director noah baumbach was fascinated by the book.t struck me when i reread the book — and ijust happen to coincide with when the pandemic hit — was that it felt like a book that could've been written after any major event in this country, you know. i mean, at the time it was the reagan era, it was the cold war, it was at the aids crisis, but if i'd read it after 9/11, if i'd read it after trump was elected, you know, and then when i did reread it during the pandemic, i just think it's something uncanny about it. i do�*t know who said it, but apparently it was said that the novel was unfilmable, so what made you want to take on an unfilmable project? i didn't think about that. i mean, i don't know— i don't know what criteria people used to say what's filmable or not, but it was just something that intrigued me and i started it almost as an experiment, and then ijust kept going and i got very involved in it, and i felt like it was something that i could really do. with its mannered humour and, at times, artificial dialogue and idiosync