Greta Gerwig, completely in the right, did not vote for Marriage Story in the 2020 Oscars
She and her husband Noah Baumbach stood by their respective Academy Award contenders
Aux News Greta Gerwig
When you and your spouse are both filmmakers, things can get a little complicated—especially when both of your projects receive Academy Award nominations in the same year, in the same category. For Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the two decided to back their own work when it came to voting for the award winners in 2020.
In a new interview with New York Times, Gerwig shares that she and her spouse decided to vote for their own films in lieu of any other options. Both her adaptation of Little Women and Baumbach’s Marriage Story garnered six Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture.
“It was so weird in the moment when we actually were there,” Gerwig says of 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.’”
Voting for Little Women must not have been difficult for Gerwig while voting against Little Women must have been terrible for Baumbach. Unfortunately, despite there being an obvious winner when it comes to who made a better film (Gerwig), both lost out in the Best Picture category to Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite.
Gerwig and Baumbach have both since worked together, with Gerwig leading her partner’s adaption of Don DeLillo’s White Noise with Adam Driver. She says that while working on the film together, she took one moment to give him advice on set.
“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,” Gerwig says.
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.”
43 Comments
When I saw Gerwig was in White Noise I thought to myself “it’s nice they’re working together after the divorce.” I keep thinking they split because Baumbach made the messy divorce movie.
The thing I remember most about that movie is that the divorce didn’t really start out all that messy. It only got messy when a bunch of people outside the marriage told them it was going to get messy, some of whom benefitted directly from the messiness.
In the now pretty crowded field of “watch the dissolution of a marriage” films made recently, that was the most refreshing part, and ties in with a lot I see on social media and forums when someone talks about their fractured marriage. The advice is always to get a divorce, or talk to a divorce attorney (who, yes, may have useful advice, but it’s not surprising that they’d also have a vested interest in seeing the marriage fail) and to treat the spouse as an enemy. Lots of relationships can be toxic and it can be a good thing that they end, but people taking sides and trying to be the “right” one only does more harm.
That’s true, but it also became messy because Scarlett Johansson’s character started advocating for what she wanted, which she had seemingly never done before in their relationship, and Driver’s character found it inconceivable that she might want different things to him. That was also a really relatable element to me, the way that in so many relationships one partner’s wants or needs gradually become dominant, in a way that only becomes obvious when it ends.
That’s fair!But I feel like they could have worked that stuff out more easily if Laura Dern and Don Johnson weren’t telling both of them not to give an inch because it would show weakness.
See, I think without Dern being aggressive and one-sided, Johansson’s character would have never thought to advocate for herself in the first place.
“Noah . . . Noah!”
“Who is that?”
“It’s the Lord . . . Noah.”
“Right! Where are ya? Whadya want, I been good!”
“I want you to make . . . a divorce movie.”
“Right!”
“Right….what’s a cubit?”
“Well, uh, I um, used to know what a cubit was . . .”
I will forever mourn the fact that that classic routine didn’t come from a better source.
“What is this?”
“Its a divorce! Ha ha ha haaa!”“You wanna get it out of my driveway? I gotta get to work!”
“How long can you tread water?”
I thought the inspiration for the movie was his first marriage and divorce to Jennifer Jason Leigh.
I find it impossible not to read “Don DeLillo” as Don DiMello. Andy Daly, you’re too good.
Bring out the girls!
Hey, where all the white women at?!
No, Leonard, there are NO white women!!
A little something for daddy.
Haven’t read White Noise, assume it takes place in international waters
I read it as Dom DeLuise
I know almost nothing about Barbie (being a boy in the 80s, I had GI Joe and Transformers), but I am really intrigued by what kind of story they came up with. And with the one photo I’ve seen of the set, it seems like it’s going to have a look all its own….should be a really interesting trailer.
And after they didn’t vote for each other, they had some hott hott nasty “I didn’t vote for you” lovin’!
They both make really boring movies.
The non-criticism “boring” always says more about the viewer than the work itself. Try better.
Boring is not a “non-criticism”, but it is the case that more effort could be put into such a critique.
Sorry. My first comment was a typo.
“Only boring people get bored” no idiot, only intelligent people get bored, must mean you’re a fool. Saying “try better” when you meant “try harder” proves it.
Honestly, more often than not, they are kind of fucking boring.
Those photos make them look like sketch comedy characters.
They should have both voted for ‘Parasite’.
Nobody voted for the right film, considering The Irishman was the star of that year’s Best Picture lineup.
I liked Little Women but don’t think it held a candle to Ladybird. It’s just Little Women with good actors told out of order, which makes for an enjoyable movie but nothing special. Marriage Story was much better imo.
Neither deserved Best Picture, but I thought Gerwig’s attempt to distinguish her version from earlier Little Women adaptations via messing with the timeline made it worse.
Disagree.
As far as I understand, it’s ranked choice voting, so they probably put each other’s movies second.
About the only thing I remember from her adaptation is Bob Odenkirk saying “My little women!” The way it cut to him, plus his line delivery, plus the…sudden Bob-ness of it all…just really made it seem like a sketch all of a sudden, or at least a meme.
He got the titular line.
I used to only have two little women but now there’s three! Triple’s are best.
I preferred Marriage Story to Little Women.
I don’t know about “there being an obvious winner” when both literally have a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and they’re also almost identical on Metacritic (Marriage Story’s 94% vs Little Women’s 91%). And while we’re at it, Marriage Story is at a 7.9/10 on IMDb, and Little Women is 7.8/10.
Before anyone says you can’t trust aggregate sites… I mean, maybe one in isolation can skew things, but the two movies being neck and neck on three of the biggest aggregate sites… can that count for something?
Personal preference is a thing of course, but the general consensus from critics and filmgoers seems to be that both are great. To act like Marriage Story getting nominated was objectively ridiculous (this article doesn’t really state it like an opinion) rubs me the wrong way.
OK? Why wouldn’t they?
I saw a headline about this that just said that she voted for her own film instead of his – no mention of that fact that he did the same thing. Unbelievable. Well… extremely believable, I guess, but no less annoying.
God, see, this is why I hate the state of “journalism” these days. Now people are editorializing in the freaking headline.I don’t understand why people think this is appealing. I don’t want to feel a journalist is agreeing with me. As heartless as it might seem, I don’t want to consider the individual journalist at all. I want all news to be Reuters basically. Just a robotic report where we decide how we feel, not the reporter. News should be bone dry and without any opinion, period.