Noah Baumbach – Celebrity About

Cattle farms across America face a problem: ~~a lack of federal funding from this dumpster fire of an administration~~ predatory wolves coming after the livestock. But since one of the main culprits — gray wolves — are classified as endangered by the government (for now), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has come to farmers’ aid in the most logical and humane way possible: by deploying thermal camera-equipped drones to spot the wolves. And then how do they get the wolves to leave the premises? By subjecting them to the work of Noah Baumbach, apparently. No, I kid the indie (yet now kinda mainstream) auteur! But the USDA really is going about scaring off trespassing Canis lupus by blasting a scene from Baumbach’s Marriage Story, in which stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver engage in an epic fight. Other sources of “alarming” sounds are also used for this procedure, which the USDA refers to as “wolf hazing.”

A new report from The Wall Street Journal reveals that audio of Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver screaming at each other in Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” is being used by the United States Department of Agriculture to scare off wolves from killing cattle and scaring livestock on farms across America. The fight scene is the most emotionally volatile moment in Baumbach’s 2019 drama, which earned both Johansson and Driver Oscar nominations.

Per the WSJ: “Riding to the rescue are drone cowhands, whose quadcopters have thermal cameras that can reveal any wolf lurking in the darkness and bathe it in a spotlight. A loudspeaker broadcasts alarming sounds like fireworks, gunshots and people arguing. One recording is of the fight between Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in the movie ‘Marriage Story.’”

“I need the wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad,” a USDA district supervisor in Oregon told the publication.

“Wolf hazing,” as the practice is called, also uses loud music like AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” to scare off deadly wolves. The USDA has relied on drones because gray wolves had long been on the federal government’s list of endangered species. The process seems to be working. As the WSJ reported: “Drones were deployed in the Klamath Basin of southern Oregon after 11 cows were killed by wolves there in a 20-day period. Over the next 85 days when drones were on patrol, only two were killed.”

“Marriage Story” stars Johansson and Driver as a couple going through a bitter divorce and custody battle over their son. The movie earned critical acclaim after premiering at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. Variety’s Owen Gleiberman named “Marriage Story” the second best movie of 2019.

[From Variety]

I gotta say, props to the Wall Street Journal, cause they’ve really been on top of their reporting on predatory wolves lately. And though this solution from the USDA is undoubtedly funny, it’s also kind of ingenious? Sure, when I read the headline USDA Uses ‘Marriage Story’ to Deter Wolves, I had my share of chuckles. (Like, what are they trying to deter the wolves from, marriage?) But this method IS successfully keeping cows and wolves alive, so I say carry on, drone cowhands! Though I do wonder if this exposure will open a can of worms: now that filmmakers and musicians are aware that their material is being used by the USDA, is this going to launch a whole new field of licensing rights? I’m just imagining request forms listing off usage categories: “Will you be using this piece in a film, song, book, artwork, standup, rally, or to scare off wolves on a farm?”

PS — LOL to Variety slipping in there that Marriage Story was their “second best movie of 2019.”

photos credit: Wilson Webb for Netflix, Getty Images for Netflix, Pixabay and Shelby Waltz on Pexels, screenshots from YouTube

I love Greta Gerwig as an artist – an underrated actress, a gifted writer and a brilliant director. She’s funny, cool, artsy AND commercial. But her personal life… I won’t say she’s messy, because that implies that she’s been a whirling dervish of sexual shenanigans for years, and that’s not the case. What is the case is that Greta had an affair with Noah Baumbach, and the affair blew up his marriage to Jennifer Jason Leigh around the same time that JJL and Noah welcomed their son Rohmer in 2010. Greta and Noah have been together ever since, and Greta went on to have two sons with Noah, the youngest of whom was born in February of this year. It would have been a much, much bigger scandal but Greta wasn’t that big of a name in 2010 and Noah was just some art-house director. The whole situation with JJL still gets brought up, even if Jennifer barely engages with the story at this point. Why bring it up again? Well, Noah and Greta got married.

Greta Gerwig and her longtime partner, Noah Baumbach, are married, a representative for the Barbie director, 40, confirmed to PEOPLE. A source told PEOPLE that the two got married at New York City Hall. The couple first met while filming the 2010 movie Greenberg and began dating in 2011.

The news comes after a busy year for the couple who co-wrote the Barbie screenplay and announced that they quietly welcomed a second son in an interview with Elle UK published in July.

“The little guy is sleeping through the night. But I’m still doing that thing where I wake up, every hour to 90 minutes, and just hover. You just keep wanting to look at that baby. So I’m slightly in a twilight state,” the Lady Bird director told the outlet.

The new addition joined the couple’s first baby together, son Harold Ralph Gerwig Baumbach, whom they welcomed in March 2019.

[From People]

No mention of JJL. I guess she’s been written out of the narrative completely, although I would have expected some first or second-paragraph mention of “this is Baumbach’s second marriage and he has an older son with his first wife.” Something else I saw on Twitter is the suggestion that co-authoring the Barbie script was possibly the biggest paycheck Baumbach has ever gotten, especially if he and Greta got a backend. So… is that what happened? The thing is, I’m sure they always would have tried to put a bow on this at some point, but it’s interesting that it happened now, 13 years and two children later.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.