The Darjeeling Limited

[modage]

eh.   bring on Blood.

[JG]

i think i'm gonna hold off on really saying anything about the movie cos i feel the same way about it as i did when i first saw life aquatic (and my opinion on that movie has since changed).  but my first impression is that i didn't like the first third, really liked the second third, and was bored by the end. 

but i did sit directly in front of rob huebel. 

[meatwad]

but i did sit directly in front of rob huebel. 

you must have been at the union square loews, because i saw rob huebel as well.

[grand theft sparrow]

Was he dressed as Inconsiderate Cell Phone Man?

[MacGuffin]

Jason Schwartzman: Color him amazed
No one's more surprised at his career than Jason himself. And now he's reunited with the man who helped start it all, 'Rushmore's' Wes Anderson.
Source: Los Angeles Times

JASON SCHWARTZMAN limped around his friend's sun-dappled Nichols Canyon retreat looking highly apologetic. Frowning at his heels was his chubby French bulldog, Arrow. Schwartzman had broken his toe the day before, and as he made his way to a secluded outdoor table, he tried explaining. "It was like that scene in 'Karate Kid,' " he said, presumably casting himself in the Ralph Macchio role. Everyone was kicking soccer balls around like a bunch of Pelés, he said. So, playing barefoot seemed like a good idea.

The actor's solicitous earnestness was palpable. This hesitant, wide-eyed loopy charm, often employed as the comic relief in sensitive, maudlin films, lands him roles among Hollywood's best. But no one, it seems, is as surprised by his celebrity as he is. In some respects, he's at the white-hot center of young arty Hollywood; yet he sees himself more as a struggling musician and improbable interloper.

"The Darjeeling Limited," opening Friday, is his first movie with Wes Anderson since the writer-director helped make the teenage Schwartzman a star in 1998's "Rushmore." And it's Schwartzman's first screenwriting credit. It's a weird road movie with the typical Anderson flourishes -- the Kinks songs, the melancholic tone, all of it awash in color -- that follows three estranged brothers played by Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson on a spiritual quest by train through India. Schwartzman spent about 18 months writing the script with Anderson and Schwartzman's cousin Roman Coppola.

But before his storytelling began, Schwartzman opened with a disclaimer. "My feelings won't be hurt if you cut me off," he said. "I can be slightly long-winded."

And then Schwartzman unspooled a stream-of-conscious recollection of "Darjeeling" from the first moment Anderson approached him with the idea in Paris, while Roman Coppola and Schwartzman were filming "Marie Antoinette," to the exotic experience of shooting in India, much of it in the crowded compartments of a moving train with weekends spent in his pajamas, watching movies in bed with Anderson. At some point, Arrow began snoring loudly under the table. Schwartzman paused to acknowledge his throbbing toe.

"It's like a ticking clock," he said."I've never done an interview in physical pain before, but it's great." And he was off again, remembering his surprise at Anderson's invitation to co-write the film. "Darjeeling" originated with Anderson's idea -- three brothers on a train in India. They worked out the rest together in Parisian hotel rooms and coffeehouses where Anderson sometimes lives, on long distance conference calls and then, finally in India, until they finished the script.

"I really would describe it as less like painting something or drawing something, less like creating something on a blank space," Schwartzman said. "I think it was more like trying to uncover something like an archeological dig or something. It felt to me like these three brothers were real and the trip they were on was real and we were trying to define it or document it. I remember going to bed every night thinking, 'What are they doing now? Where are those guys?' So, I don't think it was as much, 'OK, what can we create for them now?' as waiting for them; it felt more like they were there and we were trying to uncover it, less than create it. Then we went to India for four or five weeks and really just wrote nonstop. I had to get a whole new long-distance plan."

He paused. "Was that too long-winded?"

It was quiet out on the deck, the silence broken only by the sound of wind in the leaves. The small hillside compound felt exclusive. A windblown Kirsten Dunst lingered out front, as the actor headed into his beautifully appointed quarters for a photo shoot. But apparently, this was a bit out of Schwartzman's milieu.

"I think if I lived here," he said, raising his eyes to the trees, "this would drive me crazy." He pointed down the hill, toward the endless, noisy flats of Hollywood and said, "I live down there."

Schwartzman, 27, grew up in L.A., the older of the two sons of Talia Shire and now deceased producer Jack Schwartzman. He also has two older half-brothers, one of whom, John Schwartzman, is a cinematographer. Francis Ford Coppola is his uncle and Roman, Sofia Coppola and Nicolas Cage are his cousins. His grandfather was award-winning composer Carmine Coppola.

But to hear him talk, Schwartzman grew up in the audience, not on movie sets. He recalls living in his mother's busy orbit, where music was always played at high volume -- Stephen Sondheim or Aaron Copland.

"My mom would be singing and kind of dancing around rooms," he said. "She always was watching movies. So I think that as a young kid maybe just to be close to my mom I would watch movies with her. But I wasn't too invested in it, because usually they were black and white, usually from the 1930s."

As an adolescent he acquired his own brand of showmanship, dressing in formal attire for family gatherings, performing lines from movies to entertain his family. He shared the same comic self-possession that made his Max Fischer in "Rushmore" so memorable.

The Schwartzman style

HE hasn't lost that puckish quality, which colored every role that came after, from the overwrought poet-activist in "I ♥ Huckabees" to the scruffy, self-involved font designer in "Shopgirl" to his socially stunted Louis XVI in "Marie Antoinette." His performances are often as much expression -- the furrowed brow and pursed mouth, the exaggerated gestures -- as timing and delivery, sort of a postmodern Buster Keaton.

"He has a way of moving, the way he uses his hands, his manner is very unique, very interesting and can be very funny," said Anderson. "He also has a really interesting way of making metaphors that are very unexpected and very pointed."

Every now and then, Schwartzman performs around town as a solo artist called Coconut Records. A video of a recent gig posted on his MySpace page shows him wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a T-shirt, shooting incongruent gestures into the crowd. His lyrics are inaudible over the cheers.

"There's a very endearing quality about him," said Brody. "He's very honest and open and I think that's very lovable."

The summer he was 16, Schwartzman played Otis Ormonde in his cousin Sofia's take on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," a small stage production Francis coordinated for the kids at the homestead in Northern California. Around that time, his mother rented three classic 1960s-'70s films for him: "Dog Day Afternoon," "Harold and Maude" and "The Graduate."

"That was the first time that the feeling I got from music, I got from a movie," he said. "I just knew that whatever I do with my life, I hope that I can make something that makes me feel -- makes someone else feel -- the way I feel when I'm really enjoying these things."

At a party later that year, Sofia's friend Davia Nelson told her she was helping cast the lead role in "Rushmore." Sofia waved over Schwartzman, who was wearing tails and carrying a cane. He listened to Nelson's pitch and tried to talk his way out of it.

"Growing up in L.A.," said Schwartzman, "there are kid actors and you see like little headshots -- you know what I mean -- you go into places and see like a little kid dressed like an astronaut or something, showing all the things he's capable of looking like. And I remember thinking, I'm just not that person."

'It didn't seem scary.'

BUT then he read Wilson and Anderson's "Rushmore" script -- the first he'd ever read -- and decided to give it his best shot. He wore khakis, a blazer with a homemade school emblem on the lapel and slicked back his hair and was devastated to find that every other candidate for the role had worn the same thing.

Then he met Anderson. "He was so young!" said Schwartzman. "He had Converse sandals on and I was wearing New Balance shoes. And we started talking about each other's footwear. I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy seems like he would like music.' It didn't seem scary."

Even after that phenomenal debut, Schwartzman toured as the drummer of Phantom Planet, a band whose song "California" became the theme to the hit Fox show "The O.C." But touring proved too much and Schwartzman decided to focus on acting and songwriting.

"He has a lot of heart," said Roman Coppola. "He doesn't make choices in any kind of cynical way. He's very curious and committed. When he gets involved in something, he gives it his all."

Schwartzman had spent the morning recording. Last spring, he released an album of pop songs from his own small label, Young Baby Records, his first since he left Phantom Planet about three years ago. He's considering writing another screenplay. Next spring, he costars with Ben Stiller as the title character in "The Marc Pease Experiment, a comedy about a once-great high school musical-theater star turned limo driver. "It's got some sad, nice moments," he said.

A week after Schwartzman's toe injury, Anderson called from Paris with a more succinct take on writing "Darjeeling."

"Our goal," he said, "was to make it too personal."

Anderson, who earned much acclaim for "Rushmore" and a screenwriting Oscar nomination for "The Royal Tenenbaums" -- both of which he co-wrote with Wilson -- seemed to stumble with the big budget of "The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." With "Darjeeling," the consensus among early viewers is that it's more fun than "Aquatic," but lacks the depth of "Tenenbaums" and "Rushmore." Then again, Anderson's films -- and Schwartzman for that matter -- aren't designed for mass appeal. To some, they're just too precious, even self-indulgent. For others, though, they capture something layered and emotional about 1970s childhoods.

Schwartzman's character in "Darjeeling," Jack, is a writer and hopeless romantic who is inexplicably barefoot at all times. He tries to heal his broken heart with lusty encounters with the train's lovely young hostess while obsessively checking his ex-girlfriend's voice mail because he still has the access code. He writes short stories that he says are fiction, but are actually taken verbatim from his life.

Brody's character, Peter is expecting a baby with a woman he expected to have divorced and wears his recently dead father's old prescription glasses everywhere. Wilson's character, Francis, seizes his brothers' passports to ensure they don't abandon the spiritual journey, a quest inspired after his near-death motorcycle "accident."

"Each guy is really just the three of us kind of spread out," said Schwartzman. "Shards of the three of us."

The "Darjeeling" shoot was an intimate one. Mornings, Wilson cooked Brody and Schwartzman oatmeal that he'd brought from L.A. Then they each donned their suits, fixed their own hair and makeup and by 7, they were jumping on a train which became their traveling set. For about 14 hours each weekday, everyone packed into those tiny compartments. "You have no place to hide," said Schwartzman. "And I think that really helped. We really were forced to be there for each other."

There's no mention of Wilson's state of mind during the shoot, or the fact that a year after the film wrapped, he apparently attempted suicide. When asked about Wilson's August hospitalization, Schwartzman demurred.

But Schwartzman quickly retrieves the thread of conversation, turning it back to the film, his admiration for his co-stars, his struggles with self-confidence. He said he gets so star-struck on film sets, it can be crippling. Despite Dustin Hoffman's casual, kind way, for example, Schwartzman said he was never totally comfortable with him on the set of "I ♥Huckabees." And on "Darjeeling," the idea of filming opposite Wilson and Oscar-winner Brody was so unnerving, Schwartzman said, he arrived to the set in India seven weeks early.

"Maybe this is always how it will be," he said. "I feel like I'm learning. I feel like I'm just starting out."

[©brad]

kind of got a little miss sunshine feeling from this - many funny, moving moments but was left wanting more. this may not be a step in a "new direction" for wes but it certainly wasn't a step backwards. i kind of like thinking of it as the baby brother to tenenbaums. 

one thing's for sure - it's hard not to continually be reminded of wilson's recent suicide attempt (the bandages certainly don't help). the film is all the more poignant because of it.

[noyes]

i was disappointed, slightly.
it's definitely a different directorial style for Wes.
the film's intro was great in style and got me excited but i expected myself to laugh more and thoroughly enjoy it, which I did, but in a 'kinda' way.
crazy how The Life Aquatic and the familiarity it embodied within Wes's individual style seems brighter than this film.
maybe i need to watch it again.
it was definitely a new style of filmmaking for him, albeit still maintaining Yeoman's camera pans, zooms, etc.
meeting Roman Coppola behind me on line made my day anyway.

[MacGuffin]

East meets Wes
Variety screens 'Darjeeling Limited'

Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited" is big in heart and oddly enough, spirituality. Shot almost entirely in India, the story follows three brothers trying to cope with the death of their father.

At the Variety Screening Series, the 38-year-old Texas native said it was a beautiful, arduous process.

"The movie really began with me wanting to make a picture in India. And that was, in part, inspired by movies. The films of Satyajit Ray, which I really loved all of my life and subsequently, the real reason why I wanted to go to India," he exclaimed. "The other big inspiration was the idea of working with Jason [Schwartzman] and Roman [Coppola] on a script and mixing all of our ideas together."

The three of them wrote furiously and decided it would be best to travel to India to scout locations and "act out" some of the scenes.

"So we were traveling by train in India one day and we end up in this village. When we arrived, they welcomed us with a standard ritual for visitors, where you sit down with the elders of the village and do this opium drinking ceremony with them," Anderson said with a smile. "So one of them is sitting there steeping it in tea and then he pours the opium in his palm and you have to slurp it out. You can do it once, twice, or three times, but I think we all did it three times. When we left we all felt like 'this is a great village. Let's shoot here!'"

When asked what he thought was the most memorable moment of the shoot, Brody recalled a beautiful Christmas dinner with the cast that took place in a remote field in India.

"It was beautiful. It was a very spiritual night. When we left though, I was with my girlfriend and we were in the back of a pick-up truck and I was staring dreamily into her eyes when out of nowhere, a low-hanging powerline went under my neck and I struggled to free myself. It was a very dramatic, romantic ending to the whole shoot."

[w/o horse]

Tomorrow I'm camping out in front of the Hammer and it's going to be a great day and then the film is going to be free.  Since there's appearences tonight at Aero I'm hoping for the same tomorrow but the website doesn't list it and probably not.

[tpfkabi]

i don't understand why there is not a theater schedule yet.

is it because TLA was a commercial flop - they're treating it delicately?

[Kal]

Yes, they are worried that there is no enough screens in the country for Game Plan, Mr. Woodcock and Rush Hour 3. They release every piece of shit movie in 3000+ screens and then they make a big deal out of these movies. Makes no sense, and I dont get tired of saying it.

[MacGuffin]

Wes Anderson Conducts The Darjeeling Limited
Source: ComingSoon

Filmmaker Wes Anderson is back with his fifth movie, The Darjeeling Limited, which takes three estranged brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman (who also co-wrote this), on a spiritual across India, getting into all sorts of misadventures. A few days before the film was to have its North American premiere as Opening Night of the New York Film Festival, Anderson made a rare appearance to talk to journalists about it.

ComingSoon.net: What sparked your interest in this idea?
Wes Anderson: The first thing was I wanted to make a movie in India. That was sparked through a series of events: some movies that I'd seen over the years, a book that I'd read, and a friend that I had who I grew up with who was from India. So all those things contributed and then just at a certain point I realized that's what I want to connect. And I thought I wanted to make a film about three brothers because I grew up one of three brothers. One of the key things was that I thought I would like to write with Jason and Roman and that was in a way the biggest idea for me because the story came from all three of us together.

CS: I thought it was interesting that the natural colors used in India seem to be very much like something you might see in a Wes Anderson film. Is that something that appealed to you? That sense of color and style?
Anderson: I love that about India. There's practically nothing in the movie that we invented. I didn't go there until three years ago and I went there because I wanted to make a movie there, and when I went, I wasn't shocked by what it was. It was this place that I've seen in movies, but vastly expanded. Obviously, I'm not an expert on India by any means. It's just a huge place with so many different subcultures. To me it was a place where there is no direction to look that isn't interesting in some way or another. It's a very moving place to visit.

CS: Do you believe in reincarnation and that you might have been an Indian filmmaker in a past life?
Anderson: One of my favorite filmmakers is Satyajit Ray and he's one of my inspirations for doing this movie. His whole approach to making movies interests me because he works like a novelist really. He made a movie practically every year. He has his own little troop and their very personal stories. I think Pedro Almodovar today, his way of working, he's a regional filmmaker, has his group of people, he has his resources and can keep making one movie after another. He does his own thing. I admire that.

CS: There are some similar people you work with from movie to movie like cinematographer Bob Yeomen who's shot most of your movies. Would you ever work with another DP or do you just like his style?
Anderson: He's a very good friend of mine and I just think he's great. I would be happy to work with someone else if Bob doesn't want to do the movie I'm doing, or if he's unavailable. I like working with my friends. We work well together.

CS: You've collaborated on your movie's scripts with Owen and Jason and Roman, all of whom you've been friends with for a while. Can you talk about how you decide to start writing with your friends?
Anderson: It's different every time. Owen and I were helping each other writing short stories when we first got to know each other, but we also went to movies all the time. That one it was just sort of automatic. It was almost like we didn't have any choice about it. Then, Noah (Baumbach) and I started working on a story for a movie without realizing we were doing that. It wasn't "The Life Aquatic" it was something else that we haven't even finished writing. Whenever we would go to dinner or something we would just start make up scenes for the thing and then we would just start writing them down because we've got a lot of stuff now. And with Jason and Roman it happened when we were all in France at the same time. I knew I wanted to work with Jason again, we hadn't done anything together since "Rushmore" and we'd been friends since then. And then Roman had come and helped while we were doing "The Life Aquatic" he did a lot of work on that movie and really helped me enormously and he's somebody I really enjoy being around. So suddenly we were all in this place together right when I wanted to start this project and I thought this is good luck so let's take advantage of it.

CS: What is it about brotherhood you think makes such fertile soil for story telling?
Anderson: For me it's because the first twenty years of my life most of the time I was with my brothers. I feel like we get along very well, but we fought a lot. We fought most of the time we were together. And yet they're the people I'm closest to in the world. And other than my own brothers I've spent a lot of time with Owen, Luke, Andrew Wilson. Those brothers are like my brothers to me because I lived with them for years and years in different places we've all been together. And also Jason and Roman I feel like my relationship to them is also like brothers. Just because it's a big part of my life I guess.

CS: This film is set in India, in previous films, like "The Tenenbaums," it's kind of a mythical New York, what made you want to do it this way?
Anderson: Well we don't ever say India. I don't know if we do actually, we may. It's hard to argue that this is a mythical India. I thought during the movie about this issue, because I kind of like not specifying a place. But in the case of this, Darjeeling is a real part of India. It's nowhere near where any of this stuff is actually taking place. I guess because India is so much the subject matter of the movie I just wouldn't want to give it a fake name.

CS: What are some things that you learned making "The Life Aquatic" and also some things that you learned making "The Darjeeling" that can apply to your next project?
Anderson: "The Life Aquatic" was a very hard movie to make. We shot for a hundred days and people were always warning me you don't want to do a movie on the water. And I was like, "Well, just wait." But it just turns out to be very difficult. Making a movie on a train is nothing like making a movie on a boat. The weather can change so suddenly and small things can become gigantic problems. I've never been anywhere close to working on a movie where two thirds of the day through I was thinking, "I'm not going to get anything done today. We're going to leave today without anything and we're going to have spent three hundred thousand dollars." And that's the kind of thing that was happening on that movie; it was very difficult. It was also a lot of fun in a lot of ways. It was the movie we wanted to make, but it was expensive and difficult and slow, and I don't like working that way. I felt like nobody made any choices along the way to make it any more commercial. It's an odd movie, it's a weird movie. It's the movie we wanted to make, but maybe it shouldn't have cost sixty million dollars. The way it was released in Europe or in Japan for instance; they released it like my other movies. "Well, this is a special little odd movie we've got here." They don't really know how much it costs. They don't really think about it. But in America, the way it was presented, it had to be presented as a big movie that came out on 2,000 screens or something, because they had all this money in it. Their only hope to get the money back was to go for it which it doesn't do all that. So this movie we made for much, much less money. We made it much more quickly. And the whole process really felt right, whereas, in "The Life Aquatic," the process was a mixture of things. And I will say this, looking back on "The Life Aquatic," how we did it, I don't know how we could do that movie cheaper. Well, the way to do it cheaper is you cut out some of the boats, islands, helicopters, explosions, you know? And then you can get it to a more modest scale.

CS: I remember you had a five-story boat in "The Life Aquatic." In this, you have a scene of the train, where the camera pans from one car to the next. Did you actually build that in a similar way?
Anderson: The difference is that was five stories tall. But that was the most expensive shot in the movie. Because we had to build this set. It is like following a train of thought. The scene you're talking about in "Darjeeling" definitely relates to that other scene. And I sort of worry, well do I want to do something where somebody will recognize that's something I do, or I'm repeating something I've done in some way. But I kind of think that, well I don't want to not do that. There are a lot of peoples other movies people that can see and if I want to follow this train of thought if you want to call it that I'm just going to do that. So we built it and we had to bring everyone back. Bill Murray and Natalie Portman, and everybody who left had to come back for that. And then we went out for the afternoon to the desert on our train and shot it. It wasn't actually that hard to do. A lot of what needed to be done just had to be built in such a way by our production designer who was good at that stuff.

CS: You mentioned earlier watching a lot of movies while you were younger and getting inspired by that. What first made you fall in love with wanting to make movies?
Anderson: Once I would list Hitchcock movies that were out on Beta, when they first had Beta, which were "Rear Window" and "Rope" and maybe "North by Northwest." Just a few color ones. And those really interested me because I was aware that the videos said Alfred Hitchcock. You see him every now and then, but suddenly it's not about the star, it's about this Alfred Hitchcock. So I was interested in that, this director. And then I think probably Spielberg, "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars", all that stuff was interesting to me. And then later when I actually started doing stuff I started watching some French movies and those were movies where all the things I was looking at were built around these directors, and I got drawn to those.

CS: Looking onto your next film, is "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" going to be a bigger budget movie?
Anderson: It's bigger than "Darjeeling" just because it's a movie where you have to build everything and you're building it in miniature. It's stop motion.

CS: Is Henry Selick going to do that?
Anderson: Not Henry. Henry has his own movie that he's directing, but there's a guy he introduced me to named Mark Gustafson who is one of his colleagues at this place Vinton where he works. So he's going to be the guy who's in charge of the animation. It's very low budget for an animated movie, it's like thirty five million, because you need to get a bank loan. (This is probably more information than I'm supposed to be giving you.)

CS: Have you started principal photography?
Anderson: No we haven't started. We're still designing the characters. We just got the money two months ago, something like that. We were at one studio that went out of business, and we've been through a lot of different phases of getting this sorted out, but finally we're rolling on it.

CS: We've talked to a lot of filmmakers who try to do everything on camera because when they have to go to computer animators, it's out of their control. Are you worried about not having as much control because you'll be depending on them?
Anderson: The way we shot in India, I feel like what I enjoyed the most about it were the things that you couldn't control because I'm pretty good at controlling it all. India is a place you can't control. There's no way, it's going to invade everything. Things are going to happen. My theory with the movie was, okay, all right. We left last night and the hut was brown and now today we're here and we can all see that it's painted blue. Now that happened over the night. That was somebody's decision and now we're going to film that. Literally that's an exact thing that happened. It's just a place where you say, "Well, what happened guys?" People just made decisions. It was very exciting for that to happen. It was full of surprises working there. The animated stuff, we control everything. That's the answer to that. The actors will bring a lot to it and the animators are like actors also, so they bring a lot to it as well.

The Darjeeling Limited is now playing in New York, and it will be released in more cities on Friday, October 5.

[MacGuffin]

Wes Anderson And Jason Schwartzman On Journeying From 'Rushmore' To 'Darjeeling Limited'
'This time around the intent was to make something very personal,' Schwartzman says of the recently released 'Darjeeling.'
Source: MTV

*READ AT OWN RISK*

Say what you will about Wes Anderson, the director of "Bottle Rocket" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," the man and his work stand out. There's nothing much like a Wes Anderson experience (and they are experiences, from the impeccable production design to the spot-on soundtrack choices), except another of his films.

Much to the delight of his avid fans, he's back with his fifth film, "The Darjeeling Limited" — which recently opened in, um, limited release. As much a spiritual journey through India as it is a comedy about three estranged brothers, the film stars Adrien Brody and Anderson stalwart Owen Wilson.

And re-teaming with Anderson for the first time since the much-beloved "Rushmore" is Max Fischer himself, Jason Schwartzman. MTV spoke with Anderson and Schwartzman (who also co-wrote the film) about their history together, why it's not so bad to repeat yourself and whether Max will ever appear onscreen again.

MTV: First things first: Who is to blame for it being nine years since you've done a film together?

Wes Anderson: Is it nine years? We did have a part in "The Royal Tenenbaums" that was written for Jason, but it got cut out. He played a boy who lived across the street from them.

MTV: That was cut out in the screenwriting stage?

Anderson: Yeah. But there's a bird in the movie that's named after his character. He was going to play Mordechai. He was the son of a diplomat and had escaped from his school.

MTV: What did you guys make of each other when you first met at the audition for "Rushmore"?

Jason Schwartzman: I was very nervous going in because I had never really auditioned for a movie before. I was immediately put at ease, though. He was young. I felt immediately like, "Oh, this could be my friend."

Anderson: I remember the very second of meeting him. We had spent a year trying to find someone to play this part. When he read, it was a slam-dunk. We got the guy. Then he read opposite some other people that were auditioning to play the sons of Bill Murray, and he played Bill Murray's part and he was really great. I mean Bill was great, but Jason was pretty good too in that part.

MTV: Does it feel like a completely different kind of collaboration this time?

Schwartzman: This time around it feels like the intent was to make something very personal. And it feels like you can only go to that level by deep-sea diving with someone you know and trust and can believe in. There's a real foundation there. You have much more rope to bungee with.

Anderson: [Laughs.] I knew there would be a second [metaphor]. I already got deep-sea diving but then I got the bungee. I knew I'd get at least two. Jason has a way with metaphors.

MTV: You started writing this together in Paris, and then you continued writing in India. How much of the film was dictated by the trip?

Schwartzman: When we went to India, Wes kept saying, "Say yes to everything," just like in the script. So we were half living the script and half writing it. We would engage in things way more than we normally would.

Anderson: Most of what's in front of the camera is what we discovered there.

MTV: This film returns to some of the themes that appear in most of your work, namely absent fathers.

Anderson: I've been thinking about this recently. There are a lot of things that, from one movie to the next, are related. I kind of like following a train of thought and developing an idea. I like the idea of, after I make some more movies, they can all sit on a shelf together and they sort of fit together.

MTV: Do you worry about repeating yourself? Do you ever compose a shot or write a line of dialogue and think, "I've done this before"?

Anderson: I do worry about repeating myself, because I know that I am doing something the way I would do it. But then I think, should I do it the way I wouldn't do it? It's a dilemma. And I really think the best answer for me is, I should try to make it the best it can be and do it the way I like it the most. I'd rather do that than force myself to be something normal. Maybe my way is worse, but at least it's personal to me. It's based on all my own experiences and my own approach that's formed by God knows what.

MTV: "Darjeeling" marks four Wes Anderson films in a row with Bill Murray. What power do you have over him?

Anderson: We keep going back to him for more stuff. We always want him.

MTV: Is it implied that his character in this is the father?

Anderson: People have said that.

MTV: Was that your intention?

Anderson: We didn't have any intention.

MTV: Was it discussed with Bill?

Anderson: No. Jason, [co-writer] Roman [Coppola, who is also Schwartzman's cousin] and I discussed whether people might think that. But that was about as far as we ever went with it. My one conversation with Bill was, "We have this thing you could do if you want to come to India. It's kind of a cameo. It's actually more of a symbol." I think he was interested in being a symbol.

MTV: The short prequel, "Hotel Chevalier" [which has been screened with "Darjeeling" at festivals and is available for free on iTunes], was shot over a year before the film, even though it also stars Jason's character. How exactly did it come about?

Schwartzman: I remember Wes calling me on the phone and reading it to me. He said he had written this short story that he wanted to do with me and Natalie Portman. And he wanted to do it immediately. I don't know how soon after was the idea that this guy in this short film is Jack Whitman. It was totally helpful for me to go back a year later and work on "The Darjeeling Limited." You can imagine things as an actor but it's really great to remember it as an actor. I actually wish that from here on out I could shoot tons of things a year before I do the actual movie.

MTV: Wes, did you consider shorts for Owen's and Adrien's characters too?

Anderson: We thought about it, but the short we made with Jason and Natalie wasn't written to fill a formal spot. We just had it. Then I thought, "I just like that we have the one that we made." The other ones would have been because we felt like we owed shorts to those guys.

MTV: Have you ever thought about writing another story with the Max Fischer character for another film or book?

Anderson: [He pauses.] Hmm. In a way a lot of these characters are connected.

MTV: Do you imagine them all inhabiting the same universe?

Anderson: I do sometimes feel that characters from "Rushmore" could go into "The Life Aquatic" in a very natural way, and there aren't many other movies they could go into and feel like they weren't out of left field.

Schwartzman: It would be great to see them meet.

[grand theft sparrow]

Come on, Mac!  Spoiler warning, man!

MTV: Do you imagine them all inhabiting the same universe?

Anderson: I do sometimes feel that characters from "Rushmore" could go into "The Life Aquatic" in a very natural way, and there aren't many other movies they could go into and feel like they weren't out of left field.

Schwartzman: It would be great to see them meet.

Please, Wes... no "Max and Herman Blume Strike Back."

[Pozer]

bite yourt toungue, Sparrow!  dont you ever 'come on, mac!' again!