Gerwig’s “Little Women” and Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” were both nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Greta Gerwig is giving insight into her own relationship story with Noah Baumbach.
The “Barbie” writing duo and offscreen partners have collaborated on numerous films together, but when it came to the 2020 Academy Awards, Gerwig couldn’t bring herself to vote for Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” as Best Picture — at least not while her film “Little Women” was nominated in the same category.
“It was so weird in the moment when we actually were there,” Gerwig told The New York Times of attending the awards show. “It’s very funny, but we did actually vote for ourselves. We were at our computers and I was like, ‘Just so you know, I’m going to vote for myself,’ and he said, ‘OK, I’m going to vote for myself, too.’”
Gerwig’s “Little Women” was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. The film won Best Costume Design. Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” was also up for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture; star Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress for her performance. Dern also starred in “Little Women” that same year.
Baumbach told NYT that the 2020 Oscars night results were “easier” because both films lost out on Best Picture. “We could celebrate that together,” Baumbach said. The honor instead went to “Parasite,” making history at the Academy Awards.
As for the inner workings and inherent competition of both being filmmakers, Gerwig said, “I feel like it must be hard if you’re 25. I think as you get older, things work, things don’t work. You’re up, you’re down.”
Baumbach echoed, “I’ve been in a ton of therapy. If I show her something I’m writing, or I show her a cut or something I’m working on that she’s not directly involved in, the highest compliment she pays is, she says, ‘I’m jealous.’ Maybe if I was 25 and met her, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it.”
The duo worked together once more on Netflix’s “White Noise,” written and directed by Baumbach with Gerwig starring opposite Adam Driver. And Gerwig offered directorial advice “once on the set,” saying of Baumbach, “He’s incredibly open to suggestion. The truth is, I think if I had wanted to sit there all day, every day, even when I wasn’t on the set, he’d be happy to ask what I thought of every shot.”
She added, “I think also, as a director, there’s a certain loneliness. Mike Nichols said directors need a buddy. So someone who has a thought or a point of view or is looking over your shoulder makes you feel less like you’re having an isolated existential crisis every day.”
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