Crafted with unmistakable heart, Jay Kelly — writer and director Noah Baumbach’s sharp, sweet new comedy-drama — is a love letter to Hollywood. Co-written with Emily Mortimer, who also appears in the film, the story follows its namesake, a marquee leading man played by George Clooney, traveling through Italy with his longtime friend and manager, Ron, portrayed with warmth and wit by Adam Sandler. Their journey is at once literal and philosophical, a sun-drenched trek that drifts between past and present, reality and memory.
Baumbach, Mortimer, and Sandler recently joined casting director Nina Gold at The Lineup: Live at the Egyptian in Los Angeles to talk about the passion, humor, and emotional undercurrents that shaped the film.
An edited version of the conversation follows.
Noah Baumbach, Adam Sandler, Emily Mortimer and Nina Gold
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Tomris Laffly: Noah, throughout your career, you’ve explored the idea of people looking back at their lives, looking at themselves through a different mirror. Jay Kelly feels like a heightened version of that. How did you arrive at the story?
Noah Baumbach: The character [Jay Kelly] has these memories that he actually walks into, so it was a way to even physicalize and dramatize [the] internal life of the character. That was, I think, the initial thing that was compelling to me: thinking of an actor who might be having a crisis of sorts taking this voyage. He goes on a journey from LA to Europe, but he’s also going on a journey into his past.
Adam, you and Noah collaborated before on The Meyerowitz Stories, and Noah then wrote this character with you in mind. What were you excited to explore through Ron?
Adam Sandler: Oh, I loved being Ron. I loved having the job as a manager, a man who looks out for his client, only thinks of his client, and it was really easy to do with George playing Jay Kelly. I loved being with him. I loved looking at him. He’s handsome — in person. Onscreen you don’t really get it, but in person! [Laughs] I’m kidding — you know he’s an idol. But I loved being Ron. And what Emily and Noah wrote — I don’t know how to repay it, so thank you.
Can you talk a little bit more about building this chemistry with George?
Sandler: Oh, man, he was so nice to all of us. We shot some of this in Italy, and everywhere he goes in Italy, people are like, “George Clooney!” And with all of us, you feel it too — he brings you in on it. He knows every restaurant and every place to go. If you have a problem, he helps you. Whatever the hell’s hurting you, he’s like, “This’ll fix that.” He’s just an unbelievable guy. I just sat back and hung out with him and listened to George’s stories and told him about me, and we got closer and closer, and I loved it. Lifetime friendship.
Emily, this is your screenwriting debut for a feature film. Tell me a little bit about what it felt like, as an actor also, to bring that insight to the life of Jay Kelly, the actor, looking back at his memories.
Emily Mortimer: Well, it was amazing. It was a dream that I wouldn’t have even dared dream come true that Noah asked me to write this with him, because I’ve just admired him forever. And yeah, I guess it was really interesting to think about this character and relate it to myself as we were writing. I think to anyone that has a job that they really care about and they really love — in order to do well, you have to spend an awful lot of time doing it. And I think that acting as a profession is something that attracts sensitive people who sometimes find the messy business of reality quite difficult. So it’s easy to run away — to use it to run away. I relate it to that very much. And here we have a character who’s literally running away, but he can’t. All the tricks that he’s used in the past to avoid dealing with life have stopped working for him now. He’s running away from his present, but his past, in the form of these memories, is catching up to him. I think anyone who has used work as a way of escaping can relate to this, really.
Nina, you’re a casting legend. This is the kind of movie that really makes me glad that casting is now a category at the Academy Awards. There are over 75 speaking parts in this movie, not just the main cast but also people who have one or two scenes or maybe a little moment that enters Jay’s orbit. Tell me about navigating this vast cast.
Nina Gold: Well, it was helpful to have an incredible script that’s written in such intricate detail for every tiny part, even if they only have a tiny moment. Everyone really seemed to exist as fully formed characters on the page with their own world. Having an incredible filmmaker and two other great actor magnets at the top made it much easier to attract really, really wonderful actors for really tiny, tiny little moments.
Can you talk specifically about Billy Crudup? He has just one big scene, which involves the dramatic reading of a restaurant menu, but his presence looms over the entire movie. What made him right for that incredible part?
Gold: Well, he’s such a wonderful actor, and he’s just completely brilliant. We talked a lot about the menu scene and imagining who would do it — we couldn’t not imagine Billy doing it. He’s such a wonderful actor, and we’ve just seen him in this one-man play, which just solidified everything you could possibly think about him.
Noah, earlier you mentioned Jay literally walking into his memories. You use a lot of old-school filmmaking techniques, all real sets. How did you pull off some of those transitions? He’s looking in the mirror saying his name in one moment, and then instantly he’s in a completely different place.
Baumbach: I had to figure out how to actually execute — and execute well. Linus Sandgren, the cinematographer, and Mark Tildesley, the production designer, and I spent long hours [fretting], trying to figure out how to do it. Because we didn’t want to do anything in post with CGI — we wanted it all to be practical.
For instance, one of the memories, he’s on an airplane, and he’s talking to his entourage of people, and he gets up and he goes toward the back of the plane, and he opens the curtain and then he walks out and he’s in his past — his young self is on a stage in an acting class from 30 years ago. And so what we did was build the plane onto the stage — the way that you see it in the movie is the way it was for us there on the day. But it was a very sophisticated thought that went into something that ultimately feels quite simple and, I hope, effortless. The design and the lighting and everything — we tested all these versions, because it’s something that had to feel right.
Adam, obviously you’re on the actor side of things and then, here, you’re playing the other, business side of filmmaking. How did this experience of playing Ron reshape the way you look at the industry?
Sandler: I like being on Ron’s side. I like taking care of the movie star. It was just fun to give myself to someone else and not be concerned with my day, just worry about them.
This film is universal, but it’s also a love letter to movies. As the story progresses, as Jay goes on this journey, we actually see a lot of genres — a train adventure, a buddy comedy. As you were writing these on the page, how aware were you that you were also visiting these other genres that we all love?
Mortimer: I don’t think we necessarily thought, ‘Oh, we’re going to go to this genre now or that genre.’ But we did watch movies that felt [like a] part of the world of this film: We watched Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Vanishes, Wild Strawberries, there were lots of different films from different universes that felt right for this film. But it wasn’t like we were consciously thinking we wanted to genre-bend at all. For some reason, this journey through this film star’s life felt like it could hold those different tones and elements somehow.
Baumbach: When we were writing it, once we had him walk into these memories, it opened up other possibilities of the movie in terms of things that might or might not happen. And there were magical elements and there were very realistic elements, and these things could live side by side. We weren’t thinking consciously about, ‘Oh, we could shift here or there.’ I think the movie kind of guided us and allowed us to go there.
On that note of this deep affection for the movies, maybe we can end the conversation with each of you telling me a core movie memory or a formative movie that you love that really shaped the person that you are today.
Baumbach: Well, The Jerk was a big one, wasn’t it?
Sandler: Oh, yeah.
Baumbach: That was an R-rated movie. I wasn’t allowed to see R-rated movies, but the theater in Brooklyn that had been closed for years suddenly [re]opened and was playing The Jerk. And because it was local, I could suddenly see R-rated movies, because I could walk. I don’t know why that was a bend for my parents, but they allowed it. But I loved The Jerk. It was hilarious, and it also seemed kind of grown-up and naughty in some ways.
Sandler: Yeah, accurate. I was thinking, when you brought up The Jerk, which was a big one for me also, but before that there was one called Young Frankenstein. As a kid, that was one where my parents dropped me off, and I stayed for two showings in a row. I couldn’t believe how great it was. As a comedian, you just go, “That’s as good as it gets.”
Mortimer: It’s such a strange one, but I just happened to watch it on the telly when I was about eight, and it was Calamity Jane with Doris Day. I fell in love with this film, and I don’t really know why. I think it was because she was everything. She was so funny, and she sang and she was a cowboy, but she also wore pretty dresses, and it was very romantic and funny. I just adore that film, and I’ve watched it so many times. I’ve forced my children to watch it, and no one else in the world has ever watched it, so they’ve got no one else to talk to about it but me.
Gold: I was obsessed with Tootsie. A wonderful film. It was the one!
