Wes Anderson interview on "Rushmore" (1999)

director Wes Anderson is here he first came to our attention in 1996 with his critically acclaimed debut film bottle rocket the chairman of Walt Disney Pictures Joe Roth was such a fan of the movie he made sure Wes Anderson made his next film for Disney that film is Rushmore it is generating a great deal of Buzz surrounding its February 5th release the film focuses around the life of a prep school Misfit and his efforts to win over a teacher I am pleased to have Wes Anderson here to talk about this film welcome thank you very much what's interesting about Rushmore uh is is that for me it is sort of come out of nowhere to to sort of have this Buzz about it uh why is that well the other movie we made um almost no one saw so I think that contributes to the out of nowhere didn't it it didn't explode at the box office no it was released very quietly and um it sort of built up a little cult following eventually but um but it had a few fans that were in the movie business like Roth who kind of set us up uh with Disney um and the other thing the movie doesn't have a lot of stars it's got Bill Murray who's playing a supporting role but most of the other people are sort of new faces um so I think it was kind of a surprise to some people your lead was I mean you looked a long time to find somebody and then this guy just walks in and you say magic right we had we we looked for a year trying to cast this part because it was the kind of thing where the whole movie is riding on the shoulders of this kid uh you know it's a the character is years old and um and we had looked all over America we looked in Canada we had casting directors I went through went through four rounds of casting directors in LA and I had him all over the place and at one point we were even looking in England even though the character is American because we were thinking that he would be we were thinking like it could be a kid doing a fake English accent which would actually be a real English accent because we'd be using an English actor and we were desperate we were just coming up with really bizarre ideas um and then finally this kid Jason schwarzman uh walked in and I just knew within about 3 minutes that we could actually make the movie that we weren't going to have to shut what did he have that made you so euphoric well I think the main things were the first thing is I mean I've done the other movie we did is almost all with unknown or people who just weren't actors non- actors and so I'd kind of experience had some experience with casting those kind of you know people and it's a thing where as soon as they start playing a scene you can tell if they can be real or not some you know they can either do it or not and then beyond that it was that this and he was very real and then the other thing was he just had a real instant intelligence and energy and sort of a force which was going to be very important because the character does some awful things and I still want us to be with him and pulling for him you know and it needed someone who would kind of you know bring the audience along and they would stay with them um so was Murray an easy sale um Murray what the not paying him big bucks no we couldn't pay him that's we we wrote it for him and but we thought we wer W going to get him cuz we thought we couldn't afford him we thought we wouldn't be able to get to him get him to read it or any of that kind of stuff and um what ended up happening was his agents knew the script and his agents were fans so they put it in front of him and we had a couple other mutual friends who kind of promoted us to him yeah and so then what happened was a week after we gave it to him he called me and um and he called me you know he sort of said hello and then he started talking about this kurasawa movie called Redbeard right um which is about a doctor and we spoke for about an hour about uh Redbeard which I had no idea what it had to do with anything that uh we were discussing and at the end of it he said yeah I think I'll do uh I'll do Rushmore with you yeah and you don't quite know why he said it you just knew that he had had an opportunity to talk about yeah K SW he wanted he wanted to talk about Redbeard at that moment so You' seen Redbeard I I hadn't seen redard seen he was telling me I needed to see it and then he took me on a tour of red beard and then I saw it and then I still don't get it really so have told him you don't get it and you don't quite understand it and what's the problem here I think I think I just did you did I think you did too uh roll tape this is Murray on this program tonight talking about you he was nervous to be working with you you know that I don't know that that's true read it I mean everything I read I believe well he fears me I guess no no no I mean he would come up I mean he really was wanted to create this working relationship with you and would was and talk softly and sort of well he's a film if he wanted you to do it over he wouldn't make a big scene about it right well that's that's good manners you know that's tacked and uh you know he's learned that from the really great directors operate that way they don't shout out at you the the bozos shouted out do it louder and uh and and don't scratch your nose when you do it all right roll again you know they they they talk like that but the the soft guys and the Smart Ones and the great ones come up and they go okay uh and they it's just very private thing so I've read the but the script was so precisely written I mean you could tell that this guy knew exactly what he was doing you knew exactly what he wanted to make exactly how he wanted each scene to go and I've never really seen one that was that precise I I looked at him I went this is different this guy knows exactly what he's doing and I I'll go with it anybody that can write that well I feel confident in were were you intimidated by him I well I was before I met him I was a little terrified terrified yeah because I'd heard stories about him about you know at first you know that he's a guy who can walk into a crowd of people and take control of it in a way that I never could you know he's he's he's really funny he's everyone loves him already and um and he's big and everything um and um and then I'd also heard about you know him throwing someone in a lake on one thing and I'd heard you know that he could you know if he if he didn't like the situation he's you know he's going to fix it in his way yeah um so I was scared before I met him as soon as I met him I felt so comfortable with him I felt he was so he was he was so intelligent and he was so clearly getting involved with us for all the right reasons and he wanted and he wanted to do what we wanted to do and then I just realized everything that I was afraid of I'm can use all that stuff he's going to bring that to to this and you know and we can benefit from it is directing hard I you know it's there it's if you're a shy person I think there are parts of it where you're where it's a little scary I mean like I'm not a very um I'm not necessarily that outgoing in general and you've got to be when you're doing a movie you know you've got all these people but it's such a nice feeling when you get this group together and you're all kind of working on the same thing together and most of it is I mean it's a nice the other good feeling is that when when we're doing a movie I happen to know that I'm the one who does have all the answers to every question they're going to ask because I prepared all this stuff and I know the script better and I've worked on it all this time I have ideas for how I want it to be um so I can take just an automatic confidence knowing that I that I have the right answers um but it's important that you have the right answers and important that they at least think you do that's true that's true and I think a lot and also you know the people like like the movie The First movie did bottle rocket I used all the same crew from bottle rocket um you know all the same department heads the cameraman and the production designer and the editor and all those people so they know me and they work with me so the new people who come on sort of look to them and see the way they look at to me and that can kind of help set the tone of things also cuz what I want it to be is everyone feeling like they're I don't it's not going to work it's like an authoritarian kind of thing because that's just not my style that's not really who I am I don't think I could carry that off at all so what's the hardest thing the hardest well the the the scariest thing with this one was that I was putting together with the other movie we did the cast was all a group of friends and we the movie sort of was the movie came together because we were a group of people who wanted to do a movie with this one I had to assemble a cast of people and there were there were some of them were very experienced actors like Bill Murray and uh Seymour Cassell who's in it and this English actor Brian Cox and then some of them were newcomers but I wanted it to be a group of people who would come together and become friends it's a movie that's sort of about friendship and I wanted that kind of feeling on the set and and so and I was worried about how that happen how they would interact and it came together very nicely um but it was the thing that caused me the most anxiety I [Music] think you University of Texas yeah you make a student film so to speak what an 18 minute short mhm we effectively what we affectionately call battle Rockets around here we do call bottle rockets so we'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it is in fact bottle rocket uh you made 18 minutes and you showed it to somebody and and I guess it was Jim Brooks who saw it at Sundance or somewhere and said yeah well what actually happened was if we had the movie we took it at Sundance and nothing happened at Sundance then this producer poly plat who worked for Jim Brooks right um she saw it and she saw a tape of it and our script she brought it to Jim and Jim saw and nobody wanted to have anything to do with this and Jim saw it and read it and it's and it's always a shock to me when somebody can just look at something and they don't care about what I mean so much of stuff in the movie business is people reacting to what other people want you know what bidding wars and all that stuff and this was one guy the only guy once at saying we're going to do this and that's the same with Bill you know Bill just read this script cold and he made all his own decisions about it um and you know when Brooks and poly plat uh got involved that sort of just set us up to to to work in the movies you know what else going to happen too and I'm sure this must have happened at some point somebody you can do something and somebody can get it and they can see something that they know is really good and while they know somebody might come in the room and say that is the worst 18 minutes I've ever seen and they're saying yeah yeah I understand what's wrong with the film but did you see this and anybody who can do this has a real gift and we can take that and grow it yeah you know yeah uh this is a clip called can't do it Max um tell me a little bit about Max because he's an interesting character well Max is this kid who um this was like the center of the movie for us the reason we wrote the movie was because we came up with this character um me and my co-writer Owen Wilson um and he is this kid who um he runs everything in his school he goes to a prep school called Rushmore he he he's founded all these clubs and societies kind of runs everything he puts on a big part of is he puts on these big giant plays like he's done an adaptation of Serpico that he's putting on these he's done like a big Vietnam play these things are like very influenced by TV and movies and um he's but he's also a horrible student he's on the verge of getting kicked out and um and he's on scholarship which he lies about and tells people his father's a neurosurgeon yeah and he also applying to Oxford with Harvard as a fallback as a safety fallback right right how much of this in your head is you I don't I I I don't really think of it that way I mean I think they are parallels they're parallels yeah I mean for me and Owen my co-writer both there stuff we draw like the school where we filmed is my school and the plays that he puts on your school in Houston yes my school in Houston that's where we shot it um and um and the plays that he puts on are sort of inspired by some plays I put on when I was very young but other than that something it's more like I think if I had seen this movie when I was 15 years old I would have that would have been my movie that would have been the that I would have it would have changed me um it would have been a because I think it's like a role model for it's like a kid who it shows you a way to be heroic and still be a horrible student and get rejected from all your schools and fail in all kinds of ways but succeed in other ways and I didn't really have an idea of how to kind of put do that I was going to get rejected and I was going to do terribly so R tape here's a scene called uh between Max and uh Brian Cox Dr Guggenheim Dr gugenheim I don't want to tell you how to do your job but the fact is no matter how hard I try I still might flunk another class if that means I have to stay on for a postgraduate year then so be it we don't offer a postgraduate year now explain this to me I mean he seems like the way he talks is a smart kid right yeah he he's a smart kid I think he's deeply Disturbed and in a lot of ways and he's also probably one of those kids who's very verbal but he probably will never be able to do math you know one of those kind of people uh this relationship between you and Owen Wilson what's this collaboration about I mean you seem to be joined at the hip yeah well I Owen and I have been friends for about 10 years and uh we went to school together and all our whole sort of however long we've been working and doing movies and everything it's been together um and I just sort of feel like there's nobody else I know my work is going to be better if I'm writing with him and there's I've never met anybody who else who I would want to write with and I feel like our sort of sensibility and our sense of humor is so similar the things that we're attracted to in characters and stories and behavior and things are just so close um that I just it just seems like you know I just I'm lucky I feel I'm you know I'm lucky to have him all right oh just one more time take a look at on one other clip from this film called won't me to grab addiction this is the infamous in this movie Miss cross who Max has his eye on and so does uh Bill Mary's character take a look the truth is neither one of us had the slightest idea where this relationship is going we can't predict the future we don't have a relationship Max but we're friends yes and that's all we're going to be that's all I meant by relationship you want me to grab a dictionary you and Wilson write this together I had it the collaboration work in terms of the process of writing well the way we the way we usually work is we start out just talking and um usually we're traveling or something like that and we're talking and talking and talking about the characters and telling stories you know we both have a hundred stories that we know of each other you know and then we have stories of things that happen to us together people that we've kind of watched and that stuff all starts to kind of mix together and we talk and then we start just writing on little scraps of paper which we trade back and forth and I'll write something out and then I'll get backone will'll have big X's through it and uh things scribbled and uh and we rewrite each other's stuff and um and then eventually I start typing it um the bad thing is when like if Owen gives me something and I type it if I don't like part of it I just I just don't type it I just erase it but if I give Owen something he put an X through it which is so much more so much more aggressive and seem so much Rudder than just erasing are these defining personality traits uh the defining personality tra is that I have learned to type and he hasn't you have to write your own scripts I mean so far everything you've made you've written yeah it's two it's two but so it it I I mean it feel I I I haven't read anything that felt I mean these These are pretty personal movies like this movie Rushmore is very personal to me an ow and it's what does that mean personal it's got enough it's got so many little things that connect to our own lives you know the characters come so much from people we've known and um and from Little aspects of ourselves and the setting is so familiar to us and and then there's sort of thematic stuff that's personal to us and I just don't think there's any way that I would find a script that would mean as much to me you say thematic stuff that's personal to us what do you mean I mean like the kid in the kid that the movie is about is someone who he doesn't try you know like in high school one of the central things is to be cool yeah and this is a kid who's not cool at all but but who is who but who is um he has his own ideas the way he wants to be things he wants to kind of accomplish and he has this great enthusiasm for those things and this kind of Drive about it and a resilience and and I sort of kind of that's something that means something to us I mean I like people who are are kind of unusual characters and kind of originals and um do we think Max is going to be successful in life I think he's like headed for Broadway or something you know he's kind of like hook up with Mike or somebody like that he'll become a protege of someone and he'll and he'll speaking of Mike Nicholls uh he's a hero yeah because well I you know I I've Loved uh a number of his uh you know I've Loved lots of his movies and and some somehow The Graduate is a movie that Owen and I have gotten into our Consciousness in a way where whenever we write a script we end up feeling like we just stole a hundred things from The Graduate and we can't point out what they are but we feel like there's like some sort of tonal thing or something it's just like uh it just seems to be a part of it and then there is stuff that I over overtly stolen also overtly yeah what's the best example of that well there's a scene where Bill Murray is having this his uh his twin sons who we despises are having a it's their birthday party the middle of the birthday party he climbs up on the high dive and does a cannonball into the swimming pool and he stays underwater by himself and there's just sort of a lonely moment of him all by himself in the in the swimming pool which is you know there's a scene in The Graduate where Dustin Hoffman is in his parents give him a wet suit a scuba diving thing and he's just by himself at the bottom of the pool and it's that's what it's from uh who else anybody else in your Pantheon of Heroes that are directors that sort of make this yeah uh a lot I mean a guy who I keep thinking about is is palansky who um Roman palansky Roman palansky because of what film a lot of it is because of Rosemary's Baby and the way he shot it U because it's a movie where it's a it's a horror movie but the the performances are all all totally real and there's this and it's also sort of a comedy and there's a sort of strange it's just a little off from reality you know the behavior is all real but there's something about everything in the movie that feels like just a little off which is kind of setting you up for the fact that eventually it's going to be it's going to go crazy I thank you very much pleasure thank you for joining us see you next time

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Id: 621pSEkKvV0

Length: 18min 18sec (1098 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2016