Feature

Dream Role

Paltrow and Martin Freeman in The Good Night.

(Photo: Courtesy of Yari Film Group Releasing)

For any artist watching it, The Good Night may feel itself like a bit of a work-anxiety dream, beneath its romantic trappings. At its heart is a very relatable anxiety: the fear that one’s best work has already happened—or may never happen. Anna, Gary’s tuxedo-clad fantasy, has the shining eyes capable of seeing genius where others see only mediocrity; she’s the perfect lover as perfect audience. It’s no wonder that in the hilarious, awkward sequence when Gary actually meets his dream girl (or at least, someone who resembles her), things go south: In the flesh, she has appetites and ambitions of her own, and is far less tolerant than her dream self.

Over time, Gwyneth says, she has learned to slip the skin of her own artistic self-doubt, to be proudest “when I’m pushing myself not to do my old tricks.” (It helps, she says, that the tabloid pressure has dropped, swerving “toward reality stars and wild-child-type things.”)

But Jake, who has just begun to dip a toe into this new realm of public judgment, insists that despite his famous family, he’s never really felt the anxieties his protagonist experiences—fears that are finally, he argues, delusions based on a false notion of success. “I almost wish the movie dealt more, in a literal way, with the fact that this is all self-perceived failure. If you have a success in your life, why can’t we hold on to that? Why can’t that be good enough for a lifetime, why do we always have to be ramping up?”

In any case, writing has become Jake’s favorite part of the filmmaking equation. “You’re alone, there are no questions about whether it will get made, whether it’s good or bad. It’s become a really enjoyable time. I’m in the apartment, I used those Bose headphones, my girlfriend [photographer Taryn Simon] was there with me half the time.”

What was he listening to? I ask. A variety of music, he says, ducking his head: “This guy Gonzalez, a lot of stuff.”

Any song in particular? “There were a few particular songs,” Jake finally confesses. “But I won’t say. I might want to use them in the next one.”