Greta Gerwig interview

The Detroit News

Greta Gerwig co-stars with Ben Stiller in the new film "Greenberg."

According to boxofficemojo.com, the average Ben Stiller movie has earned $76 million over his career.

And how much has the average Greta Gerwig movie earned?

"I think my average is five dollars," Gerwig says on the phone from San Francisco, where she's promoting "Greenberg."

"Actually, I honestly think it's in the hundreds of dollars. But give it 15 years -- we'll see who's the box-office king or queen then," she says with a laugh.

Over the past three years, Gerwig, 26, has become the princess of the "mumblecore" film movement, an ultra-indie, low-low budget approach to filmmaking that involves a lot of improvisation, perspiration and inspiration and not much in the way of earnings.

It's a do-it-yourself ethic that has seen Gerwig, born and raised in Sacramento but a New York City girl since attending Barnard College, working as a writer, director and actress on such little-seen but critically praised movies as "LOL," "Yeast," "Hannah Takes the Stairs" and the genre's "hit," the faux horror film "Baghead."

But with "Greenberg," in which Gerwig dazzles as a flighty L.A. personal assistant who finds herself falling into a relationship with Stiller's spoiled, 40ish, sometimes mental patient, she finds herself moving into the mainstream, or at least toward it.

"It's all relative, but this for me is big time," Gerwig says.

And chances are it will lead to even bigger times.

Gerwig is drawing raves for the sparkling realism she brings to the role, a naturalism that has drawn inevitable comparisons to Diane Keaton's breakthrough in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall."

Gerwig certainly doesn't mind the comparisons.

"I'm a huge fan of Diane Keaton. I used to dress up like Annie Hall all the time. I was a purveyor of men's wear, which my mom was not so excited about," she says.

Indeed, Gerwig says Allen and his films shaped her entire world view.

"I am a lover of Woody Allen. If you want to talk about ambition, a big ambition is to get myself in a Woody Allen film before he stops making films," she says.

"I grew up in Sacramento, and my impressions of New York and the intelligentsia and cocktail parties and witty banter all came from Woody Allen," she says.

"I spent a lot of time in junior high and high school imitating those people, which is why I didn't have a lot of friends," Gerwig says. "But then I went to New York for college, and I kind of found myself in the world that was so appealing to me on the screen."

Note to Woody: Here's your next muse.

Watching "Greenberg," it's hard to believe that Gerwig isn't improvising her lines, both because of the natural way they flow and her ease before the camera. But writer-director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale") is a man who sticks to his script.

"I'm always happy when people think it's improvised, because that means we're selling it," Gerwig says. "It's easier to make great writing not feel like it's acting," she says.

The blond Gerwig is a natural beauty, but that's not something she tries to take to the screen, she says.

"I kind of always saw films and acting as not the place to be perfect and beautiful," Gerwig says.

"I saw films and acting as a place to be true, and I think that my obligation has always been to the character and the situation, even if that person is not gorgeous or she's annoying, she's a little dim or she's selfish, or whatever it is," she says.

"I strive to look good and be nice in my life, and I'm interested in exploring these other elements on film," Gerwig says. "I find it very freeing."

Woody, seriously, pick up the phone.