by David Geffner
photos by James Hamilton

Being a part of lower Manhattan's "la familigia" guaranteed us impeccable service during our one-hour conversation. And why shouldn't it? When you're in a family, you're treated differently — for better or worse. No one knows this more than the 30ish Anderson, director of the cult comedies Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. His current film, The Royal Tenenbaums, spins a tale about a trio of "former child geniuses" in Manhattan and their estranged father's attempt to get back in the family's graces.

At its core, The Royal Tenenbaums is an exuberant, even reckless approach to filmmaking that wears its obscure literary references smack on its cinematic sleeve. With a script co-written by Anderson and co-star Owen Wilson, the movie unfolds in chapters, like a novel retold on-screen. An unseen narrator (Alec Baldwin) recounts the sad, yet storied history of each of the three Tenenbaum children, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller and Luke Wilson, as well as the acrimonious breakup between their parents, played by Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston. The parallels, some might even say thematic conceits, to a piece of fiction is no accident: the Texas-raised Anderson is a self-described "stockpiler of books" who adores the printed word.

"Owen [Wilson] criticizes me for collecting books that I will never have the time to read," Anderson laughed. "When we wrote this film, our idea was to create a fake novel called The Royal Tenenbaums that's retold to the audience in the form of a movie. We spent a lot of time in the beginning with exposition, which I shot in this arched, theatrical style, on each character's place in the novel. The exposition takes awhile, but it's key to how each member of the Tenenbaum family will later behave when they're shoved back together. The last thing I want to do as a director is sacrifice the core of my story for a visual gimmick of any kind. So the literary style and references evolved from who the Tenenbaums are as a family."

		Director Wes Anderson behind the camera. Click picture for larger view.

"There are more than 250 locations in this movie and every day of the shoot there was some kind of move," Anderson said. "But it was important that I didn't try to cheat those locations. I wanted the smell and feeling they breathed into the characters' lives. For example, the ship that Richie (Luke Wilson) lives on before returning home could have been done as a digital effect. But instead we got a real ship, a Marine training vessel, and made it look like an ocean liner by building wooden decks and railings. I was on the QE2 by myself, as Richie is supposed to be, so I had the set design modeled on my own experience. For the scene when Richie finally leaves the ship to go home, and meets his sister at the docks, I wanted the real QE2 in the background. It was docked in New York for about half a day, which made the shoot so tight the boat was pulling out of the harbor just as we broke down our last dolly shot."

Close shaves of another variety dictated the arc of Luke Wilson's pivotal character, Richie Tenenbaum — a troubled young former tennis star. Anderson needed Luke Wilson to shave his beard on-camera for a key scene leading into Richie trying to commit suicide. Shot in lap dissolve close-ups and looking straight into the camera, the sequence ushers in a powerful shift in both Ritchie's life and the movie. "It had to really be Luke's beard, and he had to shave it off on-camera," Anderson said. "We sort of scheduled the film around Luke Wilson's beard! But the QE2 was only in New York that one day right before we wrapped. We put Luke in a fake beard," Anderson laughed. "And the boat won out."

Working with so many stars wreaked havoc with Anderson's production schedule. Paltrow was doing two other movies during the Tenenbaums shoot, and Ben Stiller was editing the film he directed, Zoolander. Anderson credits his first AD, Sam Hoffman, with being the "absolute glue" that held things together. "I can't stress enough how important it is to get an experienced AD like Sam Hoffman on a film with so many actors and locations," Anderson said. "I honestly don't think I could have juggled it all without him."

Juggling different actors' working styles was Anderson's toughest task on The Royal Tenenbaums. Although the director is quick to point out that "the actors are my first priority. Other stuff can get screwed up, but if what the actors do works, that's all that ultimately matters."

Anderson cited an example of offering Huston a simple two-word direction — "much colder" — after having shot the scene according to Huston's initial instincts. "She'd adjust the entire take on that one direction. "Then I'd walk over and she'd whisper: 'in-between' and I'd nod my head. And she'd do it again and hit it right in the middle. She was able to give the entire scene a completely different feeling, and then on my direction, adjust it back up — halfway. It was just amazing."

Even with a cast filled with talent like Danny Glover, Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston and Gwyneth Paltrow, there's bound to be one presence stronger than all the others. For Anderson it was clearly the title character, Royal Tenenbaum, played by Gene Hackman. Anderson described Hackman's style as unusual, relative to all the other members in the cast.

		Director Wes Anderson on the set of The Royal Tenenbaums with his crew. Click picture for larger view.

The conflict inherent in Anderson's words is plain, particularly since he's a director who co-writes all his scripts. "Obviously I'm going to say things to Gene Hackman if he's straying too far from what I intended with the scene," Anderson explained, "but I'm sympathetic with his approach of always keeping it pure and spontaneous. It's an age-old conflict — does the actor have the totality of a scene in his approach relative to the director's vision of the film? With a guy like Hackman it ultimately doesn't matter, because he's never going to get it all wrong. He has the totality of the role in his mind and that led me toward the right place. He's always real, and who would want to change that?"

Working with vets like Hackman, Huston and Glover might intimidate some younger directors. But Anderson actually wrote the movie with each specific star in mind. He approached Hackman years before the script was conceived and doggedly pursued him even after the star was slow to respond. Did being the co-screenwriter give Anderson, the director, a leg up on the set?

"I don't separate the two jobs like the industry does," Anderson said. "For me, most of the writing is just planning what we are going to film. So to me the two disciplines are linked. I will say that on The Royal Tenenbaums I stuck much closer to the script than I had envisioned. I always imagined myself as a Cassavetes-type director, where the process verges on this loose, improv feeling. But we didn't improvise a single line in this movie."

Halfway through our lunch, the obvious impression was that Wes Anderson is a director who loves to plan things; all the more amazing given that his films feel like spontaneous-combustion comedy. Take the soundtrack for The Royal Tenenbaums, rife with well-known pop tunes from the '60s and '70s, for example. Anderson began thinking of songs to include from the moment he started writing the script, perhaps even earlier.

"There's a Nico song that plays when Gwyneth Paltrow comes off the bus with Richie. It's called "These Days" and I knew I wanted that song in the film before I had ever conceived of a story. I had this vague image of someone coming out of Penn Station with the Nico song playing. There was also a Ravel String Quartet I wanted in there. The music gives me a feeling that I will then match up with a scene in the movie."

Anderson cited another example: a Rolling Stones song called "She Smiles Sweetly" that he knew would play in a small, confined room somewhere in the film. "Ultimately, Gwyneth Paltrow puts that record on in the tent, after Luke's character has tried to commit suicide," Anderson explained. "He comes in and surprises her and they're together in there. I owe a lot to my music supervisor, Randy Poster, whom I've known a long time. He'll make CDs of songs for me to listen to while I'm writing."

Anderson's relationship with Poster is a close one. Because the director had taken a shine to a Ravel piece, Poster researched French Impressionist music and returned with dozens of choices. One piece among them, by George Inesco, became the inspiration for a 12-minute-long cue that was shaped by Mark Mothersbaugh, the film's composer. During the cue, different instruments act as themes for different characters as their lives as "former geniuses" are brought up to the present.

At our outdoor table, Anderson paused to watch a man try to hail a cab by walking out into the middle of Sixth Avenue, prompting a question that had been floating in my mind throughout the entire movie. Even with all the strange, colorful characters in The Royal Tenenbaums, the real show stealer is New York City.

"I wanted to make a film that was like a heightened version of New York, more New York than New York itself," Anderson said. "All the names of the streets are New York–sounding, but not real. Archer Avenue, where the Tenenbaums live, is Edith Wharton-sounding. The 375th St. Y would probably be in Yonkers, if it existed. The Lindbergh Palace, where Royal is living before moving back in with the family, is named after Charles Lindbergh, who was part of this big New York family. We found the Tenenbaum home up in an area of Harlem called Hamilton Heights. We had been looking for town homes all over the city and then we just stumbled upon the right one."

As noted, Anderson is a planner. He prefers quick sketches in his notebook, although he will meticulously board certain scenes if needed. "For this movie we had to keep the planning of shots a bit looser, because we had so many actors moving around in a single space," Anderson said. "I needed to see the location first, and then I'd start staging stuff with the AD and PAs months before shooting began. I also did a lot of staging with the stand-ins on the day. And there is no Steadicam in this movie at all. We used dolly shots to track parallel to the action and with the widescreen frame,

I'd lock down and give the actors the freedom to move in and out of the frame."

		Anderson with actor Gene Hackman between takes. Click picture for larger view.

Although the Guild has won over Anderson's creative spirit, it's the practical struggles it has fought on his behalf that have left a lingering impression. "The DGA allowed us to do a special credit sequence in this movie," Anderson explained. "I screened the reel with the credits for this gang of guys — this unbelievable group of filmmakers: Arthur Hiller, Paul Mazursky, Irvin Kershner, Randal Kleiser and Robert Ellis Miller. At first I was intimidated, but it turned out to be fun. Every single director expressed an opinion. And what I really found interesting was that they all offered notes on the sequence. Like: 'by the way there was this little pacing problem.'"

By now, the sun was growing low in the November skyline, and Anderson looked over to the chauffeured limo that would whisk him back up to Times Square to complete the sound mix on his "fake novel about this screwed-up family." Departing the Greenwich Village eatery, the creator of The Royal Tenenbaums was treated like royalty himself. Heartfelt thanks from the host, sprinkled with questions about the quality of the food, the service, etc., as only New Yorkers can do: "You OK?" "Everything alright?" "You sure you had enough to eat?"

As Anderson lingered on Sixth Avenue, appreciative of the warm family-style treatment, he offered one more point about directing and the nature of the collaborative process.

		Anderson and crew set up for a shot on The Royal Tenenbaums. Click picture for larger view.

Table of Contents     Top of Page