Adam Driver Says ‘White Noise’ is ‘A Lot About Avoidance’
White Noise is Netflix‘s latest big project — a movie starring Academy Award nominees Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, based on a successful novel of the same name by Don DeLillo. Many are unsure of what exactly the movie is about, but Driver recently gave his take on the theme of White Noise.
What is ‘White Noise’ about?
The book White Noise is based on, also called White Noise, was written by DeLillo and published in 1985. The story follows Jack Gladney (Driver), a professor who is married to Babette (Gerwig), his fourth wife.
The pair and their children are navigating typical family drama until a nearby train crash releases a cloud of chemical waste over their town. The family must figure out how to get out of the town and grapple with the problems that come from being exposed to the chemicals.
Trailers for White Noise have left some viewers more confused than they were before they saw it. The director and the movie’s cast recently attended an event at Lincoln Center, where they discussed the movie and its themes.
Why Adam Driver says ‘White Noise’ is ‘about avoidance’
The storyline of White Noise seems pretty out there. But Driver was quick to point out that the movie explores conflict and what happens when people face their problems.
“[It’s about] the idea of people constantly keeping things at a pace and what would happen if they actually stopped to face the thing that they are kind of avoiding,” Driver said of White Noise‘s characters. “It’s a lot about avoidance.”
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s thoughts on ‘White Noise’
Gerwig, the Oscar-nominated writer and director of Lady Bird and Little Women, also weighed in on the relationships shown in White Noise. “The characters…they’re sort of fragmented,” she explained. “They’re not quite psychologically full in the way we think of certain characters.”
Noah Baumbach, the director of White Noise, joked that the movie was “easily filmable,” then went on to discuss how he came to make the adaptation of DeLillo’s book. Baumbach, who wrote and directed the Academy Award-nominated Marriage Story, first read the book when he was a teenager.
“I loved the voice, I loved the feeling,” he went on. “It stayed with me in a funny way. I had visions from that book throughout my life…but it wasn’t something I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to go back and make that [into a movie].'”
He credited Gerwig, who is also his partner, for pushing him to adapt DeLillo’s book and make a movie version of White Noise. While Baumbach’s movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the book, there are a few differences.
Differences between the book and movie versions of ‘White Noise’
The Gladney family is made up of Jack and Babette’s children from past relationships. However, in the movie, son Wilder is the couple’s biological son. In the book, Wilder is Babette’s son from a previous relationship.
Another big difference comes in a dramatic scene toward the end of the movie. (Warning: spoilers ahead!) Jack travels to a motel to confront the mysterious Mr. Gray. He ends up shooting Gray and attempts to make it look like a suicide. Babette then appears and, after the couple sees that Gray is not actually dead, rushes him to the hospital.
In DeLillo’s White Noise, Babette is not part of this scene at all. Jack carries out the shooting, suicide staging, and rush to the hospital all by himself.
