Noah Baumbach is a writer, director, and filmmaker whose projects have included The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Margot at the Wedding(2007), and the critically acclaimed, at-times painfully autobiographical The Squid and the Whale(2005).

Phillip Lopate is an author and media critic whose work has appeared in numerous publications. His most recent essay collection, Notes on Sontag, was published by Princeton University Press in 2009.