Noah Baumbach doesn't love L.A. But in 'Jay Kelly' and other films, he is fascinated by it
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George Clooney plays the title character in Netflix’s “Jay Kelly,” a Clooney-esque movie star who is seemingly on top of the world — but is, in fact, at a crossroads.He’s finished his latest movie and is at a point in his career where he’s begun to worry that every project could be his last.
His hope to spend the summer with his youngest daughter, Daisy, is squashed when he realizes she’s set to travel in Europe before heading off to college in the fall.(Jessica, Jay’s eldest daughter, barely speaks to him.) His mentor, a British director who cast him in his first movie, has recently died; on top of the looming sense of mortality is the guilt Jay feels for not attaching his name to the director’s final project in order to get the financing.
And after the funeral, Jay runs into the former friend who brought him to that fateful audition as emotional support — and who remains bitter that Jay got the role and “stole his life.”Instead of sitting down to process these conflicts, Jay decides to run away from them, dropping out of his next movie to follow Daisy to Europe.His professional entourage — a group that includes his longtime manager and friend Ron (Adam Sandler) and his no-nonsense publicist Liz (Laura Dern) — immediately springs into action, accompanying Jay on a chaotic trip abroad, with the final stop being an Italian film festival where Jay is set to receive a career achievement award.“I did have an idea of an actor having a crisis of some sort, and it would be a journey forward and backward at the same time,” says writer-director Noah Baumbach of the spark that eventually became “Jay Kelly.” As Jay flees Hollywood, the city and its people continue to haunt him.
Visions of himself as a young actor float in and out of his mind as he recognizes the mistakes he made by screwing over his friend and neglecting his older daughter.But no matte...