"IT'S NOT SOMETHING I THOUGHT OF CONSCIOUSLY, BUT THERE ARE A LOT OF LONG CAMERA MOVES..."
In the introduction of his interview with Noah Baumbach, Dazed's Nick Chen states that "Baumbach’s scripts are so meticulous and efficient, his visual approach can go underappreciated. There is, for instance, one specific directorial flourish towards the end [of The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)] that I’ve never seen from Baumbach before, which is clearly indebted to his mentor, Brian De Palma. Chen asks Baumbach about the De Palma influence in this bit from the interview:
You released a Brian De Palma documentary last year, and spent a few years before that revisiting his films. Did that influence Meyerowitz in any way?Noah Baumbach: Somebody said to me the other the day that they saw Brian’s influence in the movie. I thought that was interesting. It’s not something I thought of consciously, but there are a lot of long camera moves and stuff I’ve done before, but I felt maybe I and Robbie Ryan, who shot it with me, were more successful at doing some things I’ve been trying to figure out. Brian obviously is known, rightfully so, for his great long pans.
And that thing which Brian says: you can’t play chess without showing the chessboard first.
Noah Baumbach: Right, right. Yeah, his whole thing of suspense is contingent on you understanding the space to know what’s really at stake. So often, people rush to the suspense without setting it up. Brian loves to set up a room and show you everything.