Wes Anderson 2008 Paris Interview (Part 1)
Purple Fashion Magazine Interview: S/S 2008 No. 9
After the screening of Darjeeling, Wes Anderson returned to Paris, where he took the time to discuss with us his mentors, actors, friends, and the difficulty of writing good female characters.
Interviewers: Olympia Tan
Snapshot: WARIS AHLUWALIA [Born in India, long-lived in New York, jewelry designer, named "The World's 50 Best Men to Wear Clothes"]
Olympia Tan: Are you going to wear those headphones all the time during the interview, Olivier?
Wes Anderson: I think that's a good idea. I had him wear it throughout the interview, which looked more scientific. Have you ever seen a photo of Truffaut and Chabrol in a lengthy interview with Hitchcock? Truffaut and Chabrol were the founders and famous directors of French "New Wave" films, and the interview lasted four years and was later compiled as Hitchcock and Truffaut Dialogues.
Olivier Zam: So you're playing Hitchcock in this interview, Wes?
Wei Dao: That's right!
Zam: I'm more like Chabrol.
TAM: Then I'll be Truffaut.
Wei Dao: Very good. Maybe that's the best character.
ZAM: Sorry, I don't have any technical brains.
Wei Dao: No? That tape recorder looks quite high-tech.
Zam: Bought it the day he was dumped by his girlfriend. I've got to spend some money!
Wei Dao: Make yourself feel better...
Zam: Wes – it's a beautiful autumn Paris. We are honored that you have visited our city so often. What attracted you to Paris?
Wei Dao: It sounds pretty bad, but basically the movies that attracted me to a city were films made in that city. We just made a movie in India, Across Darjeeling, and I wanted to go there because I had seen some movies about India, and oddly enough, some of them were made by French directors. For example, Louis Mahler's documentary about India in the late '60s or early '70s was very good, and I loved Jean Renoir's "The Great River," which made me decide to go to India. I learned about it through film a long time before I came to Paris, and it turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be – it was what it looked like in a movie. So I really liked it.
Tan: So you love Paris in the cinematic lens, right?
Wei Dao: It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but when I finish my work and come back to Paris, I do feel that way. It was like coming home.
Zam: Is Paris quieter than an American city? Are you easier to work here?
Wei Dao: Yes, much quieter. I prefer every aspect of every day in Paris to a day in New York, my breakfast, the place where breakfast is served, the view from the window, even the architecture that fascinates me. In Paris, the view from my window is really beautiful. I also loved my apartment in New York, but when I looked out the window, all I saw was new buildings popping up and the community of Steviente! I don't have so many friends in Paris, but I really like my friends here and it's always fun to meet them.
ZAM: Do you feel like you're a New Yorker?
Wei Dao: I don't know, I think so. I'm actually from Texas, lived in Los Angeles for a few years, and then moved to New York. But I don't know what I'm counting. I'm American.
ZAM: It's all about it.
Wei Dao: That's right.
ZAM: Let's talk a little more about France. Are you going to use French actors in future films?
I wanted to make a film with all-French dialogue, but maybe it would be a mistake because I don't speak French — when an actor speaks French, I don't know if I can tell if the person is acting well or badly. But anyway, I want to make a movie here.
Zam: The way you use the American language is very precise. Dialogue is really important in your movie.
Wei Dao: But shooting in French can be a disaster! We actually did make movies here. I don't know if you've seen it.
Tan : Short film "Knights Hotel"?
Wei Dao: Yes, we made a short film with Natalie Portman and Jensen Schwartzman at the Raphael Hotel.
Zam: What about French actors? Are you going to work with Jean-Pierre Lyod?
Vedic: [Laughs] Jean-Pierre Lyod! Do you know him?
Zam: I met him once, in a bar, and he wanted to steal my girlfriend. He's definitely nearby.
David: Jensen Schwartzman and I understand him very well. He is one of our sources of inspiration. We talked a lot about him when we made "Youth" ten years ago and when we made this movie now. In fact, I just met an actor I really liked on the street outside the hotel, Matthew Amalik, who played the old lady's housekeeper in Weiss's latest "The Grand Budapest Hotel."
Zam: He's the best!
Wei Dao: He's great. He had just stood on the street with Mira Nair, who directed "Monsoon Wedding", "The Same Celebrity" and "Good Morning Mumbai"!
Zam: Matthew is funny. Very free. A really interesting actor. He performed brilliantly in his friend's film, The King and the Queen. I don't remember the director's name, he was Matthew's best friend...
Director Wei: I also like the actor in "The Rhythm Of My Heart's Forgetting", Roman Durris, who is really great in this movie. I think, who else?
Zam: You're really discerning in your choice of male actors, and your choices have been great.
Wei Dao: But I need to write a good female character.
Zam: Maybe you're not good at dealing with women...
Wei Dao: It's fun. Owen Wilson and I've been talking a lot lately, trying to write some good female characters out. In fact, I recently talked to Owen about this topic in Los Angeles — I looked around and there were probably 11 men in the room. I said, "Why can't we think of good female characters?" "So yeah, I agree with you.
ZAM : Gwyneth Paltrow is a very good choice.
Wei Dao: Yes.
Tan: So is Angelica Houston.
Wei Dao: But you know, they really put themselves into the role and make the character more interesting, whether the character itself is interesting or not. Some things come from real people, based on real people. Tell me, who is the most interesting French actress today?
Tan: French actress? There are no interesting people in the French actresses, except Catherine Deneuve.
Wei Dao: What do you think of Ludiffen Shani?
ZAM: She's great.
Wei Dao: She is quite praised. The woman in "Lip Horror" is also good. She plays a rivalry with Vincent Cassel.
Tan: I never watch French movies. Don't watch recent movies anyway.
ZAM: Rudifern is great.
Wei Dao: Vincent Cassel is also very supportive. What else? The man in the Chabrol films, Benois Jacques?
TAM: You mean Benoy Magimé.
Wei Dao: Ah ouui Benoy Magimé. Yes, Benoyard Jacques is a director, a good director. Have you ever seen his movie, Seventh Heaven? [Translation: Here Wei Dao said once in French and English] very beautiful. One of my favorites. You should take a look.
Tan: You know more about French cinema than we do.
ZAM: Yeah, maybe we shouldn't talk deeply about French cinema because you know a lot more than we do. We're getting bigger.
Wei Dao: I know a person that none of you like, but I am a big fan of her: Agnes Chavi. A lot of French people don't like her as much as I do. You don't like her?
Tan: I don't like it very much.
Wei Dao: This is the case every time! I talked to people here about her and they just didn't like her! Is it because she's too "popular", or what?
Tan: She's a little too popular. What does "popularity" mean in English?
Wei Dao: Well, I get it. popularization. She's too popular. You know, I watched these films in a different context —at the New York Film Festival—and I love to watch them. "The Taste of Others", "Like an Illusion" – these are all very good. You don't like it?
Tan : No!
Wei Dao: Really? But why? What aspects of these movies don't you like?
Tan: I would never watch a movie like this. Don't look at it on the plane.
Zam: Olympia, you've had enough.
Director Wei: Who do you think is the most interesting director right now?
ZAM: The guy I mentioned earlier...
TAN: The one who worked with Matthew Amalek?
Zam: Yes, that's him, what's his name?
Wei Dao: Who?
Tan: It's a director he just mentioned, and you just met the actor on the road to shoot the film... Is this unclear! 【Laughs】
Wei Dao: Yes, everyone on Earth knows— "Matthew Amalik's friend is one of the best new generation directors right now!" [Laughs]
Zam: I also like Olivier Assayas.
Wei Dao: Yes, I think he is great.
Zam: He was clearly influenced by the New Wave and the Film Handbook.
Wei Dao: Yes, he used to write for the Film Handbook. It's hard to imagine that someone who has directed "Clean" could work with Emmanuel Bea to make a movie like "The Fate of Emotions", which is really amazing. When you watch "The Fate of Emotions", you think this director must be seventy years old. It's actually a compliment to him, because it's a very quiet, mature work.
Tan: The audience may feel the same way about you.
Wei Dao: What? Will I also make a quiet and mature movie?
Tan: No, you're actually seventy years old! Think about the aesthetics in your movies.
Director Wei: Maybe some people really think so, but seventy-year-olds don't come to see my movies at all! People in the company always warn me to pay more attention to the young audience, they are my bell period, I think they are quite right. Many elderly people will watch my film and think, "What a ghost, I can't understand it at all." "Probably a lot of young people think the same way! But I'd rather feel like I'm making a movie that will be greatly appreciated by audiences ten years from now, and those who don't buy it right now — well, I hope to change their perception of me in the future, but I'm just saying stick to my style, not that no one likes my movies right now.
Tan: Of course we love your movies. But we've also noticed that there are always generations of conflict in your films. Adults seem to be immature, have no sense of responsibility, and are lost in their own world. Children are small and big, and they are particularly mature in speech and doing things. It's as if age and mind have been reversed.
"Bottled Rocket"
Wei Dao: How can this be?
Tam: We just want to ask you!
Wei Dao: Don't you think that the older we get, the more confused we will be? I know it myself. When I made my first movie, "Rocket in a Bottle," my self-confidence was bursting, it was my most secure moment, as if I knew everything, and I firmly believed that "Wait, everyone will love it after watching the movie!" "But when the movie really came out, it felt like everyone was not interested." They really didn't like that movie, and it had a big impact on me.
Tan: I really don't understand why everyone doesn't like it, so funny!
Wei Dao: Not only don't you like it, it's just very annoying!
Tan: Everybody says that?
Wei Dao: Everyone says so! We had a 385-person screening in Santa Monica, north of Los Angeles International Airport, california's famous waterfront city, and basically only one person filled the card with compliments; one person loved it and wrote an article; and everyone else hated the film. A third of the audience left without watching it, and that was it.
TAN: Where did you get the money to make the next movie?
Wei Dao: Fortunately, there is a person who likes it is the owner of a big company.
Tam: So lucky! Can you reveal some personal life facts? What was your home like when you were a kid?
Zam: Because in your movies, family is always very important.
Director Wei: Most of my families in movies are very rich. This is a far cry from how I really am – I never felt like my family was rich. In addition, the family situation in the movie is always more dramatic, and my own family has not had the problems in the movie.
TAM: Thank goodness!
ZAM: So, fundamentally, you had a quiet childhood?
Wei Dao: A very typical American Texas-style childhood, my family has three brothers, I have an older brother and a younger brother.
ZAM: Did your brothers also enter the art world?
My brother was a doctor, and my brother Eric drew and wrote. He has contributed many illustrations and other ideas to my films. There are a lot of things related to my movies. He published a book called Chuck Dugan Is AWOL, and wrote a script based on it, which he may have to make later. It was a book...
TAN: A novel about maps?
Right! Fiction about maps!
Tan: I saw no, but I came prepared.
Zam: How did you first like movies? Did you write a script as a child?
Wei Dao: Exactly. I write the script... Wait I suddenly thought of one thing, most things I have said on other occasions, but the following one has never been said. Honestly, I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say this now...
Tan: [Laughs] So it's an exclusive news!
Wei Dao: It is the latest explosive scoop! Most of the first screenplay I wrote was actually copied from a short story written by my brother. Well, I finally have the courage to make this public!
TAN: Does he know?
Director Wei: He will definitely know after reading the script.
Tam: But he didn't say anything?
Wei Dao: He never said anything, so he let me take that story. That was the only thing I took from him. I think I made a little change to make the script more commercial.
TAN: How old were you at the time?
Wei Dao: Maybe the fourth grade, so it should be eight or nine years old. My brother's story is about a bunch of guys driving super-cool Italian cars. My only change was to make them Maserati. My screenplay is called Five Maseratis. Sounds like it's not quite a good fit to write a script, just a bunch of cars. But it's more like a setting.
You were only eight years old, and was your work as complex and elaborate as the one written by Max Fischer and Margot Tenenbaum?
Director Wei: I did try to make a very complicated Star Wars drama, but it didn't take shape. Not very successful, the script is not well written. The costumes were not bad though.
Tam: You make your own clothing?
Director Wei: I did it with a few other people, but it didn't end up on stage, and the script was not well adapted.
TAM: I really like the bullet hole in Margot Tenenbaum's zebra stripe set, and I love that detail.
Wei Dao: Thank you. It's interesting that no one has ever told me that. It reminded me that at first we wanted to smear the blood directly on it, but it didn't work very well, so we cut the red felt and sewed it up, which was much better. I'm glad there's still attention to this.
Tam: This detail is really amazing.
Zam: You've known Owen Wilson since college and started co-creating films, so let's talk about that. Do you have the same ambitions? Are there any plans to enter the film industry?
Wei Dao: Almost, but we never thought about it that way. I loved making movies, and Owen loved watching movies, but at that time we all wanted to be screenwriters. I made some small films and wrote a very bad and incomprehensible script. But what I really want to do is write fiction. When Owen and I first met, we were both writing short stories and helping each other. During the process, I came up with the idea of a movie, which was "Bottled Rocket", so we both co-created the script. I invited him and his brother Luke to join, but Owen felt that this was not professional enough, and he wanted us to find famous actors, or at least people who knew how to act. But I know I'm a good idea, and they're going to do a good job.
Zam: Your first step into the film industry was with a friend, which is interesting. In fact, it seems that you have built a film family around yourself, like directors Casawitz and Truffaut, who always work with the same group of actors and slowly form their own circle of artists. Is this what you're also trying?
Director Wei: There are some elements in the works of Director Casawitz and Truffaut that I really like and want to imitate. But I never consciously developed a circle of artists around myself. Every time you start making a new movie, you think: Who's up to it this time? I know who did a good job before, or use him this time! Who can play this role well? Oh whoever plays it will definitely be brilliant! The results are people you know. Sometimes you also have characters that you don't know who to play, or actors you've worked with before expire, and you meet new people, and then in the next movie you want to work with them again, and that's how things work. And it's a beautiful thing to have a big reunion every time you start shooting. Usually everyone is out and about, except of course me! Everyone was reunited, and I wanted it to be a happy reunion.
Tam: It's like your own circus class.
Wei Dao: Yes, it is indeed a little. If it weren't for the fact that I used the same actors so often, I don't think people would have noticed. Because most filmmakers have their own usual teams, but it is not so common to choose fixed actors. Some of the people I've worked with while filming in India are some of the people I'm sure I'll work with again. For example, Sanjay Sami, our field. He had a method of shooting that I had never heard of before: for example, he built a "trolley" himself. It's just putting the camera on a trolley and then using someone to pull it and run, a great idea, a great tool. The first time I heard about it, I thought, "We need something like that." There's a scene where Bill Murray is running with his briefcase, and you see him running, but he's actually just pulling the little car! It was enough for him to be solely responsible for that scene! I don't even have to ask someone to pull the cart.
ZAM: Sounds good, and it's a lot of money-saving, and we've got to introduce a new topic now...
TAM: Oh yes! Psychoanalysis of your movie!
Wei Dao: Oh my God! Would it be shocking?
Tan: No, no, but it can be a bit of a personal issue. Regarding the father figures in your movie, why are they all a bunch of jerks?
Wei Dao: I have to state first that my father is not like this. But I have a lot of mentors who have always been important to me, and the people you really admire can sometimes be more important than you think.
Zam: Can you name a few names?
Wei Dao: Well, didn't you just start with an "asshole", people may not be happy to hear it.
Tam: No, no, I mean "bastard" but what we actually want to say is "the cute bastard with the kind heart you'll remember at the end".
Wei Dao: [Laughs] So, I have a lot of different mentors, but none of them are bastards. They left me with more of a fatherly influence. Like Kit Carson, I was a lot of help with Irving when it came to filming Rocket in a Bottle. He's a real filmmaker, a writer, and he's different from everyone else we know. He has all sorts of interesting stories about the world of cinema, and he has a lot of character and influences us.
Zam: Is he an actor?
Director Wei: Yes, he starred in "David's Diary". Have you heard of it? A good film worth seeing. The film was made in New York, but it had a French perspective. The director is American, Jim McBride. Kit is the male protagonist, in fact, he is simply the true character. Another of our mentors was Jim Brooks, the producer of Rocket in a Bottle. Thanks to him, everything is today. He taught us how to write a script, and our original script stinks and is long, and he teaches us how to write it. Since then I've used his methods in everything I write. And then there's Bill Murray, and we worked on Teenage, and he influenced the scripts I wrote for other films.
Tan: Is he also like in the movie "Youth" in reality?
Wei Dao: I didn't know him before that, so I didn't know either. But he did bring a part of himself into the role.
Zam: But these are real-life mentors, and in most of your films, there's a fatherly figure as the core element of the story.
Wei Dao: Yes, this is indeed a constant thing. In the new film, we deliberately avoid this, so my father died. But surprisingly, the film does become a story about my father again.
Zam: And these fatherly roles are played by some legendary actors.
David: Do you mean people like James Kane, Bill Murray and Gene Hackman?
ZAM: Yeah, we want you to work with Alain Delon.
Director Wei: Does he still make movies?
Tam: He's making TV series now.
Zam: Actors like Seymour Kassel on screen always make people feel nostalgic for the performing arts.
Director Wei: Except for the latest one, Seymour has appeared in every movie I have. There is no suitable character for him in this film, I haven't contacted him in a while, and I'm planning to call him later. In fact, he was the one who most resembled my father, and his character in Teenage was the most like my father— especially the way he treated his children.
TAM: Why did Max treat him so badly? I almost cried.
Wei Dao: I know, Max has a bad attitude towards him, which is terrible. He had a fantasy about his own life, in which there was no father. But he came to understand that he wanted glitzy stuff like his world-renowned neurosurgeon father. But that person might be more like Gene Hackman's character and probably have a bad attitude towards him. He didn't know how blessed he was.
Tan: That's what you thought as a child?
Wei Dao: Uh, but my dad is not a hairdresser. But I always thought my dad's job was great.
Zam: What's the job?
Wei Dao: Advertising. I was excited to think about it because there were artists working for him and people helping him write. It's always fun for me to go to his office and play. So the characters in my films do come from life, but most of them are imagined by me. As for those that are not imaginary, I will say less.
ZAM: Did your creativity inspire your dad?
Wei Dao: This is an interesting question. I do not know. I'm going to meet him on Thursday and I'll ask him. Then I'll email you.
Peach Film Translation Exchange Group
Translation: Smile A Nuan Lab
Proofreader: Fei Ah Nuan Smiled Lab