Wes Anderson Saves the Movies
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)
I first heard of Wes Anderson when watching the 1996 MTV Movie Awards. They announced that the Best New Filmmaker was going to Wes Anderson for the movie Bottle Rocket. When that tall lanky dude with the coke bottle glasses accepted the award I still had no idea what movie they were talking about. Later that year I rented Bottle Rocket and was blown away by how funny and personal it was. Wes Anderson subsequently went on to reinvent Bill Murray in Rushmore and now he’s cast Murray again as the lead in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.
Check out the website for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Daniel Robert Epstein: Why do you see so much sadness in Bill Murray?
Wes Anderson: Because it’s there. If you look into his eyes you can’t really escape it, like the way he is in Lost in Translation and Rushmore. I met him and when I saw the dailies in Rushmore I felt like there was something tragic in him.
I guess I must have known it was there beforehand. I loved him in movies like Stripes and Ghostbusters but the movies of his that really grabbed me are Mad Dog and Glory, Razor’s Edge and Tootsie. Those movies were really why I wanted him to be in Rushmore. He’s so great in Mad Dog and Glory and he really has that sadness there but also a lot of anger as well. I think he was great in Razor’s Edge but he was slaughtered for it. Maybe it’s not that great a film and it doesn’t gel well but he’s very appealing in it. He was doing this thing where he’s a comic actor taking a dramatic role but he’s still funny in it.
DRE: The Life Aquatic is similar in tone to John Huston’s Beat the Devil [released in 1953]. Was that an influence?
WA: I don’t think so but I know what you mean. That’s a movie I had to watch three times before I quite got it then I really loved it. I think you are right.
DRE: Do you think Steve Zissou would have killed the jaguar shark if he was given permission?
WA: No, I think he’s not really a hunter in the end but he’s not a scientist either. He’s a filmmaker and a storyteller.
DRE: How was it working with Cate Blanchett?
WA: She was pregnant for one thing which was a good thing because about halfway through we were able to get rid of the fake stomach so we could use her real stomach. I cast her because I was a fan and I wanted to work with her. She is easily the most prepared actor I’ve ever worked with. She arrived with questions that one would only have if you had been rehearsing it yourself extensively. She’s got everything worked out which is quite different from someone like Bill [Murray] or Owen [Wilson] who are people who I will see running lines while they are getting wired up for sound. Weren’t they in their trailers for three hours watching pay-per-view? But that’s their approach because everything for them is spontaneity. Even though they didn’t really improvise for this movie they are two of the best guys to improvise in front of a camera. There are no two people better to give an idea of a scene then step back and let them come up with that.
DRE: Did they improvise at all?
WA: There is a scene in the movie where Bill Murray points a gun at the pregnant reporter. That was improvised.
But with someone like Cate, she is so prepared which can be intimidating for guys like that but that’s good because I think their characters are bit intimidated by her character.
DRE: Were you intimidated by her?
WA: A little bit.
DRE: You came up with the story for Life Aquatic in college, has it changed much since then?
WA: The story I wrote in college was only a paragraph long. In the short story there is this guy Steve Cocteau which I later changed to Zissou, his wife Eleanor and then his ship the Belafonte.
DRE: At this point your films are insanely popular with a certain type of audience member while also being highly personal. Were you surprised to find people that connect so much with your work?
WA: I was never more confident than when we made Bottle Rocket [released in 1996]. I was like “Wait until they see this. It’s going to be great.” I had people warning me that it was an odd movie but I knew they didn’t understand. After our first test screening my confidence level was brought down to its current state where it’s stayed. We had 85 people walk out of the 250 seat theatre. We started rewriting the movie even though it was all done. We wrote a new opening and shot all sorts of things. Because we had James L. Brooks producing he could get us more money to fix it. From then on I’m always surprised and pleased to have any kind of audience enjoy my film.
DRE: Your budgets keep getting larger, what would a $150 million Wes Anderson film be like?
WA: That would scare me. The $50 million for Life Aquatic scared me enough. It’s really been incredible luck. We wrote the first movie to be made for $25,000 and maybe for the next movie we would have gotten a million. But we couldn’t get the $25,000 so we spent three years searching around then suddenly James L. Brooks appeared and said “We’ll do it but it has to cost six million because my deal doesn’t permit anything less.” Then I got $10 million then $25 million and now $50 million.
DRE: Your fans are so loyal. I’ve even heard of people getting tattoos with names of characters.
WA: It’s really weird but it doesn’t happen everyday. But kids that age right now do tattoos. They are always tattooing something so I’m happy to get a few of those slots.
DRE: Why did Steve Zissou need to be such a failure?
WA: He is somebody who is caught up in his own sense of failure. Everything is unpleasant about him which is a result of his unhappiness. He doesn’t quite express it until two-thirds through the movie. The idea of failure has always been more appealing, sympathetic and interesting to me more than success. He was reaching some kind of redemption with his son who he abandoned even before he was born.
DRE: How difficult was it getting Bill Murray?
WA: It wasn’t difficult. It was easier to get him for Rushmore than for The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. For Rushmore his agent gave him the script and now he doesn’t have an agent anymore. He read Rushmore and I got a call ten days later from him saying he was going to do it.
DRE: Did you have any trouble getting this movie set up at Disney?
WA: It’s just a matter of somebody supporting the movie and wanting to do it. In this case it was Nina Jacobson and Dick Cook at Touchstone Pictures. For them it’s a low budget movie. It’s a third of the cost of a Pirates of the Caribbean and will probably be an eighth of the gross.
DRE: How did you end up casting Bud Cort?
WA: I’m friends with Bud so I wrote it for him. I wanted him in there so we came up with the character of the bond company stooge.
DRE: Are you surprised by Owen’s success in the past eight years?
WA: No, it seemed to make sense as we went along. Owen is very smart, very funny and charismatic. The end result is surprising but incrementally I was never too surprised.
DRE: How is working with Mark Mothersbaugh on the music?
WA: This is my fourth movie with him. We start working a year before shooting so he is involved all the way through. The main theme of the movie we wrote a year before shooting.
DRE: What is the animated movie you are doing?
WA: Noah Baumbach and I are adapting the Roald Dahl story, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which Henry Selick and I will direct. Noah and I are about halfway through the script.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Wes+Anderson+Saves+the+Movies/