More details have emerged about the on-set chaos that occurred during production of Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise.” The film started streaming on Netflix this past Friday. It’s definitely worth a look, even if the film feels rather puzzling and curiously patched-up.
Mixed reviews notwithstanding, it’s not so surprising that the average viewer seems to really be hating on “White Noise.” Its IMDB user score currently stands at 5.9 and the Rotten Tomatoes audience rating is … 35% !!!
I’m all for auteur filmmakers taking a dime out of Netflix, but Baumbach’s “White Noise,” which is an adaptation of the Don DeLillo novel, but I’ve been following up on stories of its rumoured troubled production for many months now.
This past weekend, in a now since deleted post, a crew member wrote: “This movie was almost as bad to watch than it was to work on.” A crew member by the name of Vlad replied:
“Agreed. Noah’s horrible treatment of the crew, long hours with no lunch, the producers constantly lying to us, the assistant directors screaming at people because Noah didn’t like people doing things other than being at his service like some kind of servant, and the heartlessness of Noah and the producers’ handling of (crew member) Shark’s death, as well as the two other crew members, made this a literal nightmare to work on. This was not ok at all. So many rules were broken by Noah and his squad of yes persons. I have never been made to feel utterly worthless as a human being before this movie […] these people treated us like garbage.”
The budget on the Netflix original is said to have skyrocketed to $140+ million. Of course, there is no way an adaptation of DeLillo’s novel should be more than $30-50 million, there is no CGI needed and it’s mostly characters monologuing with each other in various rooms. And yet, the budget completely ballooned for this one.
A twitter thread started by Saul Atreides in the summer had kickstarted the “White Noise” rumors:
Many of the people on the set that I'm on now worked on “White Noise”. They all back it up, and usually contribute their own horror stories of being on that set.
Saul added that three crew members died during the shoot. However, a little digging and we learn that those three deaths were an overdose, a suicide, and a heart attack, which set production back. Not Baumbach’s fault.
Another person adds “I was an extra on it for a couple days, the production design went crazy.” An anonymous source is also telling me that Baumbach was obsessively “burning through film prints.”
This same anonymous source told me many months ago that there was an incident involving “a miscommunication between the ADs and the stunt team that resulted in an unintended head-on collision. One of the drivers walked away, thankfully, unharmed. The other needed medical attention and was taken to the hospital.”
Let’s not forget Baumbach also swapped DP’s mid-shoot, from Michael Seresin to Lol Crawley. Shooting went on for nine months. Alas, just an epic and debaucherous shoot that was rumoured to last more than 9 months.
As expected, Snyder's latest is being torn apart by TIFF attendees. No mercy given. The film, which had its world premiere this evening, is being called by some one of the worst movies to ever premiere at the festival.