The Darjeeling Limited

[MacGuffin]

[Pubrick]

desperately seeking caption

[MacGuffin]

Los Angeles residents:

http://www.americancinematheque.com/archive1999/2007/Aero/Wes_Anderson_Aero_2007.htm#HE%20DARJEELING%20LIMITED

[for petes sake]

Is anyone else going to this?  I'm going to try to unless it is already sold out...

[MacGuffin]

Movie clip:

http://video.aol.com/video/movies-the-darjeeling-limited-clip-no-1/1973756

[MacGuffin]

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/09/21/travel/tmagazine/23profile.1.ready.html

[modage]

The Life Obsessive With Wes Anderson
On a spur-of-the-moment train ride to Rome with the filmmaker whose reality bears a distinct resemblance to his movies.
Source: NYMag

Wes Anderson did not know where he was going. The problem was not that he was lost, but that his mind kept wandering, darting off in too many directions at once—a common and not entirely unwelcome problem for the 38-year-old director. Part of him wanted to stick around Venice for another day or two, now that the Venice Film Festival was over and the promotional business surrounding The Darjeeling Limited, his new film, was behind him. He liked Venice, liked the whole idea of wandering the catacomblike streets of a city that should have been swallowed up by the Adriatic centuries ago. But there was talk of moving the party elsewhere—to Paris, maybe, where he has kept an apartment since 2005; or perhaps to Rome, where some friends were heading. Eventually Anderson would have to figure out a way back to Manhattan, his other semi-permanent residence, in time for Darjeeling to open the New York Film Festival, but logistical details like that were, for the time being, best left out of the picture.

"I'm thinking Rome," he eventually said, as if Rome were an appetizer he frequently orders, and twelve hours later he finds himself here: on a train bound for the Eternal City, joined by Roman Coppola and his girlfriend, Jennifer Furches. Coppola and Furches are the director's old friends who, like most of his old friends, double as frequent collaborators. This is the dynamic at the heart of what those close to him affectionately refer to as "Wes's world," which resembles a vaudevillian family by way of Evelyn Waugh. Coppola, for example, is the cousin of Jason Schwartzman, the star of Anderson's Rushmore, and together the three of them wrote the script for Darjeeling. (Furches was script supervisor.)

That we happen to be traveling by train to discuss a movie that takes place on a train was not part of the original plan, though I'm starting to think of it as yet another example of Anderson's knack for retouching reality with an idiosyncratic gloss. (It may be connected to his fear of flying as well; until recently, Anderson traveled to Europe by boat, and he far prefers trains and automobiles to anything airborne.) Also somewhat peculiar is the fact that buried in one of Anderson's monogrammed suitcases is 10,000 euros in cash—about $14,000—an amount that may or may not be legal to carry, and that was given to the director by Bill Murray, who asked that the money be "delivered to Luigi."

"It's not as weird as it sounds. Luigi was Bill's landlord when we shot The Life Aquatic," explains Anderson, talking about his last movie, parts of which were filmed in Rome.

"But," I ask, "wasn't that back in 2004?"

"Yeah, Bill can be a little weird with time. But there's no hard feelings or anything. I think Luigi and Bill have a pretty good rapport, though Luigi will probably be happy to get his money."

Anderson often finds himself in situations like this: real-life circumstances that have the same absurd, art-directed quality as his films. You may be tempted to shake your head and simply say that Anderson has been incredibly lucky, which is true, but that doesn't give enough credit to his talents—not just as a director, but more generally as someone who has constructed a life almost preposterously conducive to the pursuit of fantastical whims. When he was editing Darjeeling, for instance, he convinced Fox Searchlight to rent him a suite at the Inn at Irving Place, an unmarked hotel on Gramercy Park designed to re-create an era of faded glamour that probably never actually existed. Given that Anderson owns a spacious loft in the East Village that doubles as a work space, and that the studio could have rented any number of generic editing rooms for significantly less money, the logic behind this could be considered questionable. "I remember walking in there and thinking, Man, only Wes would figure out a way to pull this off," recalls the photographer Gregory Crewdson, who befriended Anderson at a dinner party four years ago. "There was the little guy behind the desk, the narrow wooden staircase leading up to the room—it was just perfect. In his films he creates a very particular and unmistakable world, and I guess you could say the same is true in his life."

You need only watch a few frames of one of his movies to spot it as an Anderson production. Though he is originally from Texas, there is something distinctively European in his obsession with aesthetics: a belief that the way something looks is what dictates how it will make you feel. His impeccably composed wide-angle shots have the feeling of a childhood fantasy: wistful, more than a bit ridiculous, with a darkness creeping in at the edges. Pepper in some resurrected classic-rock songs; deadpan dialogue; themes of failure, nostalgia, and fractured families; and the result, at its best, is a world unto itself.

Though his films have collectively grossed only $100 million—a large-sounding sum until you realize it's exactly what they cost to make—he is supported and adored by the studio system. "For studio executives, supporting Wes is like collecting art," says one friend. "It makes them feel they have great taste." The appeal is the films, of course, but also the persona of the eccentric auteur. He is an abnormally tall man, or at least a man so pale and so skinny that he appears to be abnormally tall. And he dresses primarily in suits custom-tailored to be a half-size too small, giving him the look of one of the off-kilter characters he puts on screen, further evidence that Anderson's life is his work, and vice versa.

None of which is lost on Anderson himself. Last year, he made an excellent commercial for American Express in which he simultaneously parodied and breathed new life into the Anderson Myth. In the ad he is seen clothed in a vintage safari jacket, a viewfinder dangling from his neck, filming a (fictional) movie starring Schwartzman. Anderson walks through the set making sure every detail, no matter how absurd, is just so. "Can you do a .357 with a bayonet?" he asks a prop man, and two seconds later—presto!—a sketch of the nonsensical weapon is produced. Shot outside a French château, the ad borrows the theme from Truffaut's Day for Night—just the kind of sly reference loved by Anderson. Shooting a commercial is, for many directors, simply a means to earn quick money. But for Anderson, who more recently shot an equally distinctive series of ads for AT&T, the experience had the unique benefit of allowing him to further the storybook life he was delicately lampooning. At the time he made it he was living in the Paris apartment recently vacated by Kirsten Dunst, who had been renting it while filming Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. It was a decadent and exorbitantly expensive place that Anderson converted to an editing suite, with AmEx paying the rent.

His talent, in other words, has become his trust fund. But one gets the impression that even Anderson, these days, can find living in Wes's world a bit claustrophobic. I first met him on a bright, windy afternoon in Venice, two days after Darjeeling had been screened for the public for the first time. With Schwartzman and Coppola, we were waiting for a water taxi to shuttle us off to lunch at an outdoor café. At one point Anderson complimented Schwartzman's new sunglasses, and then suddenly turned to me, concerned with how I would interpret the seemingly banal exchange. "Oh God, I bet that's the first line of your piece, isn't it?" Anderson said. "Wes Anderson, notorious for his attention to detail, carefully observes the black retro sunglasses that the young Schwartzman has pulled from his pocket ..." Later, when a breeze picked up during our meal, he turned up the collar on his seersucker suit and again quoted from the article he was writing in his head: "Anderson then pensively turns up the collar of his blazer, pulling it tight around his skinny frame to cover the monogrammed dress shirt underneath ..." Pause. Laughter. "I'm sorry, man," he then said. "I'm in a weird mood these days."

Such a mood is understandable, especially given the circumstances surrounding the Venice Film Festival. One of the most prominent members of the Anderson contingent has been notably absent these past few days. It was just over a week earlier that Owen Wilson—a friend of Anderson's since his days at the University of Texas, his first writing partner and most regular collaborator—tried to commit suicide. Anderson approaches the subject carefully. "He's never had a time like this in his life before," says the director. "His life has changed so radically in the last few years, and in ways that most people never have to deal with. He's one of the funniest, smartest guys I've ever known, one of my best friends in the world. I know I've been depressed myself before—most of us probably know something about what it's like ..." He doesn't complete the thought. "I went to see him last week in L.A., and, you know, he's doing very well. He's going to be fine." Another pause. "I call him every day to keep him updated on what's happening with the movie. I wish he was with us. He's a major part of our project, and he has the right to be there with us."

It was the 1998 release of Rushmore that radically altered Anderson's life. He was hailed as a visionary, fetishized by his fans, encumbered by expectations. It was only his second movie—his first, Bottle Rocket, would become a cult favorite later in his career—but it offered everything an indie audience desired: an endearingly arrogant and peculiar teenage outsider (Schwartzman); a love triangle that was both twisted and innocent; and, of course, Bill Murray, in a surprising role as a wealthy, unhinged developer who, because he is Bill Murray, became an immediate icon of middle-aged angst. It also introduced to the world the Anderson aesthetic. Simply put, Rushmore did not look or feel like any other movie.

This is an accomplishment that comes with a price, guaranteeing for the director that everything that followed would look and feel like something: a Wes Anderson movie. Three years later he released The Royal Tenenbaums, a more ambitious ensemble piece about a New York family of gifted children who, as adults, had fallen on hard times. Thanks in part to a cast that included stars like Gene Hackman and Gwyneth Paltrow, Tenenbaums introduced a larger audience to Anderson's style, which this time out seemed, depending on your tastes, to be either more defined or more distracting. As a meditation on family and adulthood, the film succeeds, movingly, and it certainly made clear how much more exciting American cinema is with someone like Anderson around. But there were moments—remember the Dalmatian mice?—when Tenenbaums risked being a bit too curious with its curiosities. ("Yes, yes, you're charming, you're brilliant," chided A. O. Scott in his review. "Now say good night and go to bed.") Then came The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, a Jacques Cousteau–inspired fantasia that left even some of Anderson's most loyal fans impatient. There was a sense that the director had become pickled in a world of his own creation.

Novelty has a shelf life. Aquatic was seen as a beautiful failure, a study in style stripped of substance. In talking to Anderson you can tell that Aquatic was a difficult movie for him—beginning with its making. Like just about everything in his life, Anderson prefers a movie set to be a communal and intimate environment, which was difficult to maintain while dealing with the cold world of sound stages, special-effects crews, and the heightened expectations that come with an ever-expanding budget. (Aquatic cost close to $60 million, more than twice what Tenenbaums did.) "There were so many damn trailers," he says of the filming process. "Every actor had like three trailers. And it's not just the expense, but when you have all your actors watching ESPN on satellite, they're not thinking about the work, so you have to pull them into it. You tell the actors you're ready, you wait, you check their makeup, you monkey around, you wait some more—all of this over and over, and it doesn't make the movie any better." Discussing it seems to exhaust him, as if he were reliving the experience. "We just put everything into it, and it kind of, you know, got a bit of a rough ride," he concludes. "I think it's generally thought of as the least loved of all my movies."

It's hard to gauge how personally Anderson has taken the criticism. At one point I bring up a recent essay by Michael Hirschorn in the Atlantic Monthly arguing that, as a culture, we are "drowning in quirk," an aesthetic he defines as the "embrace of the odd against the blandly mainstream." Citing Anderson's movies as a prime example, Hirschorn claims that the problem with quirk is that it "can quickly go from an effective narrative tool to an end in itself." Anderson, who in person is typically quite calm, becomes suddenly animated by the topic. "You know, I've heard that argument a million times, and it's completely uninteresting to me," he says. "It's just deadeningly unoriginal. If you have ideas that you think can contribute to a movie, that you think might help you honestly enjoy it more ..." He trails off, thinking. "Now I'm sounding bitter, aren't I? Okay, my response to that is that sometimes it hurts my feelings." Another pause. "When they say a movie I make is smarter-than-thou, that the movie is 'too smart for its own good,' as if we're making movies to try to show everybody how great and cool we are ... well, that's just not the case. We're trying our hardest to entertain people, to make something people will like, something people will connect with. I don't think there's a great effort to try to make some statement about ourselves, you know?"

Some artists thrive on defending their work, on the idea of being in combat with the culture; Anderson is not among them. By the time he was finished promoting Aquatic overseas, in the summer of 2005, he says he found himself feeling depressed. This was not a monumental or debilitating sadness, more like the low-simmering melancholy that defines his characters. He had some ideas for a new project, but they remained stalled in the Anderson gestational phase: sketches of disconnected scenes and dialogue scribbled in the small notepad he keeps in the breast pocket of his blazer.

Anderson decided that in order to be productive he had to leave New York, where he has lived and worked for nearly a decade—that it would be "interesting" to live outside of America for a bit. The director called up Schwartzman, who was then living in Paris, shooting Marie Antoinette. "Could I maybe crash in your guest room for a bit?" Anderson asked. "Whenever you want," Schwartzman assured him, and shortly thereafter the two were roommates.

It turned out to be the beginning of a European adventure that, somewhere along the way, ended up producing The Darjeeling Limited. The movie features Schwartzman, Wilson, and Adrien Brody as three estranged brothers who travel through India by train in order to find themselves and bond with each other and "say yes to everything," as Wilson's character puts it. This "spiritual journey" is played for laughs, though like all of Anderson's work, the comedy is born out of sadness—a fractured family attempting to repair itself. (See David Edelstein's review on page 80.)

Anderson first got the itch to shoot in India after Martin Scorsese—an avowed fan who in Esquire once anointed Anderson "the next Scorsese"—introduced him to The River, a lush and evocative 1951 film made by Jean Renoir. The idea for the brothers traveling came from Husbands, a 1970 John Cassavetes movie about three suburban husbands escaping to London. "But my main idea was not the train, not India, not the brothers," says Anderson. "My main idea was, I want to write with Roman and Jason." One night when Anderson was holed up in Schwartzman's Paris apartment, he read a few pages of his notebook to Schwartzman—a scene that ended up being the film's opening. It wasn't long before Schwartzman and Coppola had signed on, and the three of them set aside a month to travel through India by train. It was there that most of the script was written.

"I guess we went to India as research," says Anderson, "but the more precise-slash-romanticized description would be that we were trying to do the movie, trying to act it out. We were trying to be the movie before it existed."

On the trip to Rome, Anderson and company move about the train as if it belongs to them. They abandon the suitcase full of Bill Murray's money and head to the dining car for pasta, prosciutto and melon, and numerous half-bottles of wine. After lunch they sneak into a business-class cabin (from which, later, they will be ejected when an Italian politician arrives with armed guards). Coppola and Furches decide to kill some time by completing the Times crossword puzzle; they are soon stumped, and turn to Anderson, an amateur crossword junkie, for assistance. "Mind if I hold the paper?" Anderson asks, setting the crossword in his lap, pulling an erasable pen from his pocket, and casually taking control of the situation. He gives the sense that everyone is participating, working together, and yet—as he fills in one answer after another—it becomes clear that the end result would be the same if Anderson were sitting there alone.

"I think we're just being entertained," jokes Coppola.

"Oh, no—I couldn't do this without you guys," says Anderson, a statement that comes across as both true and false.

It is perhaps not unlike his collaborative process. His friends seem to act as conductors for his imagination: triggering it, encouraging it, very rarely questioning it. There were times on the set of Darjeeling, for instance, when Anderson would doubt his instincts: "Okay, am I doing too much of a 'thing I do' here?" he would ask the crew. Coppola was quick to quell the director's insecurities. "Roman would always express his appreciation for being inventive and making what we thought was a strong choice." As Coppola puts it, "When you do something that really is your instinct to do, then what more can you ask of yourself?"

Still, Anderson was tense at the premiere in Venice. It is the same at all premieres—Anderson worrying about how his movies, crafted in something of a parallel universe, will play in the world at large. "Mostly it's just a process of steeling oneself for what's going to happen. I'm sitting there thinking, Is the movie gonna be received with a lull of silence? Or with a boo?" says Anderson. "That's a common thing in Europe, you know? They boo here."

For the record, they did not boo. The early reviews were mainly positive, much more so than with Aquatic, though there was the requisite grumbling that the movie was "good but more of the same," as Anderson puts it, shaking his head, after reading what Variety had to say. But the director does not seem particularly hurt or defensive this time around. "It's probably not a good idea to put too much of your self-esteem on something like this, because, really, you can make a bad movie and it can be well received, and you can make a good movie and it can be badly received," he says. "I think people who've done it a lot have learned, like the Coen brothers, for instance. My impression of them is that they really aren't that vulnerable to what comes back at them. And they could get anything from any of their movies. Like The Big Lebowski, the first time I saw it I thought it didn't quite work, but the second time I saw it I thought, Oh, I didn't get it. I just didn't understand it. And I really loved it then." He adds, "You know, everyone's limited. You can only do so much. I think in the end all I can do is say, Let me live the moment. I can still do what I want to do. I'm lucky enough to be able to do these movies so far."

Two weeks later, over the phone from his Paris apartment, Anderson briefs me about how he fared during the rest of his travels. After we parted ways in Rome, he tells me, he delivered the money to Luigi, clearing Bill Murray's outstanding debt. For the next few days he dined at his favorite restaurants until he decided it was time to head back to Paris. A sleeper train was momentarily considered for the journey, until a better idea struck. "We ended up slowly wandering our way back to France in a Roman taxi," Anderson says, as if nothing could have made more perfect sense.

[Pwaybloe]

New Wes Anderson Film Features Deadpan Delivery, Meticulous Art Direction, Characters With Father Issues
Source: The Onion

LOS ANGELES—Fans who attended a sneak preview Monday of critically acclaimed director Wes Anderson's newest project, The Darjeeling Limited, were surprised to learn that the film features a deadpan comedic tone, highly stylized production design, and a plot centering around unresolved family issues.

"What will he think of next?" audience member Michael Cauley said. "And who could have foreseen the elaborately crafted '60s-era aesthetic, melancholy subtext, and quirky nomenclature—to say nothing of the unexpected curveball of casting Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray?"

In a recent review, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott also expressed surprise at the film's cutting-edge soundtrack, which features a Rolling Stones song and three different tracks by the Kinks.

[ElPandaRoyal]

New Wes Anderson Film Features Deadpan Delivery, Meticulous Art Direction, Characters With Father Issues
Source: The Onion

LOS ANGELES—Fans who attended a sneak preview Monday of critically acclaimed director Wes Anderson's newest project, The Darjeeling Limited, were surprised to learn that the film features a deadpan comedic tone, highly stylized production design, and a plot centering around unresolved family issues.

"What will he think of next?" audience member Michael Cauley said. "And who could have foreseen the elaborately crafted '60s-era aesthetic, melancholy subtext, and quirky nomenclature—to say nothing of the unexpected curveball of casting Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray?"

In a recent review, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott also expressed surprise at the film's cutting-edge soundtrack, which features a Rolling Stones song and three different tracks by the Kinks.

[modage]

website is up:

http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thedarjeelinglimited/

and as usual, fox searchlight free screenings...

Monday, Oct 01   7:00 PM   AMC River East , Chicago   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 02   7:30 PM   AMC Georgetown, Washington   RSVP
Wednesday, Oct 03   8:00 PM   AMC LOEWS Boston Common, Boston   RSVP
Thursday, Oct 04   7:30 PM   The Landmark, Los Angeles   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 09   7:30 PM   Landmark Mayan, Denver   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 09   7:30 PM   Santana Row, San Jose    RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 09   7:30 PM   Angelika Dallas, Dallas   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 09   7:30 PM   AMC Barton Creek, Austin   RSVP
Wednesday, Oct 10   7:00 PM   Harkins Fashion Square, Scottsdale   RSVP
Wednesday, Oct 10   7:00 PM   Landmark's Hillcrest, San Diego   RSVP
Wednesday, Oct 10   7:30 PM   Ritz East, Philadelphia   RSVP
Thursday, Oct 11   7:00 PM   AMC FORUM, Montreal   RSVP
Thursday, Oct 11   7:00 PM   Cinema City, Hartford   RSVP
Thursday, Oct 11   7:30 PM   Landmark Lagoon Theatre, Minneapolis    RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 16   7:30 PM   Landmark Oriental, Milwaukee   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 16   7:30 PM   Edwards Grand Palace, Houston   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 16   7:30 PM   Regal Natomas, Sacramento   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 16   7:30 PM   Landmark Maple Art, Birmingham   RSVP
Wednesday, Oct 17   7:30 PM   Cedar Lee Theatre, Cleveland Heights   RSVP
Thursday, Oct 18   7:30 PM   Drexel Gateway Theatre, Columbus   RSVP
Monday, Oct 22   7:30 PM   Rialto, Raleigh   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 23   7:30 PM   AMC Newport on the Levee, Newport   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 23   7:30 PM   Broadway Centre, Salt Lake City   RSVP
Tuesday, Oct 23   7:30 PM   Santikos Silverado, San Antonio   RSVP

[Pozer]

goin for la.

[MacGuffin]

American Visionaries
Wonder Boys
Two college buddies amble out of Texas, shake up American movies, and become the country's best-loved cut-up and its reigning indie genius. Now, in the midst of personal crisis, Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson emerge with their most ambitious collaboration yet. By John Seabrook; Men's Vogue

I got to know Owen Wilson a couple of years ago, when he was renting the second floor of a palazzo on the Piazza Farnese, in Rome. He stayed for six months while shooting the 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, directed by his friend Wes Anderson. I was living in Rome with my family then, and, as often happens with expatriates, one meets people one wouldn't ordinarily know at home. Through an emissary, Wilson invited me to one of his parties. We talked about books, sports, music, and magazines—everything, it seemed, except movies.

After that, I'd meet O. (as one comes to know Owen) in a pub called the Abbey Theatre—an Irish-themed joint near the Piazza Navona that shows NFL football games. Being from Dallas, Wilson is a Cowboys fan. "Hey, I will see you at the Ab-bay," he'd drawl, and he would see me, too—before I spotted him, usually. He had learned from being famous to get his looks in early, before other people noticed him. In the face of rapidly growing celebrity—this was around the time Starsky & Hutch came out, but before Wedding Crashers—he seemed to be aggressively committed to remaining himself. The reason that he was so determined to be himself, I imagined, was that he always seems to be playing himself on-screen. If he stopped being Owen Wilson in real life, he wouldn't know how to be Owen Wilson in movies.

Like the characters he plays, Wilson projects an air of toasted insouciance, but it takes about two minutes to see he's actually anything but a slacker. He's well informed, sharp-eyed, and careful. He orders his hamburgers well done, and I never saw him drink anything except Coke or water, and then usually tap water. "I'll have taaaiiip watah," he'd say, in that voice, after the waitress offered him, with a flourish, acqua con oppure senza gazzz. He didn't learn Italian; he just spoke to the natives in pidgin Spanish—hola, amigo!—and the Italians seemed amused, because that's exactly what an Owen Wilson character would do. We didn't discuss politics too much—you never know with guys from Texas—but I got the feeling we were on the same side about most things. After spending an evening with O., I'd find myself drawing out my vowels—exploring, like a tongue probing a sore tooth, the previously untested ironic possibilities in diphthongs.

"Are you trying to sound Southern?" my wife would ask.

But it wasn't a Southern accent exactly, or even a regional one. Later, when I asked Wilson why he talked that way, he told me he had needed a lot of speech therapy as a child, because no one could understand him. That intonation and inflection were what he had come up with.

While we were in Rome, Wilson was negotiating to play Walter Mitty in a film based on Thurber's short story, which seemed like the perfect part for him, because to me Wilson was Walter Mitty. His good fortune was so farcically unlikely, and its benefits so vast—almost anything he wanted, he could have, usually for free—that the only way to understand it was as a daydream. Except O. wasn't going to have to wake up. Maybe that's why he didn't get the part in the end.

Around this time, I also met Wilson's two brothers, Luke and Andrew, and got to know members of the Aquatic crew. The film was by far Anderson's biggest production, with a budget of $50 million, financed by Disney, and I met people involved with the production everywhere. But I never met Anderson himself. He didn't seem like the type to hang out at the Abbey. When I saw him on the set, he was working, intensely focused on a million details, not unlike the persona he presents in his witty 2006 American Express commercial, which can be seen on YouTube.

The production ended in the spring of 2004. Wilson was heading to the D.C. area, to begin shooting Wedding Crashers. It was a huge hit, earning more than $200 million and moving Wilson up a couple of notches on the celebarometer. He now commanded $10 million a picture and you could follow his exploits as "the Butterscotch Stallion"—consort to a series of celebrated women, from Sheryl Crow to, more recently, Kate Hudson—as you waited in the checkout line at the grocery store. The Life Aquatic, on the other hand, while it found its usual cadre of devoted Anderson fans, was not the hit Disney imagined it would be; Anderson's quirky vision hadn't played to a mass audience. Some blog-aesthetes noted that Wilson had collaborated with Anderson in writing the director's first three films (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums), but Wilson did not cowrite Aquatic. (Noah Baumbach did.) Ergo, Wilson somehow had the common touch that Anderson, for all his brilliance, lacked.

In writing his latest film, The Darjeeling Limited, which is scheduled to be released in October, Anderson worked with Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, who happen to be cousins. Wilson plays the central character, Francis Whitman, the oldest of three brothers. Almost all of the action concerns the Whitmans' accidental spiritual pilgrimage through India after the death of their father. The film has many of the stylistic elements that link all of Anderson's movies—a sweet, sixties soundtrack; that adventures-of-Tintin feeling; unexpected slow-motion sequences that imbue commonplace situations with pomp; painterly color (this time there's lots of saffron, ruby red, and lime-pickle green); and dollhouse-like tableaux. Visually, it's Anderson's most gorgeous film. Thematically, it feels like something of a departure. Anderson, who, like Wilson, is 38, is pushing beyond the constraints of the gifted adolescent's view of life, the auteurial stance in Rushmore (1998) and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

Francis Whitman is somewhat reminiscent of Dignan, Wilson's first cinematic role, in his and Anderson's delightful first film, Bottle Rocket (1996). Like Dignan, Francis has a crazy scheme to make everything right, and he's always optimistic, even when he has no reason to be. Adrien Brody, a new addition to Anderson's familiar repertoire of actors, plays the middle brother, Peter, and Schwartzman, who starred in Rushmore—arguably Anderson and Wilson's most satisfying creation—is the youngest, Jack. All of them are in some way damaged: Wilson's character has been in a motorcycle accident (his head is half-covered in bandages throughout the film); Brody's is freaking out at the prospect of having his first child; and Schwartzman's is trying to escape from a disastrous love affair.

Wilson and Anderson were back together in New York in June. Anderson was editing the film at the Inn at Irving Place, which is located in a double-wide townhouse near Gramercy Park, and Wilson was staying nearby at the Gramercy Park Hotel. The Inn has a Victorian feeling, with a harpsichord in the lobby. The filmmakers had taken over a suite on the ground floor, covered up the windows, and set up Avid editing machines in the sitting room. The hard drive, which contained the actual movie, was in the shower, with a fan and portable Pinguino air conditioning unit to keep it cool.

Anderson is tall and lank-haired, and looked somewhat dandified in a white suit and baby-blue handmade shirt with his monogram slightly offset on the pocket. He has courtly manners. He used to wear glasses, and he still looks like someone who has just taken them off. There's an expression of perpetual bemusement in the corner of Anderson's mouth, one that you can often see on Luke Wilson's face in The Royal Tenenbaums.

We sat in the Inn's tearoom. Classical music played softly. Anderson explained how he came to write The Darjeeling Limited. He had gone to Paris on a press tour for The Life Aquatic, visited Sofia Coppola when she was shooting Marie Antoinette, ended up staying in an apartment with Schwartzman (who was in the Coppola film), and stuck around for 13 months. He began spending time with Sofia's brother Roman, who is also a filmmaker. Starting with an idea of Anderson's, the three of them wrote the script in Paris—and via conference calls—over the course of a year. Wes played the role of editor in the process. "He's the director," Schwartzman said, "and he had a very specific idea of what he wanted to direct, and he's got such impeccable taste you just trust him. It was like making an eight-million-piece puzzle. We'd come up with a piece, and Wes would say, 'I think that goes here.' "

Anderson shot most of the film last winter in Jodhpur, where the cast and crew lived together in a big hotel and everyone would walk around in their pajamas. The budget for this movie was $20 million, much smaller than The Life Aquatic. It feels like a return to the jewel-box perfection of his early work. "We had to reshoot a bit in New York last week," Anderson said, sipping a glass of sparkling water. "And now it's done. Just finally done."

Anderson went on to say he was heading off to London, where he would soon begin shooting an animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the Roald Dahl story, from a script he wrote with Baumbach. He paused and held up a long, tapered finger. "The music. Listen. Though it sounds like a Boston Pops production, it is actually an Ennio Morricone tune from Once Upon a Time in the West. No. Once Upon a Time in America." For a moment, I felt as I were participating in the director's DVD commentary on our interview.

I asked Anderson whether it surprised him that Wilson could make such an easy transition from the highly wrought films they've made together for going on 15 years to the lowdown comedies—like Zoolander—that have made his old friend a star. "It's pretty different," Anderson said. "The kind of stuff that Owen does in these comedies, a lot of that is improv. You give them the idea, and it's best take. In our projects you have a bunch of threads that all have to be woven together. Everything has to be set up. You can't just ad lib it."

I wondered if they would ever write together again.

"It will happen," Anderson said. "I don't know what the factors will be, but I believe it will happen." He didn't look like he wholly believed it would. As though to reassure himself, he added, "We actually talked about doing something not long ago."

Anderson first met Wilson at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. Both of them had published stories in the college literary magazine and were aware of each other, but they eyed each other for some time before they spoke. It wasn't until they were together in a playwriting class, sophomore year, that they became friends.

Owen was from Highland Park, a wealthy section of Dallas. He had gone to St. Mark's, an Episcopalian prep school, but had been expelled sophomore year for cheating on a geometry test, and transferred to a military school in Roswell, New Mexico. Wes was from Houston, and his father, like Owen's, was in advertising; previously Mr. Wilson (as Wes still refers to Owen's dad) had been the president of the PBS and NPR stations in Dallas. (Owen's mother is the photographer Laura Wilson, formerly an assistant to Richard Avedon.) But their main bond was that both came from families of three brothers, and both are middle brothers. I have never hung around with Wes and his brothers (one of whom, Eric, is a writer, illustrator, and production designer), but from the short time I've spent with the three Wilsons, I can report that it feels like a parallel universe.

There were nine students in the writing class, and the big assignment was to write a play. "Wes was the one who actually finished his," Wilson told me. It was called A Night in Tunisia. The teacher, Webster Smalley, singled Wes's play out, and it was given a production in the college auditorium. Wes wanted Owen to play the main character, but Owen "never wanted to be an actor," Anderson said. "I had to talk him into it. Luke would do it, but Owen was always trying to find other guys to do his parts."

After the first performance, during a dialogue with the audience, the play was warmly complimented. But one person was critical, and that person happened to be James Michener, the author, who then was teaching at the University of Texas. "He singled Owen out," Anderson recalled, smiling his toothy smile. "He said, 'That guy is very inappropriate and doesn't seem to know how to act.' "

Wes already knew he wanted to be a director, and Owen was planning to be a writer, so they wrote a screenplay and, after they graduated, made it into a short film, Bottle Rocket. Wes wanted it to be like Scorsese's Mean Streets. "It was going to be very heavy, hard-core, violent, and dark," Wilson said. "Wes had this sequence in his head—the guys in a car, with these guns sticking out of the window, while the soundtrack played 'Heroin,' by the Velvet Underground."

But as the two of them worked on the project, it turned into something else. Three friends who know each other from growing up (Owen, his brother Luke, and Robert Musgrave) are reunited and, at the urging of Owen's Dignan, sign on to a loopy plan to rob a house and lead a life of crime. At this point, the scenario could turn dark, but everything with Dignan's plan goes comically wrong in a way that makes everyone happy. Instead of re-creating Mean Streets (which Tarantino did with Reservoir Dogs), they made a cracked fairy tale, one that served as a template for all of Anderson's future projects.

When they had finished the short film in 1992, they got it into Sundance and, together with a script for a full-length movie, the project attracted the interest of James L. Brooks, who ended up financing the feature film for five million. At this point, Wilson still thought of himself more as a writer than an actor. He had gone along with Anderson in playing Dignan in the short film, he said, but "when we got the word that James Brooks would come to Dallas to meet with us and wanted to give us the money to make Bottle Rocket, I always expected he would want to recast me and Luke." Brooks left both Wilsons in the film. "Owen is a very distinctive actor," Brooks told me. "He is incapable of having a dishonest moment on the screen. And he's intrinsically funny."

After the full-length Bottle Rocket came out in 1996, Wes and Owen moved to Los Angeles, where they shared a house; at one point all three Wilsons were living there. "Not since a Busby Berkeley musical has there been so much talent in one house," Brooks said. That was where they wrote their next script, Rushmore, about a bright kid, Max Fischer, who gets expelled from a good school (which actually is St. John's—Anderson's alma mater—in the film). Rushmore is Anderson and Wilson's most perfect collaboration: It's the story of Wilson's getting tossed out of St. Mark's, but told with a character like Anderson at the center of it. Something about that balance works; Max is a type, but you still care for him as an individual.

By the time they were writing The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson had moved to New York. "I always wanted to live in New York, and I had a girlfriend here," he said. Wilson stayed in Los Angeles. Hollywood was discovering his potential as a comedic leading man, as in Ben Stiller's hilarious remake of Meet the Parents, but also as an action hero in Shanghai Noon and Behind Enemy Lines. Anderson ended up writing most of Tenenbaums by himself, he told me, which he didn't particularly enjoy. When it came time to write The Life Aquatic, he didn't ask Wilson to help him.

I was waiting for Wilson in a chair in the lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel when I heard that voice, slightly hoarse and low: "Hey, buddy." He was wearing jeans, a blue T-shirt, and black sneakers. He did not seem to have lost his determination to remain Owen Wilson. The night after we met, as I later read in the New York Post, he rode a mountain bike up to Scores West Side, a strip club in Chelsea, checked it at the club, spent a couple of hours getting lap dances (I wondered if he likes strip clubs because they're the only place where people aren't staring at him), and left his bike there while he went to some other nightspots.

We found what seemed like a quiet place to talk. It was a small room with a big-screen TV on one wall, muted, tuned to CNN. Wilson sat with his back to the screen, on which, by a weird coincidence, almost as soon as we began talking about being a celebrity, the whole Paris Hilton re-arrest started going down in real time. In front of that scene was Owen Wilson's head, saying he thought his fame was still manageable, that there was still another level of celebrity that he hadn't reached, when you have to take precautions.

"You mean that level," I said, and we watched pictures of Paris's tearful face in the patrol car. Wilson said he felt bad for her.

I asked about his writing collaboration with Anderson. "People say that I am the one with the heart or something, and Wes is the intellectual. But I think that's all pretty much bullshit. Everything we did, we did together. Of course, Wes was the only one who could type, so he always got to put a kind of final edit on it. But, like, a writer said that the glib stuff was more me and the soulful stuff was Wes, and that wasn't accurate. Wes is capable of coming up with silly stuff just as I was. The main thing was finding the same thing funny and getting it on the page." Anderson may be the auteur, but Wilson has an ear for dialogue, especially for hackneyed clichés—like "You're cooking with gas!"—that he uses to show his characters' endearingly misguided fixations. And that privileged air of Highland Park prep that so many characters in Anderson's movies embody—Wilson can do that in his sleep.

Wilson's BlackBerry chirped. It was Wes.

"Hey, Wes... O.K., can you text it to me, or is it easier to tell me?... Yeah, yeah, O.K.... Second Street, just east of Bowery... I'll go."

After hanging up, Wilson asked if I wanted to go downtown to see some drawings by Hugo Guinness, a British artist whose work can be seen on the walls of the Tenenbaums' house on Archer Avenue in the movie.

While we were waiting by the elevator, I asked Wilson if he was a Republican.

"Yes," he said, and for one moment I believed him, until, with perfect timing, he said, "Nooo. But I had you, didn't I?" Then he had an idea. "You know what would be funny? If a guy like you or me went around in New York and told people you were a Republican. I mean, made it clear in some way that it wasn't a put-on."

" 'GOP like me.' "

"Exactly. It would be funny, wouldn't it? People would freak out. It would almost be like being a racist."

Outside the hotel, Wilson was not even out from under the awning when a woman stopped him. "Oh, I love you," she said. "I just love you." She gave him a hug and said, "You're great. Thank you for your work."

"Thank you for your fucking work?" I exclaimed as we headed downtown. "You call that work?"

At Joey Ramone Place, we turned east on Second and went into John Derian, a home-furnishings store. There were Hugo Guinness paintings and drawings all around the place. "Wes says the small ones are the best," Wilson said, and indeed they were. Unfortunately, all had red circles beside them, meaning "sold".

"Excuse me," Wilson asked a salesperson. "Could you tell me who bought these?"

"Yes, those were all bought by the same person," the woman said.

"And who was that?"

"Um, Wes Anderson."

Months later, when I read the unfathomable news that Wilson had been hospitalized after a drug-related suicide attempt, I was sorry I'd said that about his work. He had made it seem easy to be O. But now I wondered if I knew him at all. Maybe I was just another person projecting buddydom onto him. I had never noticed any signs of hard-drug abuse—and certainly never pictured him strung out among the film industry's notorious users. I hated to admit it: We weren't the friends I thought we were.

Coming of age in Texas and then being plunged straight into a life where everyone on the street is your friend must be deeply disorienting. I had been thinking about how neatly O.'s vocation had sprung from his youth with Wes, but now I saw that the meaning of friendship is easily blurred at this exaggerated level—and that if that anchor gets loose, maybe everything else goes too.

I also felt for Anderson, who must have had to endure a lot. It's easy to speculate that the cinematic crash-and-burns that O.'s characters are put through in Anderson's films can be seen as a reflection of O.'s offscreen life. Though there are plenty of revelations coming out about his problems, I keep looking for my own clues.

A few instances have been badgering me. Just before our first interview, O. called to say that "food poisoning" had caused him to postpone this magazine's photo shoot, so he had to cancel on me as well. And now, after reading that he had gone to church in Santa Monica the night before he lost control, I wish I'd paid more attention to a stray comment he made in the East Village. Passing a looming church, that evening last June, he asked if it was Catholic. Joking, I said, "You want to go to confession?" He said, not joking, "Well, maybe a little prayer."

[MacGuffin]

A Conversation With Director Wes Anderson
Source: The Huffington Post
         
What was it like to shoot your movie in India?

India gets under your skin. It is filled with colors like no other place. People look at you as if you are the craziest person they have ever seen. I like the idea of being a foreigner, and having so much positive feedback. India is a very vibrant place. You are never alone in India. India influenced the form as well as the content of our movie. Our policy was not to control what we find there, but to look and see what we could discover. In the finished movie, we would freeze-frame a shot and we'd be surprised to see who was in it: a man walking by with a barrel in the corner, for example. We did not control it. India became the subject matter. None of us is an expert of India

Can you speak about your use of setting?

I like trains, and I liked the idea of having a set moving across the country. We made the sets spontaneously while in India. One of our rules was to make it as personal as we could. It was all discovery, and getting locals to paint the sets. For example, one day, we got the idea to have locals paint elephants on the train. My set producer Mark Friedberg created on the spot. I did not want to go to India and have this be a continual struggle. We had to face surprises.

Can you give an example of a surprise?

In one village we shot in, we had to take the dead child into a home to be cremated, but no villager would allow us to do this in their houses. That scene was important for the movie, so we had to find a solution. The villagers built us a home overnight, and they decorated it and painted it as if one of their own houses. This solution was unexpected. Why did I need the scene with the dead child? I needed it to happen to turn the movie l80 degrees.

What about the music?

The music comes from Satyajit Ray's movies. Indeed, Ray's movies are what made me want to go to India in the first place--as did Jean Renoir's movie "The River". Ray wrote the music for his own films. We also used music from Merchant Ivory.

What inspired you to make a film about three brothers?

I always wanted to do a film about three brothers because I am one of three brothers. We grew up fighting and yet they are the closest people in the world to me. Of course, all the characters in the movie are fictional. The next movie I am making is even more fictional: I am making a movie about a family of foxes!

How did you write the script?

I went to Rajasthan with two friends, Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola, and we wrote the script over two months; we wrote it on the train and put everything into the script. I printed out pages everyday. But then I short-circuited the printer! I liked doing this movie in circumstances I could not control. .

Why do you begin your movie with a short about Paris?

I made the short separately, and only later did I see how the two went together. We started incorporating things from the short into the movie. Not everything was well-conceived. The way the movie itself starts with Bill Murray was meant to be like that from the beginning. I found Bill in the West Village and said, hey would you like to play not a cameo role, but a symbol. He said: "Playing a symbol, I like that.' The ideal thing is to see the short one day, and the movie the next.

What does the journey through India mean for the brothers at the end?

The brothers start off not open to each other. They are controlled. Things happen unexpectedly to them, and this throws everything over. They learn to approach each other in a different way. They learn to approach death in a different way too.

Your movie spoofs conventional Western experiments with spirituality in India, but nevertheless has a spiritual component, perhaps in its own creativity?

Yes, we performed every kind of ritual in India, from snakes to yoga. But our biggest ritual was the making of the film itself. Making a movie together is the most moving experience. I met and worked with people I want to keep for my next films, such as our key grip, Sanjay Sami.
__

The morning before I spoke to Wes in Venice, I went swimming in the Lido because I had a migraine----because slept in a new bed last night, a wonderful American woman having graciously opened her palazzo in Venice to me, just in the spirit of sharing (she herself paying 3000 euros for the week), after I found myself on a canal curb at midnight waiting for a man named Dante who had screamed, "Bring me the money! Bring me the money!", who never showed up because he "was eating dinner", and then two Venetian boys lent me a cell phone and a cigarette, and I called this American woman....

She spoke over breakfast about her philosophy of "visualizing and making the universe happen," and then we took the vaporetto together in the morning to Lido, where I met Todd Haynes, after twenty years (old college mates), and felt happy to see him with the same young look and view: "Bob Dylan is a chance to live the myths of America past and future," he said.

Then went swimming in Lido.

The masseuse in the Excelsior hotel said she would see me immediately for a massage, as I had an interview with Wes Anderson and my head was pounding, but midway through I felt bad about paying 50 euros so extravagantly and stopped the massage, and she said, "But I can't leave you with a migraine! My daughter is a poet, and she writes such sensitive poems..." So she acupuncture-pressed my hands and then blowdried my sea-wet pants so they would not be too embarrassing for the interview.

The hairdresser in the hotel salon caught me as I was leaving with sea-salted wet hair and said "You cannot leave like that!" He sat me down and coiffed my hair, for free, and told me that art today was terrible, that the best art is the art of the heart, so simple, that all humans were the same, with a simplicity in their heart, and this was what the old films had, and he himself was one who believed in art that made us remember the magic of the moment!
Then sat down with Adrien Brody and he said that to be an actor is to create magic. How so? I asked. How do you make that happen? And he said: "to be open. You are open and then all clicks."

He smiled and winked.

Wes Anderson agreed that the spirituality of his film voyage to India lay in precisely the making of the film: to be with a group of people and make a film: that, he said, eyes glowing in happy near tears, is spirituality!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Darjeeling' director Wes Anderson powers this train
By Susan Wloszczyna, USA TODAY

Whenever another whimsically hip Wes Anderson film alights in theaters, the director is accustomed to having his aesthetic choices dissected as cultural signposts.

Fashion-forward types zero in on the offbeat wardrobe choices, such as the much-coveted red Adidas warm-up suit donned by Ben Stiller in 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums.

Soundtrack enthusiasts delight in his selections, exemplified by the arcane British Invasion tunes that lent a sonic rush to 1998's Rushmore.

Few would consider the eccentric tastemaker as gossip fodder. But that was before the police-reported suicide attempt by Owen Wilson, longtime pal and a lead in his new release, The Darjeeling Limited, which opens the New York Film Festival on Friday before an exclusive run in the city begins Saturday.

The magical misery tour through India taken by three brothers mourning the loss of their father is no longer just another stylishly amusing entry in Anderson's ongoing study of familial dysfunction. Instead, the director's fifth feature has been upstaged by the disturbing events that unfolded Aug. 26 at Wilson's home in Santa Monica, Calif.

As a result, the melancholic odyssey aboard a locomotive won't be best remembered for its omnipresent 11 pieces of custom Louis Vuitton luggage, so soft and creamy you can practically smell the animal-motif leather. Nor will it be famous for the hauntingly mood-appropriate trio of songs borrowed from Lola vs. Powerman & the Money-Go-Round, a largely forgotten 1970 Kinks album.

As for Anderson's amuse bouche of a 13-minute companion piece, Hotel Chevalier, on Apple's iTunes website starting Wednesday, it is destined to be a mere footnote.

Most likely, all eyes will be on Wilson, 38, as he plays ringleader and eldest brother Francis to Adrien Brody's Peter and Jason Schwartzman's Jack with his head wrapped in bandages, the aftermath of a motorcycle accident that he later admits was intentional.

The sight of the so-called Butterscotch Stallion's sad-clown countenance, studded with scars and scabs as he gives enthusiastic pep talks to promote their uneasy bonding, just adds to the uncomfortable poignancy of the situation.

Wilson will speak for himself

Meanwhile, Anderson, also 38, is in an awkward place as both an artist and a friend. He cares about the welfare of his fellow Texan, former college roommate and frequent collaborator, and he doesn't want to encroach on his privacy.

"I just don't want to be his spokesman," Anderson says on the phone while traveling across Italy a week and a half ago. "I feel it's not my place to go into details. It's all for Owen to do. When he shares his thoughts with the world, he will do a good job."

As if to appease with some positive news, he adds: "I will say that I was with him out in L.A. I spoke to him while at the Venice Film Festival, and I talk to him often. He sounds very good."

About the speculations in the tabloid press (the latest: photos that supposedly reveal Wilson's slashed left wrist), most of them neither confirmed nor denied, Anderson says: "They make up stuff, and a lot of it is wrong. Anyone interested will find there is nothing too mysterious. Just simple stuff we all understand. It's up to him to talk about it." He answers as politely as possible, but it is apparent he would much rather discuss his new movie, of which he has said, "It means a great deal to me, and it also means a great deal to Owen."

It might involve dodging inquiries, but Anderson needs to promote his downsized Darjeeling, a reinvigorating return to a less cumbersome, more boutique approach to filmmaking that arrives at a crucial point in his career.

Streamlined adventure

The critics who adored Rushmore and admired The Royal Tenenbaums were less enthused about overly ambitious The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. The 2004 belly-flop starring Bill Murray as a crusty oceanographer cost more than $50 million and took in only $24 million. Changes had to be made.

Now, Anderson has a niche-savvy studio behind him, Fox Searchlight, instead of a blockbuster behemoth such as Disney. He has recruited a fresh crop of writing partners, Rushmore discovery Schwartzman and his cousin, Roman Coppola, son of Francis. To savor India firsthand, the threesome took a trip similar to the film's brotherhood, ending up in the Himalayas with a printer in tow — just like the one carried by Wilson's Francis in Darjeeling.

"Everything was alien to us and exotic," Anderson says. "We felt very welcome. Going someplace foreign was a positive experience. We literally finished the script on the highest mountain we went to."

He also was able to switch tracks and take a more minimalist route behind the camera.

"I wanted to move much more quickly," he says of the production that cost $20 million and took 38 days to shoot, compared with 100 days for The Life Aquatic. "I was reducing the budget as we went along. We didn't have costume people. Actors came to the set in their costumes with wireless mikes built in. They took care of their own hair and makeup. It was a complicated movie, a lot of locations and dealing with 12-car trains. But the process made it a pleasure."

As for Wilson's state of mind while on location last December, "We had a great time," Anderson says. "Here's Owen, this big star, living in a room next to Jason. No trailer, no special treatment. I said, 'This is how we are going to do this movie,' and he said, 'Sounds great to me.' He was very good then."

A band of brothers

Brody, 34, speaking before news broke about Wilson's troubles, says a rewarding time was had by all. "They were wonderful," he says. "It didn't feel like work in a lot of ways."

An only child, the Oscar winner for 2002's The Pianist liked hanging out with his movie siblings. "Having brothers was something I always wanted. We lived together in one house, and it felt good. It was kind of like being at a summer camp for wayward youth."

Schwartzman, 27, openly idolized Wilson. "He was very intimidated by Owen over the years," Anderson says. "They became much closer during the movie. They knew each other from Rushmore (which Wilson co-wrote) and were both close to me. But I never got them together until India."

And Wilson, with his surfer insouciance intact, did not disappoint, Schwartzman says.

"He's funny, nice, kind, great. There was a little-brother aspect to it. I would talk to Owen and if I made him laugh a couple times, that would make me feel good. Then I would see Adrien having the best time with Owen and making him laugh. And I felt jealous, like a possessive lover."

But that was then. This is now. And one brother is MIA.

Most Anderson fans have wondered about the suicidal tendencies that run through his oeuvre, some involving Wilson's characters.

Does he now regret the suicide theme in Darjeeling? "My only answer is that it comes more from me than Owen," the director explains. "He is just playing a role. There's not much else there. People can't avoid making connections, but they are making them after the fact."

Many couldn't help but play amateur shrink, either, as they recalled the hard-to-forget scene in The Royal Tenenbaums, co-written by Wilson, where his brother Luke's character slits his wrists. Says Anderson: "I wrote that character myself. Owen was not in on that one."

Darjeeling's three siblings were partly inspired by his two brothers as well as Wilson's: "Owen, Luke and Andrew are a part of this."

He almost sighs with relief when the subject switches to an Internet rumor — not about Wilson but a theory that Francis, Peter and Jack are named after Coppola, Bogdanovich and Nicholson, all amigos in their low-budget Roger Corman days. After all, Francis likes to direct the action, Peter wears huge glasses, and Jack is a bit of a womanizer.

Are they being referenced? "Not really. Like, for example, Jason's father is Jack. There is not much in it except for the fact we named them after people who were close to home for all of us."

Given the circumstances surrounding Darjeeling, it is probably for the best that it is basically an adult child coming-of-age story that carries more gravity than, say, one of Wilson's Frat Pack buddy romps.

When a life-altering tragedy occurs after the brothers are thrown off the train following such incidents as an escaped snake and a raucous brawl, Anderson reverentially follows it with 10 minutes of dialogue-free imagery. "Everything changes from that point on. It doesn't really lighten up."

And unlike Anderson's usual father-fixated individuals, the daddy figure here (a cameo by Murray) is hardly in the picture as the struggling lads — Francis is still healing, Peter has a baby on the way, Jack just suffered a bad breakup — are left to their own devices.

"I kept saying I have too many fathers in these movies," the director says. "In the end, the three of us just wrote what we felt was right. The luggage represents the father. It's practically in every frame. We barely hear his name and don't know what happened to him. But they cling to these suitcases."

In the end, much of that emotional baggage is left behind.

Given Anderson's cult status, Wilson's situation probably won't affect Darjeeling's box office. "It's a small film at heart," says Paul Dergarabedian of Media by Numbers. "There might be a slightly higher awareness. But it was never meant to be a blockbuster."

One question remains: Will Anderson and his buddy work together again? And especially, will they write together again since many feel they bring out the best in each other's words?

"Owen is a huge part of the filmmaking team," Anderson assures. "He always will be. We have lots of other things in mind to do together. We have an inventory."

In other words, the train doesn't stop here.

[MacGuffin]

EXCL: Jason Schwartzman on The Darjeeling Limited
Source: ComingSoon

A lot can change in two years. When ComingSoon.net last spoke to actor Jason Schwartzman at the Toronto Film Festival for Steve Martin's Shopgirl, he had been playing around with writing a few songs but nothing serious. Two years later and those songs have been turned into album, he's appeared as Louis XVI in his cousin Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette and he's been reunited with Wes Anderson, the director that gave him his start in the popular cult comedy Rushmore. For The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson brought Schwartzman on as a co-writer along with their mutual friend Roman Coppola, and the young actor also plays Jack, the youngest of three estranged brothers (played by Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody) who reunite for a spiritual journey by train across India. Schwartzman is also the star of Anderson's short film Hotel Chevalier, which acts as a prequel of sorts to "Darjeeling" and which can be downloaded for free on iTunes.

As always, Schwartzman is a pleasure to interview--friendly, funny and often self-effacing--so obviously some things don't change in two years.

ComingSoon.net: How did Wes approach you originally to co-write this movie? You obviously hadn't written a movie script before.
Jason Schwartzman: The approach was weird. The acting approach was clear. He arrived in Paris, because his "Life Aquatic" press tour ended there. It seemed like he wanted to stay. He only was scheduled to be there for a couple of days, but it was the end of this thing, so I said to him, "Look, if you want to stay and you don't want to pay for a hotel, just come stay at my apartment."

CS: You had a place there while you were working on "Marie Antoinette."
Schwartzman: I had a little place there. I mean, I don't have an apartment in Paris, heh, but they were putting me up in this little place and there was a guest room. I said, "You could stay with me if you want" and he said, "Great" and he moved in. There was a little bar down the street from my house called "Le Palette" and like every night after work, we'd sometimes go down there, have a little dinner or have a coffee or something, and he said to me, "I want to do this movie about three brothers on a train in India and I want you to be the youngest brother." That seemed okay and I was totally flattered, because I missed working with him and I was excited about that.

CS: This is before you made "Hotel Chevalier."
Schwartzman: This is before "Hotel Chevalier" yeah, well before "Hotel Chevalier." The writing thing was a little more unclear to me because part of our relationship over these last ten years has always been talking about ideas and recounting stories and trying to make each other laugh. That's just part of our dynamic, so there was nothing out of the ordinary of us walking through Paris with a notebook talking about things and writing them down, but at a certain point, he said, "Why don't we bring Roman on this." And I said, "In on what?" and he said, "The movie that we're writing." It was a little bit blurry that whole thing.

CS: I thought that was similar to how Noah Baumbach ended up on "The Life Aquatic" too.
Schwartzman: Yeah, I didn't realize it and then I realized it. That one I tried to play cool. "Oh, yeah, yeah, we're writing a movie together" but I was freaking out, to be invited on that level with Wes. And not only did he pitch the idea of the movie and us writing together, but also, the way he wanted to make the movie was already in place. Like I want to go to India. I want no hair and make-up, no wardrobe department, no trailers. I want to do a very small crew, very quickly, on a train, so the whole thing was set. So that's how it all happened.

CS: Noah also mentioned that you eat very well when you make a movie with Wes, because he said they would meet at an Italian restaurant for their writing sessions and it was very casual and laid back.
Schwartzman: Noah said that?

CS: Was this like that, writing on the fly when you were together, or was it really structured writing sessions?
Schwartzman: No, it felt pretty strict. I mean, like we weren't always in the same city, so no matter where anyone was, we'd always have a conference call for these four hours every day, and then when we were in the same city, which was pretty much a lot of the time--three weeks in Paris, two weeks back in L.A.--the writing sessions were casually rigorous, if that makes sense, in that they're not intense. Most of the writing was talking. You really are just asking questions, you're telling stories about your life, you're looking for something, but that for like thirteen hours.

CS: Did he just record everything and then just go through it later and assemble the best parts?
Schwartzman: No, no, no, we would write it there, too, but it is a lot of discussion. We were always together. It always felt when we were writing that the characters were real and this whole movie was a real thing. It didn't seem like we were telling them what to do as writers. It seemed like they already had done it, and we were just trying to figure out why.

CS: When you went on the original train trip through India with Wes and Roman, did you automatically take on the Jack role?
Schwartzman: No, I mean in the dynamic, I am the youngest of the three writers and of the three brothers, so that exists already. I didn't become Jack, but we would act out the scenes and in them, I'd be Jack.

CS: You weren't the one who hit on the porters.
Schwartzman: No, I wasn't hitting on any stewardesses. None of us were for the record. Too busy.

CS: How did the script change after you three made the trip considering that you'd already been doing a lot of writing beforehand?
Schwartzman: Well, I think India really gave it something else. We had a lot of stuff written, but it really kind of came together in India. It really showed us itself.

CS: Had you been there before?
Schwartzman: No, the writing trip was our first trip there. Wes had been there for one week earlier in the year, but it was fun.

CS: And Wes was scouting locations and figuring out how to shoot on that writing trip?
Schwartzman: It ended up becoming like a location scout. We'd have backpacks and our scripts in the back and then we'd see a temple and go, "Oh, let's stop at this temple and do a scene at this temple." We'd sit at the temple and Wes would go, "Hey, this is actually a good location. We can put the cameras in here and light it. Let's shoot it here." And then we'd just shoot it there. It ended up being really great.

CS: How cramped was it shooting on that train?
Schwartzman: It's more cramped than you can ever imagine.. but I loved it. It kept the actors together. You need to keep the actors together in this kind of movie.

CS: I know you didn't have trailers but did you have your own cars?
Schwartzman: No, not our own cars. We had cubicles. Some time to have a nap.

CS: How do you feel you've changed since making "Rushmore"? Obviously, that was your first movie and you've made many movies with other directors before working with Wes again.
Schwartzman: I suppose I've changed a lot but maybe I haven't changed. I have more experience on a film set, and I do have more years of just hanging around in life. At the same time, I'm still quite nervous and quite obsessive on a film set, and so I don't feel leisurely and confident like "I'm an old pro." I just feel like I've just got so much to learn. I still have the attitude and energy of "Oh, don't f*ck up" but I'm a little bit more comfortable. In "Rushmore" I wasn't even thinking about acting. I was just thinking about not getting creamed on the whole deal.

CS: The last few movies you've made have been with friends, but how did this experience compare to "Marie Antoinette" being that it's a little more male-oriented than a French period piece?
Schwartzman: Yeah, it was a pretty big change of pace, but it was also so many years after the fact, like we really shot it two or three years after "Marie Antoinette" so it felt like I had gotten that out of my system.

CS: When you did the "Shopgirl" interviews in Toronto, had you already shot "Marie Antoinette"? For some reason, I thought you hadn't.
Schwartzman: I already shot "Marie Antoinette," I'd already done it. I was thinking like that but I know that I did it because I had to lose all the weight from the movie before that premiere.

CS: I didn't realize you had gained weight for the role.
Schwartzman: Yeah, I gained 50 pounds.

CS: Really? I guess the period costumes help hide that.
Schwartzman: Yeah, they do.

CS: You've stacked up quite a line-up of leading ladies starting with Claire Danes, then Kirsten Dunst, and now Wes has set you up with Natalie Portman for this one. Do you have some kind of checklist you're knocking off?
Schwartzman: No, no, they're all great actresses and they're all beautiful women, and it's all extremely mind-blowing to me.

CS: I know you knew Claire before and you must have known Kirsten. Did you know Natalie before you two shot the short film with Wes?
Schwartzman: No, I'd met her once before at a party, as you do in Hollywood, but I hadn't spent time with her. You know, really, we spent the first amount of time together for "Hotel Chevalier." She got there, we rehearsed a bunch, had dinner, got up the next day and got right into it.

CS: How much time did you spend shooting that?
Schwartzman: Two days. A day and a half really.

CS: What else do you have going on? I know you're in "Walk Hard" playing Ringo Starr? Do you play any drums in that?
Schwartzman: No, it's just a small cameo. I also did a movie called "The Mark Pease Experience."

CS: Yeah, I was going to ask about that because I'm a huge fan of Todd Louiso as an actor.
Schwartzman: Yeah, he's a great director and this movie is very funny. I loved it. He wrote it, and it's about an ex high school musical star, who now ten years later is a little more of a burnout, but still living the dream. He still loves high school theatre and he's also trying to get an acapella singing group off the ground. It centers around him and trying to get in touch with his old singing teacher, Ben Stiller.

CS: In "Rushmore," you were a playwright, you've mentioned that you wanted to be a playwright yourself. Have you tried to approach any theatres about writing something?
Schwartzman: When I was 15, I wrote and directed a play, a long time ago, but I haven't tried to do it since.

CS: It seems like an obvious direction, since you keep coming back to that in the movies you do.
Schwartzman: Maybe, maybe, yeah, but I also feel like people are born and bred for that kind of thing, and I hope I didn't miss the boat on it.

CS: I interviewed Jonah Hill a few months ago for his big movie and he mentioned that you were friends and that he wanted to do something with you.
Schwartzman: We're hoping to write something together, but nothing's concrete yet.

CS: I know you also have this new record out. What's that about?
Schwartzman: It's under "Coconut Records," that's the name of the band.

CS: Are you playing drums on it?
Schwartzman: I did most of the instruments and sang them, but some stuff, my friends played on. It was a big collaboration.

CS: I remember in Toronto at the "Shopgirl" junket, you mentioned that you were writing songs, but I didn't know you had plans to do something with them.
Schwartzman: Yeah, well I didn't either, it happened so quickly. I just went to my friend's house and did them all there in one week, and not under the idea that it's going to be a released record, more that it was an experiment in multi-track recording for myself. I'm used to having an idea for a song, but you have a band and you bounce ideas off them and hear how things sound together, but I used the studio like it was my band.

CS: Did you do it all on the computer?
Schwartzman: Yeah, mostly computers.

[MacGuffin]

Anatomy of a Scene: 'The Darjeeling Limited'
Wes Anderson, director of "The Darjeeling Limited," discusses how a scene from the movie was created.

*WATCH AT OWN RISK*


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/09/27/arts/20070927_DARJEELING.html#