Ben Stiller talks to Moving On about his new film, While We’re Young

While We’re Young is a funny take on the differences— and similarities – between two couples who are a generation apart. Ben Stiller told us about his involvement in Noah Baumbach’s latest offering.

What appealed to you about the While We’re Young’s central dynamic – these two couples?

“Being a couple in their 40s, without kids, I think raises questions for them. Questions like, ‘What are we doing with our lives? If we’re not procreating and continuing the cycle and all that, then what exactly is our purpose?

“When they meet Jamie and Darby, there’s this feeling that maybe there’s a lot more they can explore in life, both together and apart. What’s so interesting is that meeting Jamie and Darby spices up their relationship but at the same time, it starts to deconstruct it.”

Photos: Icon Film Distribution/Nicole Rivelli

Josh and Jamie have a very interesting relationship, what’s your take on it?

“I think Josh has so many insecurities about his own work and sets the bar so high for himself that to see someone who says, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try that, I’m going to do this, I’m going to make a film, I’m going to write poetry…’ it’s very exciting to him … and it’s also annoying to him. I think he wants to be Jamie at first, then he realises that he can’t be Jamie. Then he figures out that he really doesn’t want to be Jamie at all.”

You worked with director Noah Baumbach previous to While We’re Young, on Greenberg. Were you excited to team up with him again?

“Noah writes very human moments and observations that are spot on. I love that about his writing. He’s all about the small nuances that have a huge impact on us. He finds humour in all the uncomfortable, awkward moments we have – but he’s never just going for the joke. He’s exploring these comical moments in a way that makes you see different things in them.

“Noah wrote such a great script that’s very much about what’s going on in this cultural moment and what’s happened in the last 20 years, to art and entertainment and lifestyles, with the arrival of the internet and social media.

“I laughed out loud at so many things and I found it a very hopeful and romantic movie – and yet it’s still a strong commentary on our culture. From the point of view of my generation, it felt incredibly authentic. At the same time, reading it, I had to realise, ‘Oh! I’m the old guy in this script!”

What appealed to you about your character, Josh?

“He’s really struggling with where he’s supposed to be in this culture, at this time. He’s an old school kind of guy, who grew up making movies in a way that has totally changed in the last 20 years, which I can identify with. All the tools have changed, how movies are experienced is changing, attention spans are changing and now with all this access to movie making technology, anybody can make a movie. That can be a great thing – it’s far more democratic, but it changes the experience of someone like Josh, who is from a generation where you felt you had to specifically train to be a great film maker, you had to pay your dues and you wanted to do things in a certain, authentic way.”

You got to be Naomi Watts’s screen husband – what was that like?

“Naomi is someone I’ve always wanted to work with. She’s intimidatingly talented, with her facility for different kinds of characters. She also has an innate strength to her, where you always feel there’s a lot going on in her head when you watch her. It was a lot of fun to pretend to be her husband.”

Photos: Icon Film Distribution/Nicole Rivelli

Moving On review of While We’re Young

While We’re Young is a cross-generational comedy about Josh and Cornelia Srebnick, a middle-aged couple who find a new enthusiasm for life when they meet twenty-something hipster couple, Jaime and Darby.

Josh and Cornelia Srebnick (Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts) are a happily married, film-making couple in their forties. Josh has been working on the same documentary film for 10 years - collecting hundreds of hours of footage, but unable to let go of any of it - Josh is unable to complete his work.

Whilst Josh and Cornelia’s same-age friends, played by Maria Dizzia of Orange is the Next Black fame and Beastie Boy, Adam Horovitz have moved on to a new phase in their life with the arrival of their baby, Josh and Cornelia appear to be stuck in a kind of limbo - that is until they meet Jamie, (Adam Driver) an aspiring young documentarian and his artisanal ice-cream making wife Darby, (Amanda Seyfried).

Inspired by their new, free-spirited friends, Josh and Cornelia abandon evenings of charades and baby talk with their same-age friends in favour of hip-hop dance classes and tunnel walking, with hilarious results.

While We’re Young takes an intelligent and incredibly funny observation look at the different ways that the generations engage with technology, old and new as well as the difficulties that people face with growing up.

While Josh and Cornelia are consuming films on Netflix and music via their iPod, Jaime and Darby are listening to vinyl and the embracing the fuzzy imagery of VHS (Video home system); leading to Cornelia to comment that “Their apartment is filled with things we once threw out.”

While We’re Young is a comedy, but it’s not trivial despite being accessible. It asks questions about the role of the documentary film in an age where everything is documented instantaneously through social media and draws a comparison between hanging on to the past and enjoying elements of it, through the characters of Josh and Jaime – a must see for 2015.

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG is on general release now, distributed by Icon Film Distribution