How The Wes Was Won

Attired in a beige and brown Pringle sweater and a similarly time warped cord jacket, Wes Anderson looks for all the world like a man who has been raiding his own on-set wardrobe unit. Just to ensure it’s the ne plus ultra of geek chic, there’s also that impeccably floppy fringe, rollerskate skinniness and the same near wet lisped, faintly Texan drawl as his friend and frequent collaborator Owen Wilson.

This, you must suspect, is a man with faith in his own capacity for cool. Earlier in the day at a press conference with Anjelica Huston, one of the vast constellation of stars featuring in Mr. Anderson’s latest giddy ensemble, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the 35 year old writer-director looked absolutely unflappable as the actress heaped hyperbole upon his young head. He probably gets as much from all the girls. That and ‘Wanna come back to mine and talk Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters?’
The Life Aquatic relocates Anderson’s Salinger-esque oeuvre to a ship of fools captained by the fading titular Cousteau-a-like oceanographer-documentarian, essayed with pitiable mid-life prickliness by Bill Murray. The rest of the Glass-like, calypso capped crew include Cate Blanchett’s delightfully hormonal journalist, Willem Dafoe’s lip-trembling German, Anjelica Huston as a weary princess (and former Mrs. Zissou), and Owen Wilson’s mild-mannered Kentucky pilot, who may or may not be the oceanographer’s son.
The wilfully scattershot plotting sees the gang undertake one last Ahabic mission hot on the fins of a murderous Jaguar shark through a Melies-ordained ocean filled with gorgeously surrealist, Henry Selick animated fish. The crayola coloured seahorses and lantern jellyfish are, ultimately, however, less idiosyncratic than the eccentric human cast, which even manages to make space for post-classical demi-god, Bud Cort, as a ‘Bond Company Stooge’.
“That was an experience,” explains Anderson. “Although I felt terrible for him, because the script called for him to speak Indonesian, so he spent three months in his hotel room learning the language. He literally only came out of there once for Mother Teresa’s beatification, because he’s a very devout Catholic. Problem was, in Rome, where we were shooting, Indonesian pirates are thin on the ground, so we ended up using Filipino pirates instead, so Bud had to start all over.”
Like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore and most recently The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic’s beguiling big fish tale is, at heart, a collection of white-funk character studies which the hipster auteur has been doodling with since college.
“The Life Aquatic was originally a short story that Owen was very keen I return to. Of course, I ended up writing the screenplay with Noah Baumbach, because if I had been waiting around for Owen to find a window in his acting schedule, I’d still be sitting by the phone. But the main thing that prompted me to return to the idea was a scene in The Royal Tenenbaums where Anjelica and Bill are looking through a keyhole. There was one moment where they exchange glances, and I remember thinking, ‘There’s a movie, right there.’”
It’s fairly easy to determine that many roles in The Life Aquatic were written to order, for it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Bill Murray deadpanning in the central role as a agreeably menopausal has-been.
“Bill’s just fantastic,” the director gushes. “You never know what you’re going to get. He’s really charming one day, but then can be very reticent the next. But he has this strange magnetism. We were walking down the street one day, and suddenly Bill starts playing pied piper for all these people who are coming up to him. The next thing you know we’re leading this huge gang all over the city, with Bill shouting instructions.”
The mondo world of Wes Anderson, it would seem, is every bit as close to They Might Be Giants as his movies are.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is released February 25th.