The Long Goodbye: Inside Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Where George Clooney Plays the Part of a Lifetime

The street is paved with cobblestones, but they gleam with an uncanny, electric blue hue. The skyline in the distance is undeniably beautiful, yet entirely flat—a painted illusion of a city that exists only in the collective memory of cinema. In the center of this artificial twilight sits Jay Kelly, a man whose smile has graced a thousand magazine covers, played by a man whose smile has done the same.

It is a sequence that functions less like an establishing shot and more like a statement of intent. In casting George Clooney as an aging movie star grappling with the twilight of his relevance, Baumbach has constructed a hall of mirrors. It is a film about the performance of living, the dissociation of fame, and the terrifying, screwball tragedy of realizing you might just be a character in someone else’s script.

A Convergence of Titans

Jay Kelly marks a significant departure—and a peculiar return—for Baumbach. Following his massive commercial detour co-writing Barbie with his wife Greta Gerwig, and the dense, academic satire of White Noise, this film returns to the intimate, dialogue-driven terrain of his earlier work. Yet, the scale here is different. This is not the scrappy Brooklyn of The Squid and the Whale; it is the rarefied air of private jets, film festivals, and the crushing isolation of the A-list.

To tell this story, Baumbach has assembled a cast that reads like a wish list for a modern American classic. Alongside Clooney is Adam Sandler, delivering a performance of quiet, soulful devastation as Ron Sukenick, Jay’s manager and oldest friend. The ensemble is rounded out by Laura Dern as Liz, a high-strung publicist constantly spinning plates that have long since shattered; Riley Keough and Grace Edwards as Jay’s daughters, Jessica and Daisy; and Billy Crudup as Timothy, a “serious” actor from Jay’s past who serves as a living reminder of the road not taken.

In a recent interview with the cultural journal A Rabbit’s Foot, Baumbach described the film as a “coming-of-age for adults.” It is a label that fits the film’s unique tone—a blend of melancholy introspection and chaotic comedy that Baumbach admits draws heavily from the “rhythm of classic screwball comedies.”

The Man in the Mirror

The genesis of Jay Kelly lies in a fascination with what Baumbach calls the “iconography of the movie star.” The film’s screenplay, co-written with British actress and director Emily Mortimer, is obsessed with the gap between the person and the persona.

“The whole movie is about who we represent and who we are,” Baumbach explained. This theme is most potently expressed in a scene that has already become a focal point of critical discussion. Jay, traveling by train through Europe to chase his wayward daughter, catches his reflection in the window. In a moment of private ritual, he begins to recite the names of screen legends—Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Robert De Niro—before finally, almost tentatively, whispering his own name.

Baumbach revealed that this moment was inspired by a specific passage in Paul Newman’s memoir, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man. Newman wrote about the strange dissociation that occurs when one becomes a household name. “It makes you understand why people invent stage names for themselves,” Baumbach noted. “Even [Dustin Hoffman] felt weird saying ‘Dustin Hoffman’ like that because it no longer was him anymore.”

For Jay Kelly, the name is a brand, a corporation he manages rather than a life he leads. The tragedy of Clooney’s performance is his keen awareness of this hollowness. He plays Jay not as a vain monster, but as a man who is tired of the costume but terrified to take it off because he isn’t sure if there is anything underneath.

The Unspoken Love Story

While the narrative engine of the film is Jay’s Quixotic quest to follow his daughter Daisy to Italy—ostensibly to accept a film festival award, but in reality, to cling to his fading role as a father—the emotional heartbeat is elsewhere. Baumbach has been explicit that he had no interest in dissecting Jay’s romantic history with women.

“There wasn’t an intellectual reason for it except that the real love story is about him and his manager Ron,” Baumbach told A Rabbit’s Foot. “So other aspects of his life are implied.”

This shifts the weight of the film onto the shoulders of Adam Sandler. As Ron, Sandler is the antithesis of the typical Hollywood shark. He is weary, loyal, and deeply protective. If Jay is the sun, Ron is the gravity that keeps the system from flying apart. The chemistry between Clooney and Sandler is palpable, born of a rehearsal process where Baumbach had the two actors “shadow” each other to develop a shared physical language.

“Adam and George are sort of versions of each other,” Baumbach observed. In the film, they operate like an old married couple or a veteran comedy duo. They bicker, they anticipate each other’s needs, and they share a silent understanding that they are the only two people who truly understand the strange, insulated world they inhabit. It is a portrayal of male friendship that is rare in modern cinema—tender, non-competitive, and essential for survival.

Chaos and memory

The screenplay’s structure mirrors the erratic nature of memory itself. Baumbach and Mortimer wrote the script organically, allowing scenes to emerge from conversation rather than rigid plotting. “It would make us go, ‘Why did I just think about this?'” Baumbach recalled. “But there’s often a significance hidden in the random resurgence of memories.”

This approach allows for a dreamlike fluidity. The film is populated by ghosts—not literal ones, but memories made flesh. Younger versions of Jay (played by Charlie Rowe) and his rival Timothy (Louis Partridge) drift through the narrative, sometimes observing the older characters, sometimes reenacting the past.

When the present-day Jay encounters the present-day Timothy (Billy Crudup), the friction is electric. Timothy represents the “artist” Jay might have been if he hadn’t become a “star.” Their confrontation is fueled by decades of unspoken resentment, yet Baumbach directs it with a lightness that borders on the absurd. The European backdrop—beautifully captured by cinematographer Linus Sandgren—becomes a stage for their petty grievances. They are two aging men arguing about art in a world that has largely moved on from both of them.

The “screwball” influence Baumbach cites is evident in the film’s pacing. The entourage—including Laura Dern’s frantic publicist, Liz—moves through train stations and hotels with a kinetic, anxious energy that recalls the great comedies of the 1930s and 40s. Yet, instead of ending in marriage, these scenes often end in existential confusion. A recurring joke about cheesecake, for instance, starts as a throwaway line but evolves into a symbol of the absurd, trivial obsessions that fill the void of a celebrity’s life.

Designing the Legend

Visually, Jay Kelly is a triumph of style over reality—a deliberate choice by Baumbach and his creative team. Production designer Mark Tildesley and costume designer Jacqueline Durran collaborated to create an aesthetic that Baumbach calls “a love letter to cinema.”

They didn’t want Jay to look like a contemporary actor; they wanted him to look like the idea of a movie star. Durran pulled references from the wardrobes of Steve McQueen, Marcello Mastroianni, and Cary Grant. Jay is always costumed, always lit, always ready for his close-up, even when he is falling apart. The film suggests that for men like Jay, there is no private life, only a backstage area.

This stylized reality extends to the locations. From the rain-slicked streets of London (where Baumbach admits to searching for cheesecake in real life during the press tour) to the sun-drenched hills of Tuscany, the world of Jay Kelly feels slightly heightened. It is a world seen through the lens of Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ or Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty—films that also grappled with the spiritual emptiness of the creative class.

The Final Act

As the film reaches its conclusion, it becomes clear that Baumbach has crafted a memento mori for the silver screen. Jay Kelly is a film about the end of an era, embodied by a man who realizes he has spent his life projecting an image that no longer matches his reality.

Yet, it is not a cynical film. There is a profound gentleness in how Baumbach treats his characters. He allows them their vanity and their delusions, but he also grants them moments of grace. In holding up a mirror to the movie star, Baumbach asks the audience to look past the reflection. He invites us to see the fragility of the human being who has to live up to the name on the marquee.

“It’s a hell of a responsibility to be yourself,” reads the Sylvia Plath quote that opens the film. For Jay Kelly, a man who has spent a lifetime being everyone else, it is the one role he is still trying to learn.

Fast Facts: Jay Kelly

Release Date: Available globally on Netflix starting December 5, 2025.
Director: Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, The Squid and the Whale).
Writers: Noah Baumbach and Emily Mortimer.
Key Cast: George Clooney (Jay), Adam Sandler (Ron), Laura Dern (Liz), Billy Crudup (Timothy), Riley Keough (Jessica), Grace Edwards (Daisy).
Runtime: 2 hours and 12 minutes.
Did You Know? The film features a recurring, improvised gag about cheesecake that Baumbach says represents the random, sticky nature of memory.
Production Note: To build the bond between Clooney and Sandler, Baumbach had the actors “shadow” each other during rehearsals, mimicking each other’s body language to create the sense of a shared, decades-long history.