The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Die Tiefseetaucher
Interview with Anjelica Huston
Out of the quite a few people OutNow.CH has met for an Interview in Berlin there was only one person late. Heavily. Her excuse: "I'm a little retarded this morning." It was of all people Anjelic Huston who actually should know how to behave since she has been in the business for quite some time. Although her father, the great director John Huston, didn't want her to become an actress. Fighting Anjelicas pighead was probably something that not many people did very well. And a woman that spent 16 years of her live with Jack Nicholson actually deserves the wait.
OutNow.CH (ON): This is now your second time with Wes Anderson. Once again it's about very exotic cartoon-like characters. Are you particularly fascinated with that type of films?
In Wes' World
Anjelica Huston (AH): I think I must be. That's a very nice way of putting it. I like characters. I am always happy not to necessarily fall into a predictable role which seem to be in most of the conventional movies one sees. I like roles with a bit of an edge. For that reason I am well suited to Wes' ethos. I like to call it "Wesworld". Wes creates his own Universe. He is very specific. It's a lovely thing to enter. It's a fantasy sort of heightened reality. I love the look of his movies. I like his take on life. It's very much his. He is very much an auteur.
ON: How did you become part of the Wes Anderson world of regular characters?
AH: When I did The Royal Tenenbaums with Wes it happened very conventionally. I've got a call from my agent who said have you seen Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. I'd seen Rushmore, not Bottle Rocket. She said Wes Anderson would like to meet with you in New York. I didn't know that it was about something specifically. I thought he might just want to say hello or something. So we met for breakfast in New York and I liked him immediately. He said that he was writing a script for a thing called The Royal Tenenbaums and that he would like me to consider. When it was finished he sent it in. I liked the script a lot. My immediate reaction to it was that it was a very interesting relationship. I felt there should be some kind of reconciliation between the two protagonists Royal and Etheline towards the end of the movie. He took that into consideration and wrote a very beautiful scene for the two characters at the end in the park. That convinced me that it was really a movie that I wanted to do.
It was during the movie in the last couple of weeks of shooting Bill Murray and I had a scene outside Gwyneth Paltrow's bathroom door. In which she shoves the key under the door, I lean down to get it and we both come up in frame. After that shot Wes said: "I like the way you look together. I'm thinking about this under water movie. Maybe I can send you another script." I agreed. Several months later this script came.
ON: What was your first reaction to this script?
AH: I liked it very much. I had a few ideas about it and Wes was very collaborative. It's always nice with Wes because he sends you drawings and photographs and the conversation begins. I find his work ethic very amusing, volatile and interesting. I had heard on Tenenbaums all about the "under water movie" and I thought how great. We are all in this little house in Harlem in the middle of Winter. And the idea of being in Rome and at sea sounded very nice. I didn't know that it would be January at sea. I love Wes and I was very happy that he would consider me for this movie.
Anjelica Huston
ON: How does it feel when a role is tailored to you and did Wes once explain why you should be the brain behind Zissou?
AH: That was one of the things that was really nice given the fact that I was an idiot in school. To be considered the brains of the operation was immediately seductive. And I was very flattered that he wanted to work with me again. You know how it is when you really like someone. You are happy that they like you back.
ON: As the daughter of John Huston did you have a sort of wunderkind feeling in your childhood and could you therefore identify with Wes Anderson's character in the movie?
AH: It was a sort of combination of wunderkind and "retarded kind". I was raised in Ireland. My parents were American. So I wasn't really like anyone in the vicinity because we lived in a very rural part of Ireland on the South-West Coast. I had tutors up until the age eight or nine years old. For a couple of years I went to an Irish convent but as a day girl. Then my parents moved out. I went with my mother to London where I was put into the French Lycée. Altough I had French tutors growing up, when I got to the Lycée I was basically very stupid by their standards. I was kept in the same class with the kindergarteners coming up and then the threatened to keep me back for a third year. Eventually it occurred to my mother that this wasn't a wonderful situation for me. So I went in between the feeling that I was stupid and special by turns.
ON: Can you talk a little about your father. His stake on life, his legacy and his personality.
John Huston
AH: Yes. I learned a tremendous amount from him. He was such a courageous person. I saw him in many different situations. He was unique. I've never known anyone like him. I always get irritated when people call him "hemingwayesque" because I think he was very much himself. He was "hustonesque". I never saw him show fear. He was very demanding which was sometimes difficult. He could be very critical which is something that I have a lot of problems with. I don't like to be criticized. That's why I am actress (She laughs). My father always encouraged me to do things that scared me. I don't know If I am nearly as courageous as a person as he is but that was one of the things he emphasized. He also was a great reader and a great seeker. Particularly at the end of his life when he was in hospital that was when I got to know him best. Even though it was a very hard time for his children to see him so debilitated it was also a fantastic time for listening to his stories, getting to know him in a way that wasn't possible as children because he was always away working.
ON: What do you think about Clint Eastwood and the way he portrayed your father in White Hunter?
AH: He made good efforts. It actually stems from another problem. My criticism of that film is more criticism of the book than Clint's portrayal. I think he did a good job. However the premise of "White Hunter Black Heart" is maybe a bit ironious. Peter Viertell describes my father as being more interested in going out and killing an elephant than making a movie. I don't believe that simply. It was a different era. It is certainly not the one we are dealing with now when these huge beautiful animals are becoming extinct by way of starvation and war. It's very difficult to see somebody who one knows as intimately as one's father being represented by somebody else, even if he did a great job. I don't think his taste of art in the movie was particularly good or like my fathers.
ON: Did you ever have the urge to do research in that story.
AH: Sometimes my assistants do research for me but I haven't hired one specifically for that.
ON: It seems that you like portrayals of families a lot. You played in The Adams Family, The Royal Tenenbaums and now this movie.
AH: I think the family is the basis of all human life as we know it. The family dynamics is the most fascinating one to all of humanity. How parents deal with their children. What their reactions are. How one has to overcome ones' difficulties as a child to come to terms with ones' parents. That is probably why I am attracted to that.
Spot the difference
ON: Is it true that your husband appears in The Life Aquatic?
AH: Yes. He complained that the camera didn't dwell on him a little bit more. You see him in a glancing close-up. He plays a Venezuelan general. It was my hardest day on set actually since he took over my trailer with his cigars and medals and costumes. I would suggest that if he would do a lot more acting he'd had his own trailer.
ON: Would you like him to do more acting?
AH: I don't know if he would pursue it or not. But not in my trailer!
ON: Is it more fun to shot comedy or drama?
AH: It's definitively more fun to shot a comedy. Although I had a great time on The Grifters, which I think is maybe an unconventional drama. But there is this sense of a nasty secret. It's great to do movies that have a little secret. Yes. It's fun to shoot a comedy because the level is raised. Everyone is kind of in a good humour around the comedy. But the movies that I like best to do are the ones that are well written, that have great dialogue. That was one of the reasons I like The Grifters. I got some fantastic dialogue.
ON: Are you also continuing your work as a director?
AH: I've just directed my third film. It's for television. I made it for CBS right after the Life Aquatic. It was mostly due to the fact that Rosie O'Donnell asked me if I'd direct her in a piece called Riding the Bus with my Sister. I am a huge admirer of Rosie. She is a wonderful personality and quite an extraordinary actress. That was seductive to me.
