While We’re Young: Baumbach on Nostalgia and Generation Gap

Writer-director Noah Baumbach‘s latest film,While We’re Young, focuses on what happens when a documentarian (Ben Stiller) and his wife (Naomi Watts) befriend a couple of 25-year-olds, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried.

While the younger couple helps Stiller’s and Watts’ characters recapture their youth, Baumbach explains that what they remember about being young might not be the way things were.

“I wanted to explore the folly of nostalgia, in some way,” Baumbach says about the film. “Jamie (played by Adam Driver) both in some way connects them to a way they used to be when they were younger but also probably to a fantasy of how they were when they were younger.”

He also was intrigued by how people in a couple are different when they’re with each other than they are with people outside of their relationship.

What it’s like to work with Baumbach?

“Noah creates an atmosphere that you are completely free to fail and discover and be as free as possible,” says Adam Driver. “It’s so lean and well-written but also just a lot to discover.”

Ben Stiller, who reteams with Baumbach after the two worked together on Greenberg, says of his writer-director, “Noah’s such a specific writer and he writes human moments that are very spot-on. … He just chooses to go to areas that interest him and that are not mined that often.”

While We’re Young has been playing in select theaters since March 27. It opens nationwide today.

While We’re Young: Baumbach on Nostalgia and Generation Gap

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