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You and Noah have discussed how Frances Ha wound up being a secret project.
Was that secrecy intentional? We didn’t
set out and say, “Don’t tell anyone
about this.” Part of that was just
functional with how we were shooting it. We shot this over a long period of time. We were presenting it to
[the actors] as, “Here are the pages
that you’re in, but you don’t know
how it fits together.” So we were
just calling it the Untitled Noah
Baumbach Project. But then there
was a point where we realized no
one knew about it, and then we did
make the active decision of, “Let’s
not talk about it.” It felt like you
so rarely get the opportunity to do
something that people don’t know
about. I love that experience. I try
to give myself that experience with
films very often. I love reading intelligent criticism about films, but
I try not to do it beforehand. I try
to almost go into the theater with
nothing. It’s hard to create that experience in this day and age. That
said, I’m certainly glad that people
know about the movie now.
Unfortunately, it’s kind of a one-shot
thing. Your next project with Noah, Untitled Public School Project, was discussed at length in that New Yorker
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profile. You can’t do that again. I
know. We talked about it because
we were like, “Should we not?”
Then we were like, “It doesn’t
matter. People will know.” It’s
fine. The thing is, though, that
we did get that film pretty much
done. So it’s like, “Well, it exists!”
Whenever people say, ‘Oh
do you wish you had been born
in a different time?’ It’s like, ‘Not
as a woman.’ As a woman, pretty
much now is the best time.”
After the New York Film Festival screening of Frances Ha last year, Noah compared the film to a pop song. I love that
designation, and think it’s a budding
trend. This film, Spring Breakers... That
was like a fucked-up pop song. I
simultaneously loved it and hated
it. It’s so weird, but I’m so impressed that made as much of an
impact and has done as well as it
did. I’m so glad for it, because it is
so weird. Deeply weird. I loved it.
You’re sort of like, “I feel sick and
I kind of can’t believe this, and it’s
hilarious, but I also feel dirty, like
I want to take a bath.”