From Frances To Forever

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Noah Baumbauch's Frances Ha, which I loved the ever loving shit out of at NYFF last year, opens in just 15 days, and since it's being released by IFC Films I have got every single finger and toe I have crossed (and some other parts too) that he and/or Greta Gerwig will be at the IFC Center here in NYC for a Q&A on its opening weekend. You best believe I'm leaving a spot open in my calendar... which granted ain't that hard since my calendar is filled with things like "Watch the last episode of Game of Thrones" and "Look up naked pictures of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau after you've watched the last episode of Game of Thrones," but whatever. It's the sentiment, yo. 

(Alright in a weird burst of serendipity I wrote that last paragraph and then learned, entirely by random, that Greta and Noah will both be at a screening on May 11th here in New York. That was so weird! Slash, so meant to be! Thanks, Glenn!)

Anyway I was writing this whole post with a separate point - y'all remember that really great profile of Baumbach and Gerwig in The New Yorker that I linked to the other week? In it the topic of Baumbach's next flick came up - not Frances Ha, and not the one after Frances Ha which is another low budget thing with Gerwig which he's already shot, but the one after that. It's called While We're Young and it's about two couples, one in their twenties and one in their forties, who like learn stuff from each other or whatever. Ben Stiller, who worked with Noah on Greenberg, is already set to star as the older male. In that New Yorker article there's a passage where Baumbach's caught on the phone talking about casting for the character of Stiller's wife, and he keeps rejecting an unnamed actress being suggested to him, calling her "too manicured." 

Well apparently he does not think that Naomi Watts is "too manicured," because I guess she's in talks for the part. Or maybe somebody convinced him she's not actually manicured at all? We'll never know. 

And that news comes in the middle of still more news - specifically that Adam Driver is in talks to play the younger male lead. Driver has worked with Baumbach before as well - he is in Frances Ha. And he's good in it, in a small part that's not really anything like his character in Girls. So I look forward to seeing what they come up with. I don't believe that Gerwig's playing the younger female role, so we'll have to see who takes it. Just cast Greta, dammit!

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