When the clown frowns

It was an uncharacteristically serious Adam Sandler who sat down to meet the press at the Cannes film festival, where Noah Baumbach’s The Meyerowitz Stories had its world première over the long weekend.

“It’s different for a comedian to get an offer like this,” said Sandler. “My first thought is that I don’t want to let anybody down, and work as hard as I can, and make sure I know the material, and try to be as real as I can.”

Sandler plays one of three half-siblings in the comedydrama, alongside Ben Stiller and Elizabeth Marvel. Dustin Hoffman is the patriarch, an egocentric sculptor looking for a late-career boost when illness strikes. Emma Thompson is his fourth wife, though Hoffman’s character claims she’s just his third: “My first marriage was annulled.”

The cast were obviously tickled at working with Baumbach — it’s Stiller’s third time, after 2010’s Greenberg and 2014’s While We’re Young. Hoffman had particular praise for the writer/director’s screenplay.

“We do say his dialogue word for word whether we like it or not,” he said. “Not since The Graduate was I required to say every single word. And it pays off because there is a music to his writing. He is a singular artist.”

(Hoffman has a point. Take the line: “You guys will never understand what it’s like to be me in this family.” Has anyone, in any family, not felt that particular grievance?)

The Meyerowitz Stories also features some amateur musical numbers, reminiscent of Sandler’s occasional forays into satiric songwriting on Saturday Night Live. Said Baumbach: “If you have Adam in your movie, if you can you’d like him to sing and play the piano.”

Sandler may seem like an unlikely face at the Cannes film festival, but in fact he’s been here once before, in 2002, as the star of PunchDrunk Love, which won the best director prize for Paul Thomas Anderson. His latest serious roles, in Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler and Jason Reitman’s Men, Women and Children, were less well received when they played the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. He has since signed a multi-picture deal with streaming service Netflix, which coincidentally has bought the rights to Baumbach’s movie.

Baumbach was asked “the Netflix question,” given that jury president Pedro Almodovar has come out against it, all but barring Netflix’s Okja or The Meyerowitz Stories from winning any prizes at Cannes.

“I made this movie, as I’ve made all my movies, with the expectation that it’ll be shown on the big screen. I believe in that and I think it’s a unique and singular experience that is not going away.” But he continued: “Netflix acquired it post-production, and they’ve been hugely supportive, and I feel very appreciative to them.”

The discussion was often punctuated with witticisms, many of them from Thompson, who remarked in a more serious moment that the movie builds on the tension between laughter and tears.

“It’s very funny and then it’s suddenly very moving, which for me anyway is the most satisfying form of drama that there is,” she said. “If it’s not funny, I can’t really cope with watching it.”

Discussing her character, she added: “I’ve got to play an American, which is quite hard, and I’ve got to play an alcoholic, which isn’t hard at all. I thought, I’ll be able to relax playing an American because being drunk will make it so much easier.”

When the press conference moderator apologized that the stars’ glasses contained only water, Thompson shot her a look and replied: “Not in mine, darling.”

The Meyerowitz Stories will be released on Netflix later this year.

Adam Sandler