Pop Culture Happy Hour - Jay Kelly

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

In Netflix’s Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays the aging movie star Jay Kelly. His longtime manager (Adam Sander) and publicist (Laura Dern) struggle to manage Jay on a trip through Europe as he deals with the difficult relationship he has with his two grown daughters. From director and co-writer Noah Baumbach, the film is an exploration of regret and missed opportunities.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, it's Linda Holmes. Before we start the show today, I'm going to talk for a minute about something near and dear to our hearts around here, public media. It's a phrase that's been in the news a lot this year. It's also what makes pop culture happy hour and all the podcasts you love from NPR unique. Public media is made for you. It centers and serves you with stories and conversations meant to enrich your understanding and your life. From its founding in the U.S., public media was also meant to illuminate underrepresented communities and to provide cultural insight that expands your perspective. We still believe in these commitments of public media at NPR. We always will. But as of this fall, federal funding for public media, including NPR and local NPR stations, has been eliminated. As we move into this uncharted future together, we know that you will not let the service that has been here for you all these years falter. We rely on your support to bring you, Pop Culture Happy Hour, now more than ever. This year, we have loved bringing you conversations about new releases and old favorites and everything from awards show recaps to our favorite YouTube

channels and one-hit wonders. And we can't wait to see what we'll get into together in 26. If you already go the extra mile as an NPR Plus supporter, thank you so much. If not, you can join the Plus community, get a bunch of perks like bonus episodes and more from across NPR's podcasts and support public media by signing up for NPR Plus today at plus.npr.org. To Hollywood's long history of movies about Hollywood, we now add Netflix's Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney as an aging movie star with a status very much like, well, George Clooney's. The film is an exploration of regret and missed opportunities. Director and co-writer Noah Bowdback works with a big cast, including Adam Sandler as Jay's

longtime manager and Laura Dern as his publicist. And they all struggle to manage Jay on a trip through Europe as he deals with the difficult relationship he has with his two grown daughters. I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Linda Holmes. And today we're talking about Jay Kelly on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Andrew Lepen. He's a senior reporter for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the host of the podcast Radioactive, the Father Coughlin Story. Welcome back, Andrew. Thank you. It's great to be here. here. Absolutely. Great to see you. So Jay Kelly, played by George Clooney, is a famous actor who's still in demand and who's the biggest client of his longtime manager and good friend Ron, played by

Adam Sandler. Look at you. You're the American dream. You're the last of the old movie stars. I'm down here. You're up there. You're down here. You're in here. It's amazing. We've accomplished so much together. Everything you say makes it worse. Early in the movie, Jay impulsively decides to catch up with his daughter, who's on a European vacation with some friends. It's as good a time as any to get out of town because he's just had a hostile run-in with an old friend, Timothy, played by Billy Crudup, who knows some unpleasant things about Jay that he's threatening to reveal. As Jay travels pursued by a shrinking entourage, Ron tries to hold everything together alongside Jay's publicist, Liz, played by Laura Dern, who is just about at her breaking point putting up with Jay's bad decisions.

As for Jay himself, he's drifting through old memories that remind him how many times he's made decisions that have brought him to where he is for good and for ill. And he has limited time to preserve the relationships he has left. Jay Kelly is streaming on Netflix. Aisha, I'm going to go to you first. You like this movie, right? I was shocked by how much I liked this movie. Historically speaking, I have been pretty neutral and different when it comes to Noah Boundback film. I don't actively dislike them, but I also see them and for the most part don't really think about them afterwards.

And this is a movie, Jay Kelly, that I was very much drawn to this film from the very beginning. And there are two scenes that kind of got their hooks in me and still have their hooks in me and I'm still thinking about, you know, weeks after I've already seen it. And that is, first, the early scene with Crid Up in the bar. It's just sort of like a really great scene where we learned so much about who both of the. these characters are just through dialogue and conversation and like this very noticeable tonal shift that happens. And it just unfolds in this very, it just feels so real. It feels like a real conversation you would have.

They're old acting buddies. They studied acting together. Exactly. Jay went on to become a gigantic star and Timothy did not. Yes. And so the genial tone quickly sours and it's just kind of perfectly calibrated. I think it's just such a well-written scene. I made two bad decisions.

Yeah, you know I passed on the original 90210. I was doing Hamlet in Louisville. That's cool. I haven't done a play since high school. Who's the other one? I'd like you come to that audition. And then the final scene was really kind of what put me over the top because there are ways in which it plays with expectations,

I think especially my expectations of how these movies can tend to go, and I think it plays into that. But then it kind of rips the rug out of you at the very last moment in a way that I found very satisfying. I really loved this and enjoyed it. And wow, I guess I like a Noah Baumbach film. So here I am. I'm glad to hear it.

I'm glad to hear it. Andrew, what did you think? I liked it too. And I guess I do like Baumack in general. It's notably more sentimental than he tends to be. And I think the things I like about Bombach when he's like firing on all cylinders is he makes a lot of these kinds of movies about arrogant, self-centered artistic types. and he usually has a way of showing you the pricklier and kind of uglier side of human insecurity

kind of through these characters. And you get a little bit of that here, but it feels a little bit more engineered maybe, but it wasn't a bad thing. I really enjoyed watching it. There's a lot of pleasure to be found here. There's a lot of comedy because you have George Clooney at the center doing the sort of aging actor thing. It becomes like a rumination on like how far charisma and charm can get a person in life and sort of what the limits of those are and the fact that, you know, he

craves the attention of these adoring strangers, but he has next to no meaningful relationship with his own family or with his closest staff. The movie plays with those dynamics in a smart way, and I liked what it was saying. Yeah, I think they do some really interesting work around his relationship with Ron, with his manager. And I think Adam Sandler is outstanding in this movie. And I know So it is not news anymore that Adam Sandler is a really good actor. I mean, we've seen Adam Sandler be a really good actor. But I think this is maybe my favorite dramatic performance of his in the sense that it is so vulnerable. And I think sometimes he's fought the sort of the assumption that he's all comedy by doing roles where the guys are really kind of prickly,

to use a word that Andrew already referenced in another context. But, you know, guys that are kind of aggressively unlikable to try to play with that I'm not being funny. But I think here, he is incredibly, I think, a sympathetic character, even though at times he's also ridiculous. And this guy has essentially put all of his chips behind Jay for his whole life. And although he has tried certainly to maintain his family relationships more successfully and has thus far maintained them more successfully, he has also. sort of decided to be in the Jay Kelly business and you see some of the ways in which that has

professional ramifications for him with other clients because you can't serve everybody equally well necessarily. So you see what that's doing to him. You see the publicist played by Laura Dern who ultimately just kind of has to get out of the madness of this trip and all of this stuff that Jay is doing. Why should we be chasing around an infant where we have actual living kids at home who are aging by the minute. Because we are supporting a great artist who shares with other human beings what it is to be a human being. We're human too, Ron. But I agree with Andrew that Jay's desire to be adored by strangers becomes a really interesting.

There's a great little sequence where Jay doesn't want to get a glass of water for himself. And Ron is kind of like, can you not get your own glass of water? But like 30 seconds later, he wants to do a big heroic jump into the middle of a chaotic situation and play the hero. You realize that if he perceives it to be something that he'll be adored for, he'll go way, way, way out of his way. If he doesn't perceive it that way, he literally wants his manager who is a professional and probably someone who's well paid to spend his time going and fetching a drink of water. And I thought that that juxtaposition was really, really interesting. I think one thing the movie does really well to that point, Linda, is showing the effects of fame and wealth on the people around this guy, the people who are in his orbit. Sandler is great as you talked about.

You know, that scene with Billy Crutup, you get a totally different lens on that. You get someone who feels like he was cheated out of something, feels entitled to it. And the framing of how all these people try to project what they want. want or what they think they want on this, like, actor who, like, made a name for himself being kind of a blank slate, affable guy. I got a lot out of that dynamic. And I think the movie is smart with how it plays with that. And what was it worth, right?

Like, that's what the whole movie is sort of asking. I saw this movie partially as an elegy of, like, a certain kind of movie star that George Clooney is kind of the last of his breed, you know, someone who could build this whole empire off of charm and likability. that didn't have to do IPs and franchises. And to that sense, I thought it was pretty ironic that Netflix drops this movie on the same day that we learn they might be buying Warner Brothers

and the sort of further consolidation of what show business used to mean. Well, let's not forget Batman. He did play Batman. As we all know, George Clooney would rather we all forget that he did that. And of course, the Oceans 11 franchise. But I think your point still stands. And another thing that I found really interesting about this is that it just feels like the type of movie that George Cooney himself to that point has been working his whole life towards.

Like this feels like the culmination of his public persona as a movie star. You know, this isn't a one for one comparison because his children are much younger than Jay Kellys are in this movie. And so like we don't know what his relationship is with his children, but like by the time he had them, he was in his older stage. So it's not like he was. And he's talked about that, but he got famous. later in his life than it seems like Jay did and that he thinks that was to his benefit. Yeah. So this movie makes those very direct comparisons to someone like Carrie Grant.

His name is said. Gary Cooper's name is said. Paul Newman's face is behind him at one point in one scene. It was funny because there's a moment on that really great train sequence that you were kind of referencing earlier. All the people on the train are like, oh, my God, it's Jay Kelly. And so he's turning into, I'm with the people. I'm going to talk to the people on this train. You're 60.

Yes. You can't get old. If you're getting old, that means I am. I'll stop at you. And one of them is kind of, she's a younger person, and she's just, like, non-plused by him. What do you say to people who say you only play yourself? You know how difficult it is to be yourself?

You try it. There's this famous quote that Carrie Grant gave, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he says something about, like, the critics have accused me of being myself on the screen, but being one's self is more difficult than you'd suppose. And Jay says, like, basically the same exact thing. thing. It's like there's just something very interesting about someone like George Clooney doing

this sort of meta version of himself. And I think it works in part because George Clooney is just so charismatic. But he's also unafraid in this role to sort of play someone who also like, I can understand why his daughters don't really want to have that much to do with him. You know, and he walks that fine line so, so well. And I think this is just one of the great George Clooney performances because he has aged and he is really. willing to accept that age comes with these sacrifices and looking back on those sacrifices in many ways. I love it. He has this generic charm response that he gives to any stranger who encounters him on the street. And then if he recognizes the person, he does this extribute of like, oh, wait, actually,

I want to be genuine with you for a second. He, like, can't remember how to do that. I think there's a lot to be said for the film's willingness to recognize both that his status as essentially a business that a lot of other people are. supported by is very hard on those other people, as we've talked about. But also, it is hard on him. And I think the film recognizes his limitations and what a frustrating person he can be, while also being sympathetic to how he ended up like this, both because he really loves being in movies. He really loves being on movie sets. He loves doing this work. He always wants to, like, get the best possible take. There's kind of a running,

sort of a motif about how he always wants to keep going and try it again. You know, you also eventually meet his father, who's played by Stacey Kich, and you get a sense from that of, you know, that his relationship with his dad is part of how he got this way. I really liked marriage story. And one of the reasons I really liked marriage story was that I didn't feel like it took anybody's side. I felt like it understood that this situation was terrible for everybody, for different reasons and that everybody had done things that were unkind and everybody had done things that were frustrating. And I think what I like about this film and maybe it's something that I like about the way that Boundback writes films is that there's no villain, right? It is a movie about feelings.

It's a movie about, largely about this emotional bond between Jay and Ron and whether or not it is real. And I think that is one of the things that just kind of keeps coming back in the film. To what degree are these men close? And to what degree are they just business associates who are very reliant on each other? I loved you. I love you too, Ronnie. But are we friends? Of course we are.

Then be a friend to me. And let's go back to work. I mean, you're Jay Kelly, but I'm Jay Kelly too. We did this together. You actually said that to me. me one time. Ron, the Adam Sandler manager, calls everybody puppy over and over and over again. And sometimes, when I was watching him do that, I thought he does this partly because he's consciously keeping himself in that mode of, it's my responsibility to baby these people. Because you meet another of his clients, who's played by Patrick Wilson,

who I think is very good and often funny in this. And he also calls him puppy. So it's not. not a pet name for Jay. The basic emotional question of this film is, what is the closeness of these two men? And does Jay want to preserve it? And if he does, is it for personal reasons or is it for I have no chance of surviving in my life without this guy who takes care of everything for me? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's clearly both, right? And there's a scene where, he flat out says it. He's like, you're my friend, my friend who takes 15% of my income. And that's another thing I think this movie does so well is it really understands the way these ecosystems run. And there is a movie where, you know, Jay could have been some sort of villain or he could have been someone who like is insecure about his acting abilities.

That's not what this movie is about. This is about him sort of trying to reconcile with the fact that he loves to be loved, but is not very good at showing that love towards the people who really need it, i.e. his children. And also run. There's the big elephant in the room, I think, which is sentimental value, the movie,

that we have talked about, Yol Kim Trier's movie, which is pretty similar in certain ways in the fact that it's about an artist, a filmmaker played by Stellan Scarsgard, who is trying to reconnect with his also adult daughters, children. And it's funny because that movie in so many different ways is less sentimental than this. But I think at the end of this film, it's less sentimental than sentimental value.

I think that's right. There is, yes, this sense of like there's strings, there's pianos. There's a lot of like, oh, what have I done with my life? But I don't think it gives us all the answers in the way that some movies might. And I think that's another reason why, I don't know, I liked it. It just really worked for me. I think that ending probably works better for me than the little snippets of Jay Kelly's earlier life that we get throughout the film.

The flashbacks, yeah. They're fine. He's sort of watching them from a distance. It's a thing we've seen in like Fellini or Wild Strawberries. Like I think Baumbach is very conscious of the influences in those kinds of moments. I didn't really know if we were seeing the snippets of the character's interiority there that maybe I would have liked to. Of course, he doesn't have much.

of it. So that's also part of what's being established in those scenes. I want to quickly give a shout out to the opening sequence, which is exactly my jam. It's a movie said. There's all these moving parts. It's an extended take. There's people running around. Everything's very busy. Dynamic lighting. The dog. Can we do it with the dog? He wants the dog? Can we bring the dog, Frankie? That dog makes more money than any of us. Can we see a light drizzle? That's a drizzle. That's not like a deluge. It closes in on Clooney as Kelly at the very end and doing a death scene, which is also very thematically appropriate.

Stuff like that, like, it really helps elevate this film one notch above a lot of the kind of love letters to movies that we tend to get out of Hollywood these days. I like the presentation of this. I completely understand your reaction to some of those flashbacks. I also think it teetered a little hammy sometimes, I think, maybe. but it just pays off for me. I think it's a boundback thing that you don't get a solution to the emotional problem of the film in the same way that you do in sentimental value,

kind of get a little bit of a solution to that, right? You have a catharsis. I think in this movie you have more a person who is learning to live with the consequences of what he has done and what his decisions have been. because I don't know how you guys read this, but when I watched the movie, I was like, okay, they're being pretty straightforward about the fact that to a degree, and his daughters don't hate him. His daughters don't hate him. They don't refuse to speak to him. But in terms of the closeness that he finds that he wishes he had had with them, it's too late. And I think the movie is honest about the fact that it's too late to redo everything and end up with the version of your life. that you now think maybe would have been better. And you have to find a way to be at peace with that and to try to be honest with yourself

about your regrets and about your choices. I think there's a really interesting ambiguity. Absolutely, yeah. There seems to be a lot going on this movie season with discussions of sacrifices that you are not willing to make to achieve greatness, just a blue moon as well. There's a little bit of conversation with that here. Everybody seems to be coming to different conclusions about what is worthwhile here and what is the goal.

He doesn't know how to turn off that drive or what the drive is for. You get it and then you have to keep it. Yeah. Yeah. It makes me a little bit happier, please, that we're finally asking the question, can men have it all? And clearly, it's an eternal question for everyone. Well, I think this is a movie that we all sort of liked. I certainly recommend seeing it for the performances, particularly great job, Adam Sandler.

Yeah. Just great job. Well, tell us what you think about Jay Kelly. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCH and on Letterbox at letterbox. At letterbox.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Andrew Lapin, Aisha Harris. Thank you so much for being here.

I would go to Tuscany with either of you anytime. Pack my bags. Let's go. Same. Thank you, Linda. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger, Carly Rubin, Kayla Latimore, and Mike Katzeth, and it was edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Hello, come in, provides our theme music.

Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.