-Happy birthday. It was yesterday, yeah?
-Oh, yeah, yesterday. -Congratulations.
-Yeah, thank you. I made it.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Been quite a year.
Oscar nomination for "BlacKkKlansman."
A Tony nomination for "Burn This."
Got a bunch of movies coming out.
"Star Wars," of course, coming, as well.
How you feeling, a little overwhelmed?
-It's good. I'm good.
-Alright, good. -Yeah.
-If you weren't good now, I feel like, maybe never.
-Yeah, right, right.
-This film is getting wonderful responses.
It's about a divorce. It's about custody.
It seems very intense.
Was it an emotional film to do?
-It was, but, I mean, I don't mean to make it sound
more challenging than what it is.
It's the what -- The subject matter is intense, yeah.
But if anything, that was a testament to the good writing.
-Yeah. -Usually, there's like one scene
that you know is in the schedule
that seems -- that you are trying to avoid, you know,
'cause it's emotionally challenging
or it's, like, physical
or you just are aware of it in the schedule,
but all of the scenes in this movie
seemed too early in the schedule for them to be happening,
which is again I think why what Noah wrote is really great.
-You've -- This is Noah Baumbach.
I believe this is your fourth film with him.
-Yeah, fourth time. -So you must have an expectation
when you -- when he sends you a script for something like this.
You were probably looking forward to reading it.
Did this feel different? Like as soon as you started
going through, were you like, "Oh, this is exceptional"?
-Well, we had been talking about it for months leading up to it,
if not a year at that point.
So I knew things that were going to be in it.
We talked a lot about structure.
He really wanted to make a movie
that played with audience's allegiances,
that kind of starts with one character,
and maybe, you know, you switch.
So, there were structural things that we talked about.
We talked about -- You know, we know each other.
We're friends, so we meet at dinner all the time,
and we bring our personal things to dinner
and talk about it there.
So, I think what I was most, um, impressed by was after --
And he had just been talking to me.
He'd been talking to Laura Dern. He'd been talking to Scarlett.
He'd been talking to lawyers, you know?
So, by the time I actually read it,
how he had taken all of those ideas
and kind of made this one document
that seamlessly did all of it --
you know, had all these interesting structures,
but didn't sacrifice, you know, blood that was happening
in the scene. So, I just --
I think as soon as I read it, I'm like,
"Oh, I'll never get anything like this again."
-One thing you do in the film is, you sing a song
from Stephen Sondheim's "Company."
-Yeah. -"Being Alive."
So, that was something that you guys had discussed
and talked about wanting to do?
-Yeah. At one point, we thought about doing a movie of "Company"
'cause, you know, if you know the musical, it seems like maybe
it'd lend itself to a film. It's kind of abstract.
-And so, that didn't happen, but you still sang this song.
Was this a song -- Was this something that you then wanted?
You, basically in the discussion, were like,
"I'd really love to sing this song"?
-He put it in. He --
if I remember correctly, and where he puts it in,
which I don't want to give anything away,
but I thought was just a beautiful,
you know, piece of writing.
You know, and similar to great musical theater,
it's not just a song for the sake of it.
Hopefully, you learn something about the character.
You know, by the end, he's transformed into something else.
-Uh, you have a history of musicals.
You were in a high school production of "Oklahoma"?
-"History" is loose, but yeah, yeah.
-What was your role in "Oklahoma"?
The lead, I'm assuming?
-No, no. I was a chorus member.
I had a line that -- How did you find that?
that, I said, "Check his heart." That was my line.
-That was your one line, was, "Check his heart?"
-Yeah, Curly gets shot, right, I think at the end,
and then there's, like, all the chorus guys come,
and they're like, "What happened?"
And I say, "Check his heart,"
which is not really a good line, right?
-Yeah. -I just saw this guy get shot.
-Right. It also seems like somebody
who's, like, not a doctor but maybe met one once.
-Right, right, right. Yeah. -Yeah.
-"I think I know the next thing you do is check his heart.
That's key." -Right.
-Totally different in tone and especially from, like,
you know, this is -- -"Oklahoma?"
-"Oklahoma" totally different from "Marriage Story,"
but also "The Report," which is another film you have.
-Oh, yeah, yeah.
-So, this is an incredible source material
to write a screenplay of.
This is actually a report
that was written basically about the CIA torture programs.
-Yeah. -And you're playing
the guy who wrote that report.
So that must be weird,
I mean, 'cause I'm assuming you don't, in the beginning,
read this sort of 600-page torture report.
-Yeah, over 6,000-page -- Well, no one has.
Well, not no one. People have.
It just hasn't been released.
It's been heavily redacted.
There is a version that you can buy on Amazon,
which I hate to say, 'cause it sounds like an Amazon plug.
but -- 'Cause the movie is released by Amazon.
But I guess that's my job is to say it.
But it is easy to get on Amazon. [ Laughter ]
A heavily redacted version of the script and even --
Or of the report. And just reading that,
even just reading the opening, you know, findings
and conclusions section, it's pretty harrowing.