How Noah Baumbach Designed His Own Brooklyn Hipster

Writer-director Noah Baumbach grew up in Brooklyn and, for the most part in his movies, has kept his focus on both documenting elements of his own life, and chronicling the evolution of the ever-changing borough.

His new film, While We’re Young, features Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a couple in their mid-40s who suddenly feel old among the gentrifying, hipster crowd in Brooklyn. They befriend an eager young couple, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried, and learn about their pseudo-bohemian culture, filled with board games and VHS tapes and street parties.

“If we were actually going to try to document youth culture in Brooklyn right now, we’d be behind the curve forever,” Baumbach tells Yahoo Movies in the video above. “So we invented our own version of the culture…. When we put Ben on rollerblades, I felt like, if they’re not rollerblading now, they will be, it’s bound to happen.”

Back in 2005, Baumbach released his most personal film, The Squid and the Whale, which is loosely based on his childhood growing up in Park Slope. Jesse Eisenberg plays a version of Baumbach as a confused teenager living with his parents’ crumbling marriage. The filmmaker says he knew that the young actor — who was years away from the fame that came after The Squid and The Whale — was right for the part from the start.

“Jesse was honest and vulnerable,” he said. “The character was trying on these personas and trying to figure himself out and Jesse could kind of do both. He could be mean and you wouldn’t blame him for it… It was very clear early on that Jesse was the guy.”

Watch our interview above for more on Baumbach’s Brooklyn films, including stories about filming in the American Museum of Natural History for the most famous scene of The Squid and The Whale.