Why Noah Baumbach’s “Kicking & Screaming” might be the best movie ever

Dec 24, 2019

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“Kicking and Screaming is a more arch and far more intelligent version of the TV show Friends. If you want to experience that feeling of being young and not really knowing yet what you’re doing in life, watch this movie instead.” –Michael Weinreb

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Michael discuss the plot of Noah Baumbach‘s debut movie Kicking & Screaming, and how it explores life-transition and the loss of status that accompanies college graduation (3:15); Generation X movie marketing, and how Michael and Rolf came to find the movie in video stores (9:00); other movies with a similar youth theme, such as Glory Daze, and how even slacker movies could be aspirational for people who watched them (18:00); the way Kicking & Screaming played with notions of nostalgia (27:00); plot aspects that do double comedic/dramatic-duty (33:00); ties to other Noah Baumbach characters, and the philosophical texture of indecision (43:00); the way the movie explores the small problems of being young and upper-middle class in a time of relative peace (48:00); how sense of place affects the characters the story, and how the movie has a writerly sensibility (51:00); and the case for why one should watch the movie (1:01:00).

Michael Weinreb (@MichaelWeinreb) is the author of three sports books, including Game of Kings, about a Brooklyn high-school chess team; Bigger Than the Game, about the rise of celebrity sports culture in the 1980s; and a cultural and personal history of college football, Season of Saturdays. He has been a contributing writer for ESPN, The New York Times, Grantland, Rolling Stone, The Athletic, and The Ringer. For more about Michael, check out https://michaelweinreb.com/.

1980s and 1990s youth-culture links:

TIME’s 1990 “Twentysomething” article (which first defined Generation X)
Sophfronia Scott on defining a generation (Deviate podcast episode)
Remembering Noah Baumbach’s fan-site Q&As (essay)
Wayback Machine (digital archive)
“Age of Consent” (New Order song)
Friends (1990s TV show)
Details (1990s youth-culture magazine)
Roger Ebert (movie critic)
Blockbuster (video rental store)
Tetris (video game)

Books and creators mentioned:

All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy (novel)
A Separate Peace, John Knowles (novel)
The Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger (novel)
Lena Dunham (writer and actor)
Bill Simmons (writer and podcaster)
Chuck Klosterman (author and commentator)
Noel Coward (playwright)
Nick Drake (singer-songwriter)
Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes singer)
Jose Ortega y Gasset (Spanish philosopher)

Noah Baumbach projects and collaborators:

Mr. Jealousy (1997 movie)
Highball (1997 movie)
The Squid and The Whale (2005 movie)
Greenberg (2010 movie)
Frances Ha (2012 movie)
Marriage Story (2019 movie)
Chris Eigeman (actor)
Carlos Jacott (actor)
Ben Stiller (actor/director)
Jason Blum (producer)
Vassar College (Baumbach’s alma mater)

1980s and 1990s movies mentioned:

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The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

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