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Comfort Viewing: Adam Driver

 Lena Dunham alerted the world--via Twitter--to this brilliant impression of Adam Driver. In the clip, Driver is ordering coffee. This is a challenge! You have to get the barista's attention. Then you need to request cream, put a cap on the ice usage, and make some decisions regarding hazelnut syrup. It's also tough to remember to toss in a "please." We like Adam Driver because he is so tortured all the time: He might slip in a FUCK! almost randomly. He spits out certain words as if the act of speaking is physically painful. He stretches and caresses and mushes his own face. You can't make a great parody unless the thing you're mocking is extraordinarily distinctive, polarizing, well-defined. (This is why Patti LuPone is a great source of comedy, and Bernadette Peters.) "Adam Driver Orders Coffee" is a thing that needed to happen; it has been an idea, gathering force, for a long, long while. And now it's here. https://digg.com/2020/adam-driver-st...

Adam Driver: "Marriage Story"

Noah Baumbach, my hero, made several movies I love. "The Squid and the Whale," "Frances Ha," "The Meyerowitz Stories": all delightful. Among Baumbach's many gifts: finding small absurd moments and catching them on camera. He and his partner Greta Gerwig have a thing called a brain dump, where they list their minor sociological observations, then decide how these gems can fit into a narrative. For example, in "Meyerowitz": A slightly unhinged middle-aged man searches for a parking spot in Manhattan. Unforgettable. "Frances Ha": Our protagonist can't fit her full name into the tiny slot a New York City mailbox allows, so the name becomes (memorably) shortened. Charming. "The Squid and the Whale": A pretentious young man begins spewing forth his father's (pretentious) thoughts on Kafka, and of course it's revealed the emperor has no clothes. The critic has never read the book. "Marriage Story"--onc...