In
1996, a 26-year-old filmmaker from Houston named Wes Anderson—working
with his best friend Owen Wilson and Owen's brother Luke—finished his
debut feature film, Bottle Rocket, a stylish, laconic story about crime and
sentimentality. Though it initially received mixed reviews, Bottle Rocket has gone on to be
recognized as one of the most significant debut films of the '90s, and Anderson
has become one of the most recognized names in contemporary American cinema,
even though his films—The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic With
Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore—annoy as many people as they delight. As
The Criterion Collection prepares to make Bottle Rocket part of its first wave of
Blu-Ray releases, Anderson spoke with The A.V. Club about on-the-job
training, being despised, and what debut films he admires most.
The
A.V. Club: Have you watched the documentary about the making of Bottle
Rocket
on the Criterion DVD?
Wes
Anderson: Yeah.
AVC:
Is that something you enjoy? Hearing other people's recollections about an
experience you all shared?
WA: Not
really. [Laughs.] But with that one, it was nice to see some old friends.
Usually when you're looking at those things, you're just worried that some
awful, embarrassing thing is going to come up. But the Bottle Rocket one is mainly quite
pleasant.
AVC:
Was there anything that surprised you? Anything your friends recalled that you
don't recall the same way?
WA: Yeah, a
couple things. It sounded like some of the people thought I was out of my mind.
[Laughs.] I probably was.
AVC:
One thing that's said over and over is that you seemed to have a clear vision
for what you wanted, even when everybody around you was baffled. Did you ever
feel that you were in over your head?
WA: I did not
feel over my head. You know, Owen and I had written something that was ours,
that was very personal to us, and so we probably shouldn't have been surprised
that it didn't immediately reveal itself to everybody. But on the other hand, I
think most of the people working on the movie did get what we were after.
Certainly [producers] Jim Brooks and Polly Platt did. Even though Polly on the
Criterion documentary kind of seems like she thought I was a bit crazy, Polly
really always did understand the movie, I thought. And Jim saw the script and
the short we did of Bottle Rocket, and he was the only person in the world who was
actually prepared to put money behind it. So I don't know.
AVC:
Do you think James Caan got it?
WA: Yeah,
kind of. [Laughs.] James Caan, I think… One thing I began to realize when we
started doing that movie is that Owen and Luke and [co-star] Bob Musgrave and
I, we had our own way of working together. We'd been doing our own experiments,
and I'd been making my own shorts, and as we started making Bottle Rocket with other people, I
began to realize, "I think the way we're doing things is not quite right,
because some of our techniques seem to be getting sort of a puzzled reaction."
Just the order
in which we were doing things sometimes was unusual. On practically every
close-up in the movie, I never set it up where the actors could actually see
each other. They always had to look at a little piece of tape, which isn't
completely unheard of, but usually directors figure out a way that the actors
can look at each other even if someone's offscreen. By the time James Caan got
there, it was all
tape, and I remember him being just, "Why is this happening?" And I remember I
thought, "Yeah, you know what, maybe there's a way around that." There were
quite a few moments like that.
One
of the guys I cast was Caan's karate sensei, whose name was Tak Kubota, as a
character in the story named Rowboat, his right-hand man. And I remember that
we had a scene where they were supposed to be doing some karate together, and
we had Tak in just Fruit Of The Loom briefs. Caan came in and was really thrown
by that. I was saying, "Well, I think it's going to be funny," and his reaction
was, "This isn't supposed to be a comedy, is it?" [Laughs.] But I think he was
amused by it. He wasn't there for long, and we had fun with him, and he seemed
to be getting a laugh out of it all.
AVC:
Do you still work in such an unconventional way? There were rumors that on The
Royal Tenenbaums,
Gene Hackman was bemused by the way you were working.
WA: No, Gene
was definitely not bemused. [Laughs.] In fact, by then I'd had some experience
with well-known actors, and with Gene, I more or less tried to do what he
wanted to do. But Gene, I don't think loves being directed in the first place,
and I had a lot of particular ideas for the way some things were to be done. He
just wasn't getting a huge kick out of it—but I don't know that he ever
does. The main thing is that everything he was doing was great. Even though he
can be belligerent, there's a lot of emotion there. I was always excited to be
working with him, even when I was a little scared of him, just because this
character that I'd spent so much time working on and was so invested in was
being brought to life—not only in all the ways that I'd wanted, but
something quite beyond.
AVC:
Were you steeped in Hollywood lore as a kid, to the point where you would feel
somewhat reverent to a Gene Hackman or a James Caan?
WA: Oh yeah.
AVC:
What about Polly Platt, who's legendary on the business side? Did you keep up
with the business side of show business?
WA: I don't
know about that, but I definitely knew who Polly was. The Last Picture Show was a movie that was
particularly important to me, and one of the few films that I always felt
especially inspired by, so that was a name that meant a lot to me.
AVC:
Did growing up in Texas have anything to do with your attraction to The Last
Picture Show?
WA: I suppose
it did. I mean, Larry McMurtry's a Texan. But I don't think my experience of
Texas was close to that. I grew up in such a different environment in Texas. I
just think that movie's so well-written and well-played, and the cast is not a
Texan cast, except for maybe Randy Quaid. But [director] Peter Bogdanovich is
somebody who comes from New York, and loves the theater. I probably related to
it more in that way, though I'm not even sure what way that is, exactly.
AVC:
Do you think of yourself as a Texan? Aside from Bottle Rocket, Texas hasn't really
been a part of your movies.
WA: Well I do, but I wouldn't
say that I know exactly how. You know, Rushmore, we made in Houston. I
like Westerns, but I don't know if that's something particularly Texan either.
That's more Hollywood.
AVC:
The original short version of Bottle Rocket, which is included on
DVD, almost feels like an excerpt from a longer work. Was the script always
feature-length before you made the short?
WA: Yeah,
that short was supposed to be just an installment of the feature. But it's
probably just as well that we started over. We actually shot more. The short
has quite a bit of stuff that was cut out of it. I think at one point it was
more like 30 minutes or something, and we cut it down. I tried to find all that
footage to put it on the DVD, but it never turned up. My mother was looking through
closets and searching everywhere, and we just never could find that stuff.
AVC:
Had you wanted to shoot in black and white? Was that always part of the plan?
WA: Uh-huh.
And I wouldn't be surprised if some of that came from The Last Picture Show, being a movie in black
and white at a time when movies weren't.
AVC:
So why the change to color?
WA: Well, the
change to color came when somebody actually wanted to put some money in it, and
they said, "Well, you can't do it in black and white." [Laughs.] So that was a
good motivation. But the other thing is that by the time we were shooting the
movie, I had ideas about the palette the movie was going to have, and how we'd
use that. So by the time we were doing it, I was very excited about working in
color. But at first it was meant to be black and white, like classic Hollywood
movies and also, in particular, French New Wave movies. Also Last Picture
Show and
that Bruce Weber documentary Let's Get Lost. Those were the movies in
particular that were making me want to shoot in black and white.
AVC: Do you have any desire to make a feature in black and
white at some point?
WA: Yeah, I
would love to do that.
AVC:
But no immediate plans?
WA: No, not
at the moment.
AVC:
Around the time Bottle Rocket came out, there was a whole wave of indie
crime films. Were you trying to react to that in any way, or to capitalize on
it? Or was it just coincidental that Bottle Rocket fell into that genre?
WA: I don't
know that it was coincidental, because I have a feeling that a lot of those
movies that you're talking about were inspired by Martin Scorsese. I think we
all had Mean Streets and Goodfellas in mind. For me also, it was Shoot The Piano
Player, a genre
movie—a crime movie—that François Truffaut used to sort of talk
about himself and his friends. He made this strange mixture. I think a lot
of† the new filmmakers around the
time of Bottle Rocket might have had a lot of similar inspirations. And Quentin
Tarantino was an inspiration to lots of people, because he has such a strong
voice and was so successful all of a sudden. He had a big impact. Though I
guess he was inspired by Asian crime movies as much as anything.
AVC: And Scorsese. And Brian De Palma.
WA: And
Jean-Pierre Melville.
AVC:
The generation of filmmakers that emerged in the '70s—Scorsese, De Palma,
Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola—were all friends. Do
feel like you're part of a group the way they were part of a group?
WA: Yes and
no. Quentin Tarantino, I really love his movies. He's such a good writer—and
he was always a good director, but then over those first three movies or so, he
really became a great director, so original and obviously so imitated. But I don't
really know him that well. And Paul Thomas Anderson, I don't know at all, but I
love his movies too. I guess I know more the New York filmmakers—Noah
Baumbach in particular. Noah's obviously a very good friend. I think Quentin
and Paul Thomas Anderson may be friends, too. Maybe if we spent more time in
Los Angeles, they'd invite us over. [Laughs.]
[pagebreak]
AVC:
Speaking of Los Angeles, in the documentary on the Bottle Rocket DVD, you mention that
you spent more than a year there working on the script. What was it like to
move from Texas to L.A. and spend every day driving to a studio to work in an office?
Was the whole business side of Hollywood seductive at all?
WA: No, not seductive. We
were there really desperately trying to get our movie going, because we were
very conscious of the fact that it might fall apart. It always seemed like it
was about to. It's hard to get even a little movie like ours made, because it's
still millions of dollars you're talking about. It didn't even need to be millions of
dollars, but it was. And getting that thing going took a lot of time. So it
wasn't particularly seductive, but it was exciting to go to a movie studio.
I worked in Rome at Cinecittà on The Life Aquatic, and that was very fun,
but other than that, I've never had an office on a studio lot. And that was
great. It was great just to be given a pass to go on the lot in the first
place, much less to be there working on our script and doing our casting
sessions and all that stuff. It was a good introduction to the organization of
how movies get made.
AVC:
Were there any opportunities to do any other kind of work while you were out
there? Did anybody at Gracie Films ask you to rewrite other scripts, or to work
on anything else for them?
WA: No, that
didn't happen. We were just trying to get this one thing done. Also, I don't
think anybody else there was even thinking about us.
AVC:
Again according to the documentary, you had to fight hard for certain things,
and didn't always get your way. Are you generally happy with the choices that
were made both in the cutting of the script and in the cutting of the film?
WA: It's kind
of hard to even gauge that, because I think the movie we originally made
probably didn't work. There was a renovation process that took place. Making
that movie, and in particular working with Jim Brooks, was a bit of a
film-school experience for me and Owen, both when we were writing the movie and
in particular in the editing room. We spent a lot of time trying to get the
movie to work properly. Then we felt like we did get the movie to work
properly, but for most audiences, it never did. We had lots of people come to
the finished version of the movie who didn't like it any more than the first
version.
AVC:
Sundance turned you down, which was kind of a legendary snub.
WA: Yeah, at
the time, we were pretty worked up about it, but really in retrospect, I'm sure
they just sat in a room and they were like, "Gosh, what is this?" Also, they
were watching probably 75 movies a week at that point.
AVC: Bottle Rocket
went on to be named by Martin Scorsese as one of his 10 favorite movies of the
'90s.
WA: That was great. Yeah that
was amazing, coming from one of my heroes.
AVC:
Were you surprised by the Wilson brothers' subsequent success in Hollywood?
WA: No. I think when any of
us look back, we think, "Gosh, we've been working in movies for quite a while,
and this is the thing we've always wanted to do." I certainly feel lucky to
have been able to do these movies so far. It seems like a great opportunity and
a rare thing. But I did always think those guys, Owen and Luke, could be movie
stars. It's not a shock to me that they are. I also think that Andrew Wilson,
if I was going to make some kind of Bruckheimer movie or something, he could
certainly be an action hero. I don't know if I'm very good at action, though.
AVC:
What about the big action sequence in The Life Aquatic?
WA: That's my
point. [Laughs.] I'm not exactly John Woo.
AVC:
You've become sort of a polarizing figure in film-buff circles, in that you
have some people who are devoted to your work and others who absolutely can't
stand what you do, and use you as an example of what's wrong with indie
filmmaking. How do you react to that?
WA: Well,
it's a bit of a drag. I guess I try to insulate myself from it by not reading
too much of that kind of material. It's not usually that great of an idea to
read lots of reviews of your movies, because even if somebody's saying nice
things, there'll still be something in there that pushes the wrong button, and
it's not really that helpful. Having said that, I am aware of what you're
talking about. [Laughs.] Even when we did Bottle Rocket, that was just exactly
the experience the audience had with that movie. There were people who loved
it, but there were lots of people who just hated it. I still don't
understand why what I do tends to inspire those kinds of reactions.
AVC: Last year there was an article complaining about
racial stereotyping in your films, followed by another article defending your
films for being so multicultural. It just seems strange that the kind of movies
you make would be so hotly debated.
WA: I know,
where did that racism thing come from? That one I heard. It just seems so
surreal to me. I couldn't have felt more misunderstood.
AVC:
What did you learn on Bottle Rocket that you were able to apply to Rushmore?
WA: I
remember when we were shooting Bottle Rocket that there were a couple
of times when I thought, "I'm not sure exactly how to do this, so we're just
going to do something and get through it." Then I remember on Rushmore thinking, "I am never
going to approach a scene that way. I don't care if we've worked 18 hours and
it's 5:30 in the morning and we have 45 minutes before the sun is going to come
up and we've got to get this thing. I am going to make sure that we do
everything we can to get it right. Because eventually the shoot is going to be
over and we're just going to have what we have, and I'm going to have to live
with it for the rest of my life." That's probably something that should be obvious,
but it wasn't to me then. It's sort of revealed itself to me.
AVC:
And that's been your attitude ever since?
WA: Yeah. Bottle
Rocket
wasn't a long, long shoot, but I do remember feeling a bit overwhelmed by it.
It just seemed like, "There's so many shots!" Somewhere, halfway through the
movie, it seemed like there was too much work to take on, and some things were
hard to get right. I don't think I've felt like that since then. I think by the
end of Bottle Rocket, I understood that these things have their shape, and part of
that shape is that they end.
AVC:
Were you conscious making Bottle Rocket that it would be a
calling card, an introduction, and that it needed to represent you?
WA: We
weren't really thinking about it being a stepping stone to anything, because
the thing itself was just everything in the world to us then. That's all we
were talking or thinking about, so there was no need to even think about it any
other way.
AVC:
What are some of your favorite debut films?
WA: What
region should we start with? [Laughs.] Okay, France. One of my favorites is François
Truffaut. His short film "Les Mistons," and then The 400 Blows. I think The 400 Blows is a great example of a
movie that establishes such a strong point of view with something so personal,
and that had an enormous effect on people. He evolved from there and became
certainly a more skilled filmmaker, and made other movies that I like even
more—that I love, even—but I don't think he ever made a movie that hit
people the same way. I think "Les Mistons" has a lot in common with his later
work, more than The 400 Blows does. But his first feature was the one that
really made his reputation. Maybe that's not an uncommon thing, that somebody's
first work is what establishes their identity. But who are other ones like
that? Maybe you can lead me somewhere, because I feel like there's too many to
choose from.
AVC:
Well, you've been to France, so how about England?
WA: Oh, David
Lean. The ones he did with Noël Coward—This Happy Breed, In Which We Serve, Blithe Spirit, Brief Encounter—and then those
Dickens movies, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations. The early David Lean
movies are quite different from those huge epics he ended up doing, but I think
those are my favorites. Especially those two Dickens movies, which are simpler,
and brisk and precise where Lawrence Of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago and The Bridge On The
River Kwai
all have to have an intermission.
AVC:
How about India? Your last film paid homage to Satyajit Ray. Pather Panchali was his first film,
right?
WA: Yeah,
that was his first film. The Apu Trilogy was maybe three of his first four.
Yeah, I love his movies. But the movies of his I love the most are some of the
later ones. Ray's a peculiar one because his earliest films are what people
sometimes refer to as "mature films," where the director's style is less
immediately legible. His first films are quiet and gentle and very humane, and
focused entirely on the characters. Some of his later films—some of the
films he did in Calcutta in the '70s—are like Godard movies in that
they're much wilder and experimental in a more aggressive way. They're very
exciting. The Middleman and The Adversary and Company Limited—people sometimes call
them his "Calcutta Trilogy," because they were made when Calcutta was in wild
turmoil. That one in particular, Company Limited, is a great film. I
suppose those aren't really seen, for some reason.
AVC:
Not sure they're available on DVD, at least not here in the States.
WA: Well, you
can get them if you got to Hindu-language places that deal mostly in Bollywood
stuff, or in primarily Indian communities like in New Jersey or something.
They'll be bootlegs, but they're there, with very bad subtitles, very bad
translations… stuff that just doesn't even make any sense in the translations.
AVC:
Any Americans on your list?
WA: Well a
great first one is The Maltese Falcon, because John Huston wrote a great script for
himself and then directed it perfectly. Scorsese had sort of a series of first
films, like Who's That Knocking At My Door? and Boxcar Bertha, but his first real movie
to me is Mean Streets, and that was a big inspiration for us when we were making Bottle
Rocket.
Roman Polanski has a great first film, Knife In The Water. Orson Welles did pretty
well. [Laughs.] Peter Bogdanovich. Targets was a very good one, because that one was
one of those movies where he was assigned one thing and he brought back
something else. I think he was hired on to do a certain job, and instead he
just did what he was interested in, and took the opportunity to make his own
thing. And it's very good, that movie. Polly Platt worked on that with him.
AVC:
Could you have been that kind of filmmaker? Could you have been like a
Bogdanovich or a Scorsese, who had to start off working within the studio
system or even in the drive-in movie realm, trying to smuggle your own personal
style into an assignment?
WA: Well, I
think I certainly would've been up for it. Before I had made any movies, if
somebody had said, "You available to go film this?"—whatever it was, I
would've said yes. I don't know whether I would've been any good at it.
[Laughs.] But I certainly would've tried.