Included as a supplement on the Criterion Collection DVD of Kicking and Screaming

A comedy centered around three Brown University-educated people who are approaching the age of 30 in the months leading up to September 11.

Winner of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the 2005 Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Directing Award, a tender, funny, and ultimately moving coming-of-age story, starring Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney. Set in Brooklyn in 1986, The Squid and the Whale captures with extraordinary immediacy the inner workings of the Berkman family. Bernard (Jeff Daniels), a once successful novelist, and his wife Joan (Laura Linney), an up-and-coming writer, have given up on their marriage. Their two sons Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), 16, and Frank (Owen Kline), 12, are left to grapple with their confusing and conflicted feelings. The experience is a tender, funny, and ultimately moving coming-of-age for Walt and a tortuously premature one for Frank. The emotional tensions and strains that emerge during this difficult period for the Berkmans are given a remarkably subtle and nuanced portrayal. This is a film that deftly presents the realties of a family in transition learning to redefine itself. In the acclaimed Newmarket Shooting Script format, this book includes the film's award-winning screenplay, an introduction by writer/director Noah Baumbach, Q&A, scene notes, movie stills, and complete cast and crew credits. 28 color photos.

After his first date at age 15 ended with the girl making out with another man at a party, aspiring writer Lester Grimm has treated all his girlfriends with jealousy and suspicion. While dating Ramona Ray, paranoia gets the best of him when he discovers that her most recent ex is successful novelist Dashiell Frank. Lester begins attending the same group therapy sessions as Dashiell to learn about Ramona's past with him.

After college graduation, Grover's girlfriend Jane tells him she's moving to Prague to study writing. Grover declines to accompany her, deciding instead to move in with several friends, all of whom can't quite work up the inertia to escape their university's pull. Nobody wants to make any big decisions that would radically alter his life, yet none of them wants to end up like Chet, the professional student who tends bar and is in his tenth year of university studies.

A New Yorker moves to Los Angeles in order to figure out his life while he housesits for his brother, and he soon sparks with his brother's assistant.

Margot Zeller is a short story writer with a sharp wit and an even sharper tongue. On the eve of her estranged sister Pauline's wedding to unemployed musician/artist/depressive Malcolm at the family seaside home, Margot shows up unexpectedly to rekindle the sisterly bond and offer her own brand of support. What ensues is a nakedly honest and subversively funny look at family dynamics.

Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.