Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interviews by JANE CROWTHER

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The team behind Noah Bambach’s Hollywood comedy talk dessert, watching their own movies and the loneliness of a movie star.

When Hollywood Authentic sits down with the cast of Jay Kelly and their writer-director in a suite at the Excelsior on Venice’s Lido we wonder why there’s no cheesecake on the table. At the heart of their film, the titular movie star, played by George Clooney, has an existential crisis during a jaunt across Europe with his longtime manager (Adam Sandler), his publicist (Laura Dern) and his hair and MUA (Emily Mortimer). On his rider everywhere he goes: a slice of vanilla cheesecake. 

‘No cheesecake,’ Mortimer laughs. Also, no Clooney, who has excused himself from Venice Film Festival with illness after soldiering on to walk the premiere red carpet with Greg Williams. ‘It stinks,’ sighs Sandler of his buddy’s absence. Still, it’s clear the remaining team enjoy each other’s company and also the process of filming the movie across France and Italy as well as Hollywood. ‘I had the idea of a movie star going on a journey – going from Los Angeles into Europe, and specifically Italy, it was a compelling idea for me,’ Baumbach explains of the genesis of the project on which he partnered with Mortimer as co-writer after the two spent time together on White Noise. Mortimer was accompanying her kids, Sam and May Nivola, who were playing the on-screen children of Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig. ‘It wasn’t until Emily and I really got into it that I understood that making a movie about an actor is making a movie about performance and identity, and is a way to tell this story of how we’re all trying to meet ourselves as we go through life, and identify ourselves and who we are in all these different roles that we play in our lives.’

‘Noah came to me with a notion of this movie, but there was an awful lot of both of us that we shared,’ says Mortimer. ‘All the different ways in which living this pretend life can screw with your mind, and separate you from real life. And the kind of dedication and time that is required of you to do this job. Things like you see in the movie where you’re pretending to be in a family with a group of actors, and a fake kid, and a fake wife, and spending a lot of time getting to know each other in order to make the scene work and the film work. And, meanwhile, you’re leaving your real husband or wife or kids far, far away. So, yes, there was a lot that I could add, and also I spent a lot of time in Italy growing up. So I had lots of stories to tell about strange family holidays when I was a kid that tickled Noah.’

Of course, while Baumbach and Mortimer could pour their own experiences in their screenplay, it would only truly sing with the right person in the role of Jay, a charming, handsome movie star who has been famous and liked for decades. ‘It was clear that it should be somebody that the audience has a history with,’ says Baumbach. ‘Early on I felt it should be George. I’ve known him over the years a little bit, and always wanted to find something for him, and with him. I gave it to him, and the first thing he said after he read it, ‘You really wrote yourself into a corner with this, because there’s not many people who could play this part’. But George has that timeless quality, he feels like a movie star from any era. It was exciting doing it with him, because you’re asking the actor to reveal more and more of himself in the performance, while playing someone trying to hide.’

As Jay tries to hide, his erstwhile manager, Ron, tries to protect, juggling life with his wife (Greta Gerwig) and kids. Baumbach cast Adam Sandler, who has known Clooney for years in real life. ‘We played a few [basketball games] – we shot around a lot,’ says Sandler. ‘He’s a funny, decent person. But I never got to spend as much time as I did on the movie set, and being part of George’s family. You wish he was your concierge in real life. ‘What do I do today, George?’’ While the friendship with Clooney is replicated in real life, Sandler also recognises the movie star world of Jay Kelly from his own experiences.

‘When I see some movie star stuff that goes on in there, I’ve seen it in people I’ve worked with, or I’ve done it myself. In real life, I try to include my family and friends with what I do. But I will tell my family, ‘I’ve got a big day coming up, or a big couple of days in a row. I might not be as available to you’. And they’re cool with that. There was also a scene in the movie where I had to be very emotional, and Noah was cool enough to let my wife do the off-camera for me – a phone call – because I really had to feel things, and my wife and I have a nice closeness that it was allowing me to feel what I needed.’

Jay’s perfect life unravels after a meeting with an old friend, played by Billy Crudup. Having been mates as struggling actors, the two men have not seen each other for decades. They go for a drink and their lives are now starkly different, the emotions that are brought up by the reunion, charged. ‘There are so many features about [the film] that are about our lives, and about a very human expression of what it’s like to try to do this,’ says Crudup. ‘It’s probably a great analogue to everybody’s lives, you know? We make sacrifices in our work lives. Some of them are small, and some of them are catastrophic. You never know what’s going to come next, and how you’re going to manage your family in a certain period, or in a new portion of your life where you’re a parent, or you’ve lost a parent. All these different things were very relatable to me in the script. The first movie that I was in – as soon as the movie came out, I was hearing from people that I hadn’t heard from in a very long time. I can remember them not being very nice and that creates a kind of loneliness.’

Laura Dern as Jay’s exasperated publicist agrees; ‘The movie star is such a perfect choice of Emily and Noah, but it can be any career path. But simultaneously, this is not a drive of ego, but a shared drive that all of us here share, which is a deep love of cinema – it’s also this constant current in the film, with every choice, with every frame, with Noah’s work as well as Linus, our amazing cinematographer. You know, you’re falling in love with movies as you’re watching this cautionary tale about living the life of being in the movies.’

‘It’s not just a cautionary tale of how destructive pretending to be other people can be,’ Mortimer adds. ‘It’s also just innate to who we are as people – play-acting and pretending to be other people. And the fun of that, and the joy of that, and how much it can give to everybody.’ The film also shows a moment when Jay watches clips of his own films with an audience, seeing how his work affects other people. What is the experience for Mortimer when watching her own movies back?

‘I guess it’s just the same as looking at old photographs or something. You’re just like, ‘Oh my God, I looked so nice, and I was so young. What was I worrying about!’ For me, looking at old movies, I can’t really look at it in a way where I’m analysing my work as a professional – it does feel like a scrapbook or a photo album of your life somehow. And you mark your life through the movies that you make. You remember scenes from your own life through seeing the film and it gives me the sense of time passing in the blink of an eye.’

‘I certainly enjoyed being a lot skinnier back then,’ Sandler admits of watching his back catalogue. ‘My family will watch an old movie of mine, and I’ll walk in. I never sit and watch it for too long, but I do remember what happened, and what was going on – maybe even that day.’ He keenly remembers a specific day when asked what’s on his own rider (not cheesecake). ‘One movie I walked onto maybe 20 years ago, and it was too hot on the stage. And I said, ‘Where the hell is the air conditioning?’ I was yelling about it being too hot, and I’m sweating, and I can’t think straight. And now every time one of my productions is going, I step on the set, and it’s like 62 degrees, and everyone’s shivering. And I say, ‘What’s going on in here?’ And they’re like, ‘You said…’’ He chuckles. ‘That’s my cheesecake.’