The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Die Tiefseetaucher

Interview with Wes Anderson

A little over thirty, only four films in the can, and Cate Blanchett already calls him an auteur. Bill Murray is probably going to shoot films under Wes' direction until the Academy will finally grant him an Oscar. It couldn't become much better for the Texan Wes Anderson. Even his style in clothing has changed to a more positive note. Say thanks to his stay in Italy for the shooting of his newest escapade The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. His films though will remain as wacky as ever before. That Hollywood allows such a thing is probably a miracle to him as much as the next guy.

» Deutsche Übersetzung

OutNow.CH (ON): Do you think you have to watch The Life Aquatic more than once to get it all? Is it too complex?

Wes Anderson (WA): To get it all, I am sure. I didn't feel it was too complex. There are choices I could have made to make the movie clearer and easier to digest and more obviously one thing than another. I deliberately didn't choose those things. What I choose was to do it exactly they way I wanted to. To let it be a bunch of things at once. And to let it be something you had to think about for a while and maybe see it again to even know exactly what it is that you thought it was. That's been my experience with some of the people who have seen it. Some person might see it and like it immediately. Somebody else might see it and hate it. And will always hate it no matter how many times he is going to see it, which will probably be the one time anyway. Other people might take some time. I see that as a kind of a flaw in the movie. But I also see this as a flaw that I don't mind it having because there are benefits to it. I want it to be something that, if you revisit it there are more layers, and where everything that we could get into we put into it. I am never going to say, I wish there was more to it there. I don't feel like I'll regret that choice.

ON: Where do you take all the inspiration from for what Anjelica Huston likes to call "Wesworld"?

WA: It's funny. In this movie the setting of it is totally inventive and imaginary. And I think the filmmaker I relate to with that is Federico Fellini. He would invent a world that his movies are set in. But I also relate to Fellini in the way he puts personal experiences into his movies. For instance in Amarcord there is something about it that feels like an invention and the characters are exaggerated in some way. But the movie is about his perspective of his childhood. It's nothing like the film that somebody else would have made about his childhood. It's filtered through his imagination. For me that is the way I see movies. The Royal Tenenbaums is a fantasy version of New York. But the characters are all connected to the people in my own experience. I can say about almost every single person in that movie that it is this and this person or this is what happened to me or to my brother three years ago. It is the same with this movie now. I feel like a personal connection to how these relationships are formed, to what happens among these characters. In my life I tend to be surrounded by people who are oddballs, outsiders and misfits. People that are drawn to me and I am drawn to them. That brings the absurdity into the movies. But I feel that it does come from life. Having said that - this movie is as extreme a version of inventing your own reality that I am likely to do. Other movies I have done had been closer to the world they are set in. Rushmore is in a strange world. But it's also a film about where I went to high school. I think there are different kinds of levels of how real or not real the setting could be.

ON: Since this is your second collaboration with Anjelica Huston you must really like her.

WA: Yes. She has always been one of my favourites. I loved her in The Dead and Prizzi's Honour which both are directed by her father and dozens of other movies. Me and Noah Baumbach also wrote a part for her in the The Royal Tenenbaums. In the case of this movie not only did we write it for her but I had known her for some time by the time we were writing it. There's a little bit of her that went into the making of that character. I also showed her the first version of the script and she had very good ideas of how to deepen and strengthen that character. So she even helped with creating that character.

ON: Were there other scientists than Jacques Cousteau an inspiration for you?

WA: Cousteau was a great inspiration obviously. I grew up watching his show on TV. My brothers and I thought he was a hero. At that time, at least in America, there were a lot of scientists and explorers real TV stars. There was Cousteau. There was Jane Goodall who had her National Geographic Specials. There was Carl Sagan who did his own programme. And there was "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" with Marlin Perkins who was always in Africa. It's a genre that doesn't quite exist anymore.

ON: Are you generally interested in Oceanography?

WA: I think it's very different now. Zissou's version of that is really more the Cousteau era version. Because nowadays that kind of exploration happens three miles under the surface. All that stuff is now totally computerized - high-def cameras searching etc. Bob Ballard is now the person. And a lot of his work is theoretical to a certain point until they then finally go into a submarine. What they invent isn't something that Cousteau invented. Cousteau invented the aqualung - a tank that you can strap on your back so that you can breath under water. Ballard figures out different kinds of projections and currents and things to locate something and then there are computer images of it. It's a completely different thing. In a way Life Aquatic is also about a guy that is looking back at his life and is a little obsessed with the past.

ON: Other than the explorer theme. Where did the idea come from for the scenes on the red carpet and the inclusion of the long lost son into the story?

WA: That's something from my own experience. I've gotten to know certain people who I knew as a fan for a long time. When you get to know them personally you see all the other things in their lives - the complexity of them being famous. The kind of person who does become very prominent like that usually has issues. That is what the movie is all about to me. It's about the perception you might have going along with somebody you idolize and my own experience with those kind of larger than live figures.

ON: The Portuguese songs in The Life Aquatic are very beautiful. What made you collaborate with Seu Jorge?

WA: My initial idea was that I wanted to have one member of the crew, who's job it was to entertain the crew. He was going to play a guitar and sing. At one point I thought, why don't we have him play "Space Oddity". Then I started adding more and more Bowie and just realized it should all be David Bowie because that will unify it. Somewhere along the way when we were writing I made the crew more international. I made one of the characters Japanese and one of the characters German and made this character Pelé, the Brazilian.

ON: Like the footballer?

WA: Yeah exactly. Bowie Songs in Portuguese is a way we have never heard them. That was a great idea. I loved Seu Jorge in Cidade de Deus but I didn't even know he was a musician. We got in touch with him. He auditioned and I found out he was a pop star. That was good news for us. He adapted those songs himself. Not only did he translate them into Portuguese, he really made them Brazilian and that brought a whole different element to the movie. He also played a big part in the movie. His character says only two lines in the whole story: "I didn't see it, Boss." and one other line. But he is singing trough the whole movie. He's really one of the bigger characters in the movie because we keep going back to him in different settings and he's kind of giving an emotional element to the movie with his songs.

ON: I don't know if you know Zinedine Zidane, the French football player who is also an icon for Adidas. His nickname is "Zizou" as well. And you also have a character called Pelé dos Santos in the movie. Is this a coincidence?

WA: I don't know about that. I got the nickname "Zissou" from a French Photographer named Jaques-Henry Lartique. He is one of my favourite photographers and his brother was nicknamed Zissou. He was kind of an inventor and a daredevil. He made airplanes and little racing cars and things that went under water. I always loved this character from his photographs. I named Bill Murray's character after him.

ON: I liked the CASIO-esque theme for the crew. Where did that idea come from?

WA: (He murmurs) Where did that originally come from? We made that music probably two years before we were shooting the movie. And the idea was just that this music would be the music this character would write while they are on that ship. It was like his "temp music" Why the Casio stuff, I wouldn't even remember. It was just like an instinct or something.

ON: Why does Zissou's crew use GLOCK pistols?

WA: I've heard that you can use GLOCKS underwater. They are supposed to have that advantage. But the GLOCKS comes from Anjelica Huston's husband. He's a real character. He is a sculptor and he makes these bronzes and works with all kinds of dangerous materials. He is from Mexico City. I don't want to say "macho" but he has got a little bit of a way about him like that. He has these guys that work for him that all have GLOCKS. And for me that is funny. I like that about him. It's part of his personality. He is sort of a gun slinger. I just took the GLOCKS from him. Maybe I am not supposed to tell people that he and his guys have GLOCKS. Probably he wouldn't want me to go on the record with the GLOCKS bit. Not in Europe at least.

ON: Which of your movies do you consider your most personal ones?

WA: Bottle Rocket was about that very time when we made it. It was almost about me and that group of friends I was working with right at that time. Rushmore is looking back. That one is a very autobiographical sort of story although a lot of it is invented. But there is something about it that is from my own life. That is probably the one.

ON: Your movies are very elaborated. I wonder if you spot any mistakes in your movies or if you are safe because you invest so much in preparation.

WA: Do you mean mistakes like anachronisms? No. I feel like my mistakes are kind of bigger. My mistakes are probably more with the story. I know there is Pilipino dialogue that Bud Cort has. I'm told that it doesn't make sense in Pilipino at all, which is too bad, because Bud Cort studied this language extensively to prepare for the role but didn't get it right.

ON: Do you put all the small insider's jokes in your movies on purpose just for the nerds?

WA: Not for the nerds. If I put in a reference to something it's usually just that I am stealing something. Anything I am doing to the movie I'm just putting it in there because I think it might make the movie better. It might be an idea that I'd taken from some art work - a photograph, a book or a movie - in the same way I take something that somebody said to me in real life.

ON: But what about stuff like the guy with the hat from the University of Texas in Austin, the one with the long horn logo?

WA: The guy with the hat? I don't know what he was doing there. I didn't like the costumes that have been made for the pirates. We gathered stuff together on that day at Cinecittà. A lot of it was from these Pilipino guys who we hired. One of them was suddenly wearing this hat and I thought that is weird because it was from my school. I don't know where you heard that.

ON: Where did you met your friend Owen Wilson?

WA: Well, we went to school together. When I first met him we were in a playwriting class together. We always helped each other with our short stories. We were room mates in college. At a certain point I had this idea that we should make this movie Bottle Rocket and we started writing that together. I had asked him to act in a play that I wrote that the school did a little production of. That was the first time he had acted in something. Then I put him in this short film we made. We worked together ever since then.

ON: What's Owen Wilson like?

WA: In some ways he resembles what he's like in movies. I don't know. What can I tell you? What is something more specific that you could ask me about his personality? Because I couldn't give a very good description of him.

ON: I don't know. His humour?

WA: He is one of the funniest guys I've ever met. He's smart. He's very well read. He has a dog named Garcia. He likes to swim. Are those the kind of answers? Did I give you a good idea?

18.02.2005 / rm