Noah Baumbach shows ‘Greenberg’ how he sees it

For someone who is known for creating characters who are self-centered to the point of toxicity, in person Noah Baumbach comes across as pleasant enough. Polite, a little dry, slightly reserved, he seems like a student-friendly professor who writes, as Baumbach does, occasional humor pieces for the New Yorker.

Although his 2005 film “The Squid and the Whale” -- which he describes as a “new beginning” for his career -- was tinged with just enough nostalgia to temper his more caustic impulses, his subsequent films “Margot at the Wedding” (2007) and “Greenberg,” which opened on Friday, have jettisoned nearly all conventional ideas of movie-ish likability. Rather, he crafts intimately detailed portraits of people behaving badly while also giving insightful, kindhearted glimpses into why they act the way they do.

“Honestly, I really believe the characters in my movies are only unlikable, only could be seen as unlikable, in comparison to most mainstream movie characters,” Baumbach explained recently. “I don’t think they are compared to most people. What I’m trying to do is show behavior the way I see it sometimes.”

“Greenberg” is Baumbach’s first film set explicitly in Los Angeles -- his 1995 debut feature, “Kicking and Screaming,” was shot here but meant to represent an anonymous Midwestern college town. He uses the location to get to the sense of isolation and dislocation that often comes with the city’s decentralized planning and car culture. Roger Greenberg ( Ben Stiller, in a performance of laser-guided specificity) has come to L.A. to house-sit for his vacationing brother. Recently institutionalized after a nervous breakdown, Roger, just turning 41, now declares himself determined to do nothing. He’s struggling to reconnect with old friends when he meets his brother’s assistant Florence, who helps him with errands and the family dog, and something similar to a romance begins to emerge. .

Stiller’s character is prone to angry outbursts -- he is a frequent writer of disgruntled letters -- and is inappropriately ruled by his litany of anxieties. Though funny at times, the film is a change-up for Stiller after his recent broad comedy work in films like “Tropic Thunder” and the “Night at the Museum” franchise, a challenge that he enjoyed facing.

“Ultimately, the guy’s just trying to make it through the day,” Stiller said of his character’s struggles. “And he’s got so much pain and failure and rejection and regret, things that didn’t work out for him that go way back and he can’t even acknowledge it, he’s carrying all that around with him. That’s what his struggle is, and he’s still not even aware of it, but he’s trying to get in touch with it. And that’s a brave thing, at that age with really nothing going for him, to face himself as opposed to trying to push it down further.”

Analysis from all corners

Florence is played by Greta Gerwig, best known for her performances in such recent improvisational independent films as “Hannah Takes the Stairs” and “Baghead.” Jumping into something as exacting as a Noah Baumbach project, with rehearsals and a script to follow, is a leap for the actress in many ways, both in terms of her career and her performance.

“Noah’s screenplays break down in a very literary way, but they’re incredibly actable,” explained Gerwig, who is also a playwright. “It’s this extraordinary combination where you can nerd out about the meaning of a line and write papers about it, but then they’re also grounded in human feelings and human actions. And I think the beautiful thing about Noah’s work is that things that seem very off the cuff can actually have all these layers of meaning when you look at the film from a more analytic standpoint.”

Baumbach, 40, is certainly no stranger to having his work -- and his life -- analyzed by others. The New York-born and East Coast-educated director, who has made family dysfunction and therapy talk leitmotifs in his movies, was sitting recently in the Hollywood landmark Musso & Frank Grill for a photo shoot. He used the location in “Greenberg,” including the actual wait staff and some of the establishment’s regulars, to add to the lived-in authenticity of the film. The restaurant was closed, and the strange stillness of the place seems in tune with the Los Angeles of “Greenberg,” a mix of the eerily disturbing and comfortingly homey.

He and his wife, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, were expecting the birth of their first child any day, but Baumbach displayed no trace of new-parent anxiety. “The Squid and the Whale” was based in part on the experience of his own parents’ divorce, and the way that some journalists wanted to pick their way through the film bit by bit looking for what was “real” was off-putting to him.

“I feel like I used as much of myself in ‘Greenberg’ . . . as I did in ‘Squid,’ ” Baumbach noted. “It’s just with that movie, if you Googled me, or however you might find out about my life, there were more clear-cut surface similarities, autobiographical similarities. To this day, I have people I might meet who will make assumptions about my life based on fictional elements of ‘The Squid And The Whale.’ But I think that’s par for the course if you make something that feels kind of real.”

On “Greenberg” he shares story credit with Leigh, who is also credited as a producer. He explained their collaboration on the film as a natural extension of their life together, splitting their time between New York and Los Angeles.

“It was very informal. The credits make it sound more straightforward,” he said, adding that he often shows her things he’s working on. “This one I felt there was a movie I really wanted to make and a script I really wanted to write, but I wasn’t sure what it was yet. I had a lot of these elements, Greenberg and Florence and Los Angeles and house-sitting, the dog, so I gave it to her and she just had a lot of ideas immediately. So I took them all, and went back into it. I felt like she was offering a real voice to the movie, so I made it more official in a way.”

With “Greenberg,” Noah Baumbach has solidified himself as one of American cinema’s most distinctive voices, assaying the foibles and frailties of the over-educated and self-analyzing, finding the tender heart that often lies beneath an armor of arrogance and purposefully bad social skills.

“The movie is in many ways Greenberg getting over himself, getting out of his own way,” Baumbach said. “And I think the thing about anxiety is it tricks you into thinking you need it somehow as protection, when without it you’d be more open and actually safer. I think anxiety is dangerous, but it makes you think it’s your friend.”

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