Q&A with Noah Baumbach & Jennifer Jason Leigh

Noah Baumbach: A central idea I had in writing the script was that I wanted to make a movie in the tradition of American novels that I’ve loved, books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow and John Updike, stories about men at crisis points in their lives. People have made movies of some of their novels, but I felt it was possible to create a movie that was part of that tradition and done purely cinematically. I also wanted to make a movie that showed L.A. as a real city, not an industry town. 

Andre Techine is the director of the new French film "The Girl on the Train," starring Emilie Dequenne and Catherine Deneuve.

What memories do you have of the "RER D affair", which took place on July 9 2004?

That of the most media-blitzed and polarizing news item of the last ten years. But it was Jean-Marie Besset's play, "R.E.R", that helped me remembered the case. I was shaken by the violence of this young woman’s act of, and  what came out of it. This story became the mirror of all French fears, fears that are deeply anchored in our society, it was a revelation of what we call the "collective unconscious". How can a person's lie be transformed into truth with respect to the community at large and its fears? It's a truly fascinating subject. 

Chris Columbus is the director of  "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief," starring Logan Lerman, Uma Thurman, and Pierce Brosnan. The film is being released February 12 by 20th Century Fox.

"To me, this story was perfect because it had this whole great world of Greek Mythology populated by monsters we could create and design and put in our world," says Columbus. "And, the heart of the story is about a young man who wants to save his mother and find out who is his father is. So that made it a very emotional story. The kind of story I respond to as a director."