Going Deep With Wes Anderson

“I don’t think I would know how to deliberately broaden my audience. I mean this movie is a bigger movie than any of the others, for it has the whole adventure element with the gunfights and pirate attacks, but it is definitely a weird movie. But, during the process of writing and making it, I never really think about how to reach out to a bigger audience, I just think about how we do the best with just this movie and this story. What am I going to think is funny? What am I going to be excited about? I do think about the audience in terms of clarity. Can they follow the story? Do they stay into the story? Are they engaged in the characters? … I don’t think about the audience in terms of what interests them in life and what kind of movie are they interested in seeing because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Basically, I already have these ideas about this movie and I can explore that with the actors, and I can work with Noah [Baumbach, director/writer of Mr. Jealousy and Kicking and Screaming—another “quoter” favorite], who co-wrote the script … but in the end we are just going to follow the movie where it takes us.”

The Life Aquatic takes us deep into the puckish world of misfits, zealots and seekers aboard the marine research vessel Belafonte, helmed by Anderson’s archetype of the beautiful loser, Steve Zissou—a down-and-out adventurer, captain, husband and underwater filmmaker. Although billed as an action comedy, this is a relative term in the world of Anderson, for while the movie employs more physicality and exotic locales than his previous films, it shares their common themes of disenchantment, redemption and atonement. Based on a short story he wrote 14 years ago and countless hours of research on Jacques Cousteau, Anderson once again traveled to extreme lengths to authenticate his vision.

“This movie had big stuff, like the ship. We bought it in South Africa, brought it up to Italy, made it into a real research vessel. Then we built a full-scale half section model of it. Then we reconstructed and detailed the whole compound on the island [Zissou] lives on. We built the gardens, little houses, pool/tank, dormitory, laboratory, towers, etc. We had to find those great helicopters. We actually crashed one. They were very cheap, two-man ’70s helicopters modeled on Cousteau’s stuff, but they were so dangerous they wouldn’t even let me go up in them. They even had a little badge on the dashboard that said something like, ‘This is a home-built helicopter not suitable for any type of navigability,’ which basically meant, ‘We do not endorse our product in any way.’ Luckily nobody was hurt.”

Beside the overt danger and spot-on references to the underwater action icon, the film’s pageantry falls somewhere between Disney World’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, gaudy fish tank furnishings, and The Incredible Mr. Limpet (starring Don Knotts), which seemed to play every Sunday morning on UHF in the late ’70s. When asked if any of this triangulation rings true, Anderson replies, “I know The Incredible Mr. Limpet because my friend, Rick Rubin, the music producer, sent me a tape in Italy. He was trying to advise me about different underwater worlds. He is a real movie buff and he knew about a lot of different ones, which was important, because my biggest concern was always how the underwater stuff was going to work. All the fish in the movie are stop motion, and I was always worried about how that was going to play against the rest of the film; I mean, we have people on a real boat, really at sea; we’re not doing this on a studio set and you know, in the end, I think if it’s interesting you go with it.”

While a phantasmagorical send up of Das Boot meets Jaws emerging from the depths of Anderson’s fertile mind seems plausible, it’s still a stretch for a guy who usually writes from experience. Although highly fictionalized, both Bottle Rocket and Rushmore stem from Anderson’s youth in Texas, and The Royal Tenenbaums came after his move to New York City. So it’s curious that Anderson chose to write a European adventure film about a bygone marine explorer.

He explains, “I was interested in Cousteau as a kid and even more so 14 years ago when I wrote my little story. Mostly because Cousteau as a person relates to Max in Rushmore; he was a person who had unbelievable energy, enthusiasm and ideas. He was just an amazing man. I mean this guy was in the French Resistance; he invented S.C.U.B.A. and other various submersibles; not to mention he was also an artist and a filmmaker. It makes for an incredible character—fascinating stuž—especially since he was an international superstar. Dealing with fame can carry a whole other set of interesting adventures in itself.”

It’s an interesting point, since too often fame is equated to real genius. As with The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic explores the pressures of both, and the inevitable downturn that follows when the limelight fades. I ask Anderson what he thinks of the word that’s been attached to him more than once by fervent fans and film buffs.