Now that this movie is being released into more and more theaters I can FINALLY talk about White Noise. Not just the movie itself, but my personal experience with it.
First though, let’s talk about the actual movie. I was honestly really impressed with how closely this adaptation followed Don DeLillo’s novel. Now, having read the book and being wholly unimpressed with it, I will say that the film version was more entertaining. A lot of the incessant dialogue was cut without losing the chaos of the novel. Similar to the book, Noah Baumbach (writer and director) cut this film into three distinct sections. The first focused on the mystery of Babette’s pill popping and Jak’s Hitler studies, the second was The Airborne Toxic Event, and the third swung back around to the mysterious drug Dylar and the fear of death.
The film mostly played like a drama, but it had elements of a comedy and a thriller laced sporadically throughout. The first two-thirds of the film adopted more of the comedy and drama elements, where the final third tied more closely to drama and thriller. Although I will say there was a hilarious scene with a nun near the end. Sure, a small few liberties were taken, but overall, Baumbach stayed very true to the original text. As someone who read the book, I fully knew what to expect from this film, but I would have to imagine the casual viewer will find this movie random as hell. I can’t wait for people I know to watch it so I can get their reactions and opinions on it.
And I know a lot of people are going to watch this because, wait for it,…I was in it! That’s right. About a year and some change ago, this movie was filming near my hometown, so I jumped at the chance to be an extra on it. I was cast originally as a passenger in a car, which means at night, for about ten hours, I sat in a car while they filmed at scene that legitimately lasted about ten seconds in the final product. After that first night, I was “re-cast” as a paramedic, but that gave me the opportunity to be in a scene with featured extras. An opportunity that ultimately led me to be a featured actor adjacent, and thus, that’s the two seconds that ended up on-screen. At exactly 45 minutes in, I saw myself wrapping a guy’s ankle, just like I did for another full ten hours one night.
Two other scenes I was a part of for an equal amount of time as the previously mentioned ones were also shown on-screen for a couple minutes a piece. The shots were tighter, so not too many background actors were ever shown, but still. I was there and it was cool to see those scenes on the big-screen. All in all, the portion of the film that I was involved in shot for three weeks and amounted to just ten minutes of the 135-minute film. Crazy. But again, it was beyond cool to see myself in the finished product, and the experience behind-the-scenes was even cooler. In the time I spent on set I got to see Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, and Noah Baumbach twice. I was geeking out! I even got to see a camera being drone-operated! They fed you nice and it was neat to talk to people just as excited as I was for the opportunity.
I’m hoping this isn’t the only time I get to see White Noise in the theater, but I know I’ll have more chances to watch it when it hits Netflix on December 30th. Until then!