Jay Kelly follows famous movie actor, Jay Kelly (George Clooney), as he embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting both his past and present, accompanied by his devoted manager Ron (Adam Sandler). Poignant and humour-filled, epic and intimate, the masterful film is pitched at the intersection of life’s regrets and notable glories.
Co-written by director Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer (in her screenwriting debut) with observant showbiz insights and a sophisticated sense of humour on relatable regrets, Jay Kelly finds its eponymous
hero at that exact crossroads, taking him on a journey of self-discovery alongside his burned-out entourage and disarming Hollywood magnetism he can’t help but radiate.
Baumbach has examined the realities of ageing throughout his career, from The Squid and the Whale, and Frances Ha, to The Meyerwitz Stories, Marriage Story and beyond, he’s always done so with a balance of compassion and honesty. Indeed, his filmography is full of multifaceted personalities who begin to
evaluate themselves in a weathered mirror as they grow older, and amend the way they approach
their thorny relationships as a result.
While Jay Kelly inspects this deeply human theme around one’s evolving character through the heightened perspective of a movie star—after all, acting is all about embracing multiple lives and
identities—the truth at its core is just as accessible and profoundly universal as in Baumbach’s former
work. That truth goes something like this: we all become different versions of ourselves as we age
and gain wisdom. And a handful of key moments, along with the decisions we make in those vital
moments, will come to shape the trajectory of our lives and relationships. Regardless of who we
are and what we do for a living, we all have those fragile turning points in our pasts: some, we’ll
recall with relief, and others, we’ll remember with a sting for what they came to mean for ourselves,
and our families and friends in later years.
For Jay, his movies and the time period he made them in are synonymous with organising and
storing those significant life events, some of which he broodingly conjures up like dreamy film sets
of their own.
It isn’t only through their film industry characters that Mortimer and Baumbach honour the medium
they’ve mastered. Look closely, and you’ll notice how seamlessly and continually Jay Kelly morphs into some of cinema’s proudest genres, propelled by Jay’s varied odyssey.
Says George Clooney: “Noah sent me the script and said, ‘Are you interested?’ Even before I read it, I was interested, because it’s Noah. Then I read it, and I thought, well, I kind of know how to play this part, you know? This character has a lot more regrets than I would have, because, luckily for me, fame came much later in my life. I got to figure out how to live life before I figured out how to be famous, and I don’t think this character did. It’s a beautiful script. It’s very funny and it’s very touching.”
Q & A with Noah Baumbach
HOW DID THE IDEA OF MAKING A MOVIE ABOUT A FAMOUS ACTOR AT A CROSSROADS IN HIS LIFE FIRST COME TO YOU?
It was a compelling character and idea for me, but I couldn’t have really told you why then. I can say this now with hindsight; if you make a movie about an actor, you’re inherently making a movie about identity and performance. We come to points in our lives where we’ve settled on an idea of ourselves. “This is who I am, as a parent, as a son, as a daughter, as a coworker, as a professional, as a friend.” But I think, for all of us, there’s a gap between who we are deep down and who we present ourselves to be, and this varies in terms of all the different roles we play in our lives. And as we get older and gain more experience, and maybe wisdom—how do we re-meet and redefine the person that we are? Which brings us back to the actor. It was a way of externalising and making a clear metaphor for really what is a human struggle.
THE FILM EXPLORES IDEAS OF IDENTITY AND SELF-REFLECTION, BUT IT ALSO HAS BUDDY COMEDY ASPECTS, A GREAT ENSEMBLE REVOLVING AROUND EACH OTHER AND THE FRAMEWORK OF A JOURNEY FILM. HOW DID YOU APPROACH BLENDING ALL OF THOSE ELEMENTS TOGETHER?
I’ve always loved movies that create tension but also make you want to live inside them, to be with those people. That wasn’t necessarily a stated goal here, but it was inherent in the telling that the film should be a pleasure to watch and that the deeper feelings or pathos would run as an undercurrent for much of the story, principally because Jay is so skilled at outrunning them. He’s been doing it for a long time. There’s enjoyment in watching him almost get away with it, until his life eventually catches up to him. I always thought of the memory sequences as headwinds. He’s moving at a clip, but when he enters these memories — physically, as we show in the film — they slow him down. They affect his momentum. There’s loss of control. And once, he arrives in Italy, well, it’s a land where past and present co-exist. The journey film, the friends on a road trip, the ensemble — these are all part of the same story. The movie is also about friendship which is another way to explore questions of identity and how we see ourselves in relation to others. That these tones coexist? This is my natural approach.
THE FILM DEALS IN UNIVERSAL IDEAS, BUT IT’S ALSO VERY SPECIFIC TO JAY’S CIRCUMSTANCES, HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS MANAGER, RON, WITH HIS DAUGHTERS, WITH HIS FATHER, THE PEOPLE IN HIS ORBIT. WHAT IS THE FILM CONVEYING ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, FRIENDSHIPS AND FAMILY?
We meet Jay at a turning point in his life, during a sequence of events that lead him on a journey, both a physical journey and a journey into the past, into his history. He’s contending with the choices he’s made in his life and the priorities he’s set for himself. This is somebody who’s done something on an exceptional level for a long time, and that’s something that we celebrate in our culture. He means a lot to a lot of people. But many of them are strangers. And for everything he did to become Jay Kelly, there are things that he didn’t do. Who could he be as a parent while he was chasing his dream? As a friend? And that’s a big story for him in the movie, how the consequences of the decisions he’s made come more into relief for him. He starts to face them in a clearer way than he has in a long time.
HOW DID YOU AND EMILY MORTIMER COME TO WORK TOGETHER ON THE SCRIPT AND WHAT WAS THAT COLLABORATION LIKE?
I don’t quite know why I asked her to write this with me. I mean that in the best way because I just had an instinct that it would be great. I had known Emily over the years, socially, but then we got to know each other better when I cast Sam and May, her children, in WHITE NOISE.
We were all in Ohio shooting that film, and I had been thinking about this movie. Part of the story is Jay going back into his past, and into an interior world and I think, because of that, I didn’t really want to write it by myself. To be too interior myself. I wanted to externalise it by having it as a conversation with someone else, and someone amazing. I think a great collaboration is very hard to quantify or describe. It’s like a good friendship.
I liked who I was when I was with Emily. She has a role in the film (and she’s a brilliant actress), but I asked that she be on set too, so we could keep having this conversation, because it’s great to have a buddy on set, somebody who knows where this all came from and knows why that line is there, to remind me what the intention was a year and a half ago when we first came up with it. She’s so much a part of, not only the script itself, but the whole movie.
NOAH BAUMBACH (Director and Writer)
Noah Baumbach is a four-time Academy Award nominated writer and director. His films include White
Noise; Marriage Story; The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected); While We’re Young; Mistress America; Frances Ha; Greenberg; Margot at the Wedding; The Squid and the Whale; Kicking and Screaming; and the documentary De Palma. He co-wrote Barbie with Greta Gerwig, as well as Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Wes Anderson.
EMILY MORTIMER
(Writer and “Candy”)
Emily Mortimer is an actor, writer, director, and producer. She is currently in production on her feature directorial debut, Dennis, for A24, which she wrote and is producing under her King Bee Productions banner alongside Emma Stone’s Fruit Tree.
Mortimer previously wrote, directed, and starred in The Pursuit of Love, a three-part limited series based on Nancy Mitford’s 1945 novel of the same name, for Prime Video and BBC One. She also co-wrote and co-starred in two seasons of HBO’s critically acclaimed comedy series Doll & Em with her real-life best friend, Dolly Wells, in which they play slightly fictionalized versions of themselves.
As an actor, Mortimer has appeared in notable roles for some of Hollywood’s most prolific filmmakers including Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which received 11 Academy Award nominations, Rob Marshall’s Mary Poppins Returns, Craig Gillespie’s Oscar-nominated Lars and the Real Girl, three seasons of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom for HBO, Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely & Amazing, and the romantic comedy classic Notting Hill written by Richard Curtis, among many others.
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