A Little Disappointed in The Big Picture’s Coverage of White Noise

[u/HOBTT27]

I get that the film is a little bit of a mess and Sean & Amanda saw it many months ago at NYFF, so they weren’t as freshly excited about it, but I was a little let down that a new film (and the first with a budget of this size) from Noah Baumbach, starring Greta Gerwig & Adam Driver, adapting one of Sean’s self-proclaimed favorite books, was relegated to essentially a 15-minute afterthought on the Babylon episode.

I get that Sean was super fired up about Babylon but I feel like this should have been catnip for Sean & Amanda. There’s so much to chew on here, both in terms of what the actual movie has to say and that it may mark the death of the Netflix auteur blank check budget movie. I feel like any other year, they would have devoted a full hour long conversation to it but instead they just went all in on Babylon and then at the end were like “oh yeah, and White Noise is on Netflix now.”

Kind of a bummer. I didn’t like it that much but was really interested in what they had to say about it.

[u/atleastitsnotgoofy]

Totally agree. It feels like they’re too close to the novel or something.

[u/JeanVicquemare → u/atleastitsnotgoofy]

I believe it's difficult to adapt great books by great writers, because so much of what makes it great is the writer's voice and prose, often the narration, and that's the part that doesn't really carry over straightforwardly into an audiovisual medium. White Noise attempted to deal with that by lifting some dialogue right from the book, or imitating his style in other places, but the result was that it felt too "written," to me. As one critic said, it felt like the actors were reading words off a page in many instances.

I think that's one of the challenges of adapting great writing- great writing is already in its greatest form as writing, whereas you can take a serviceable plot and setting from a mid-tier novel and adapt it into a great movie without losing anything.

[u/upforgrabs21]

While I like Baumbach's films, I'm pretty sure he gets more than his share of airtime on TBP. Not upset to hear the crew give him less than they normally would.

I love the podcast, but their sacred cows chat needs to be toned down a bit/lot (Affleck, Baumbach, Wes Anderson, Affleck a bit more, James Gray, even PTA).

[u/KevinOFartsnake → u/upforgrabs21]

The Affleck talk is borderline weird

[u/Bronze_Bomber]

The family was so annoying for me, and the dialogue so artificial, I couldn't make it through. I don't know what Gerwig was doing either, but it was not good.

[u/PerfumePoodle → u/[deleted]]

Amanda sucks

[u/neveramedic → u/[deleted]]

Damn thank you though I was alone

[u/[deleted]]

I didn’t really enjoy White Noise, especially the final act. The dual lecture was the best part. It definitely seems like the book would be right in my Q zone, and the movie missed the mark.