182 Quotes by Noah Baumbach

I made two movies very young, and then I had trouble getting a movie made, and so – which was both, I think, a plus and a minus. It was a minus because it made me unhappy.

I like to have memories of a place. It brings something extra. I’m not even sure what it is. I mean, it’s the same part of it as I like using friends in small parts or people I know or my doorman.

I didn’t train in directing; I talk to actors the way I talk to anybody.

I guess I’m interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with huge blind spots in terms of their own behavior.

There’s something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don’t know what their reaction will be.

When I make a movie, I have both a specific and vague, amorphous dream idea of what the movie is going to be. Of course, I don’t actually know what it’s going to be, but I’m still striving to get to some place with it.

I’m sure I’ve said some pretty bad pick-up lines.

I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don’t think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.

Music is like color or acting or whatever. It’s really something I think about from the beginning. Not that I always know exactly what I’m going to use, but I don’t see it as something like, “Let’s find some songs now!” after we have a finished film.