes I want to know what’s in their head, what they’ve written. I think De Niro may be [ in the audience], but with Wag the Dog, we did a reading of it. David Mamet had written it, but Barry [ Levinson] is there, he’s directing it. I had this line I keep saying over and over and over again, where I say, ‘ That’s nothing.’ And I didn’t understand. Where’s the fun in that? Cuz I felt like I [ was] missing it. [ The character] is a producer who [ says it] no matter what you say is difficult. He’s kind of like Trump, where he says, ‘ That’s nothing!’ And Barry says, ‘ That’s the joke.’ And when I heard it, I got it. I think it’s legit for actors to want to know. I like authors to read it in front of me.”

6. In order to prepare for his day’s work on a set or a stage, Hoffman writes down all his lines on note cards.

Baumbach said he didn’t know anyone else who did this, but Hoffman’s method seems to do wonders for him. “I can’t work any other way. I’m a very slow memorizer. I did it in high school, when I had to study for a test. I write out all the lines. What I find interesting about it is that you start to understand why a writer, in this case a writer- director, is choosing this word or that sentence, as opposed to ‘ why’d he do it that way?’ But you begin to understand what is going on and you get a rhythm that way. I enjoy that part of it and I’ve done it for Shakespeare. I did it with Arthur Miller.”

7. Baumbach first met his friend and frequent collaborator Wes Anderson at the after- party of a John Waters flick in New York.

Their sensibilities seem to mesh together like gin and vermouth, but it was not always thus. “It was actually after I’d made my first two movies, Wes and I met at a John Waters after- party for Pecker. We bonded because we had the same little notebook in our pocket that we took notes in, and we became friends. That was a period for me, a kind of walkabout between Mr. Jealousy and Squid and the Whale, about an eightyear period in my late 20s. We became very close, but also, working with him was a kind of lifeline in a way for me too. Because I was trying to get Squid and the Whale made.”

8. Despite the common perception, The Squid and the Whale wasn’t entirely autobiographic.

Naturally, Baumbach draws a line between his actual family, and the bitter, mostly miserable individuals that haunt the screen. “That movie uses things from my biography, like Park Slope and the fact that my parents had gotten divorced. I also used a lot of personal elements: I shot in my old high school and in my neighborhood. Jeff [ Daniels] wore my dad’s clothes. I think a lot of that stuff was meaningful and helpful for me because it accessed something that felt raw and emotional and personal, but it wasn’t about trying to re- create my life. It was about doing something new, using all these pieces, just this sort of collage of things that I understood and that meant something to me.”

9. One of Hoffman’s most famous lines — “I’m walkin’ here!” from

Midnight Cowboy was a forced improvisation.

To fans of the film, this should come as no surprise, as the scene remains iconic precisely because of its verite. “We didn’t have any money. Shooting on a shoestring budget. We had a van across the street with a one- way camera. Walking down 6th Avenue, [ Director John] Schlesinger wanted Jon Voight and I to be saying this two- page scene, but it meant that we had to get through a green light so we can keep the dialogue going. So, we get to the corner and take after take after take, it’s a red light. We have to wait. We finally get it about the 15th take and we’re so happy, we can feel it. At this point in the dialogue, John and I were at the corner, and it turns green and we’re able to keep walking, and a … cab… The truth is, what was in my head was, ‘ We’re making a movie here!’ Just as I wanted to say that, I realized I couldn’t, so I changed it, ‘ I’m walking here!’ What was really being said ‘ We’re shooting here.’ ”

10. Hoffman is forever grateful to Mike Nichols for taking such a huge chance with him on The Graduate.

Hoffman’s biggest break came out of director Mike Nichols’ particular sensibility: “He was coming from a very personal place, which I didn’t know until I read an interview he did years later. I was [ his] alter- ego part, why he cast me. I think one of the most courageous things a director in film has ever done was to cast me [ for] this Robert Redford part. ‘ Benjamin Braddock, 6 feet tall, blonde hair,’ that’s what was written in the novel. He went the other way, obviously.”