How Greta Gerwig Taught Noah Baumbach How to Have Fun

On one of those really good New York days in late September, the writer and director Noah Baumbach was wandering the upper floors of the Whitney Museum, trying to explain what his new movie was about. This is something that Baumbach generally struggles with, perhaps because it lies so closely to his gift, which is rendering the way people lie to themselves about themselves, the way they talk around the truth. “I find it difficult to say anything kind of absolute about what I’m doing or what I’ve made,” Baumbach said.