Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
Wes Anderson has become one of this generation’s most revered filmmakers, both with Hollywood actors and with critics. He’s known mostly for his intimately cast, unusual comedy films like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited.
Anderson’s unique path as a filmmaker has only gotten more so as the most arguably mainstream film of his career is at the same time his most radically departure yet, his first animated film. It’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox , based on the children’s book by Roald Dahl<.
The 40 year-old filmmaker is not only directing his latest project, but co-writing, overseeing the editing, and even supervising what songs are shown in the film. As song cues in scenes have become a very key part of Anderson’s highly unique style, we asked Wes how he chooses a song to fit a particular scene.
“It varies from one movie to the next,” Anderson says, “For this one, we had a song in the middle of the movie. While we were writing, we were thinking about the song that’s performed. Other movies, I’ve known the music before the words, before the dialogue. This one, less so, I guess. With the music that was this film, I don’t recall anything being a real struggle to get permission to use. I tried to license some Beatles songs in the past, and those used to be very, very difficult, unlicensable, more or less, but these we could get.
“We have things from other films. We have some things from Davy Crockett and we have something from Disney’s Robin Hood, and those are maybe a bit tricky, because when you’re taking something from a movie and putting it another movie, people are not necessarily sure that they want that for their movie. But we have them anyway.”Â
Like any of Wes’s previous films, he involved himself in just about every way imaginable with the film’s creation.
“I didn’t really grasp what I was getting into, I think,” Anderson says, “I
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
“In order for me to be happy with it, I was going to have to be involved,” he continues, “There are a million decisions to be made. And what really needs to happen is that I needed to figure out a system that would allow me to be involved to the degree that I want to be involved with this. Then we did figure it out, and once we had that going it was completely all-consuming, but it was fun, and I really enjoyed the process. And I certainly feel that not only would I like to do another animated film in this way, but there are aspects of it of how we made the movie that I would use in a live-action film.”Â
The filmmaking process for Anderson turned out to be a rather complex, labyrinthine process, working with 30 screens simultaneously and communicating with each unit by e-mail to keep abreast of what was being developed.
“The technology of the movie itself is a bit old-fashioned,” he explains, “This kind of stop-motion is not that different. Even though these puppets are a sophisticated version of a stop-motion puppet, the basic techniques that we were using in this film are the oldest stop-motion techniques. But without the most recent technology for communication, I don’t know if I’d be able to get the movie the way I wanted it. And that involved the system that allowed me to look through each camera on the set, but also the continual stream of images and clips going back and forth and research pulling together, it was
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
“With a live-action movie, a day is composed of shots you’ve got to get done,” Wes adds, “You’ve got to do this one and then you move on to that one and you move on to the next one, and eventually you lose the sun and the day is over, something like that. With this movie on the other hand, there are 30 shots going on simultaneously, very, very slowly. And there are also many, many set scene designs and puppets that are being worked on and you’re editing. I had my editorial staff with me and storyboard artists, because we’re making of the movie as we go along and we’re replacing the shots as they’re photographed. So the day the sets became involved, moving back and forth from one thing another continuously. And to deal with this and move over here to other people who are waiting. And that’s how you kind of move your way through the day, same results but quite a different pace and rhythm.”Â
We asked Wes if he felt he succeeded in maintaining the same degree of control he has in the past in his live-action films.
“It’s quite equal,” Anderson says, “It’s a similar level of control. With a live-action movie, you have the immediacy f being right there when the performance happens. With an animated film, even though you’re right there, you can’t predict what’s going to happen while the camera’s rolling. There are accidents and surprises that will come out of it, and any actor will give you a different interpretation. With a movie like this, first you go through the process with live actors, but when it’s actually animated, as carefully as you prepare the shots with the animators and all the people who are working on it, the preparation is down to each frame.”Â
“Even given that, every animator comes up with a different interpretation,” he continues, “Their personalities come through and
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
One way the filmmaker wanted to approach this animated film differently was by treating the characters more like characters and less as the more traditionally juvenile style of cartoon caricatures.
“I wanted to have it documentary-recorded, the idea of the actors going off on a farm,” he explains, “So for me, ‘cartoony’ was not ever a thing I was saying to anybody. I was never saying, ‘Let’s go more cartoony.’”Â
“I thought as natural as they can be, because there’s an artificial thing that we’re embracing in the first place that’s always going to be there, and maybe the tension will be between the stuff that’s invented,” he adds, “The fact that you can see that the grass on the ground is yellow towels and the smoke is cotton balls can contrast with characters that are more realistic.”Â
Even more unusual in Wes’s unique approach to filmmaking was having the cast record outside together rather than sequestered in a studio booth alone. We wondered if the raw footage would make for material on a future DVD release.
“There are little bits of it that we filmed, and those will definitely be on the DVD or at least in the making-of clips,” he answers, “It’s just recording, behind-the-scenes stuff. I don’t know if it’ll be that fascinating. But I’m sure Jason [Schwartzman] described everybody out in the field on this farm pretending to be animals. It wasn’t filmed by a documentary crew either. It was filmed by somebody every now and then taking out their phone or something like that.”Â
“There were sounds that became part of the themes that
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
With one particular voice actor in mind, Anderson also mentions that he simultaneously managed to accomplish both perfect casting and dream casting by having George Clooney play Mr. Fox.
“I didn’t just hear it in his voice,” Wes says, “I’m a fan. I thought this was a chance to work with him, have a part that I can offer him. When you see him in the movie, you really believe him as the hero. You really believe he’s the guy.”Â
“It was only after we recorded the actors and I went back to the editing room and started listening to him without him being in front of me that I realized how much he brings to the performance just with his voice and how much he brought to our movie,” he continues, “He has a lot to work with there. The animators, their first inspiration is listening to what the actors say, and I suspect that people were excited about what we’d come back with.
However, like most film adaptations, Anderson took liberties with the original material in the book in order to make it more viable as a film. Wes explained to us some of what he made different in the film adaptation.
“In the book, Mr. Fox and Mrs. Fox has four children and they don’t have names and don’t really have individual identities particularly,” he reveals, “And we thought we thought for the film, we thought if we could do one and make a
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
“My younger brother, who plays the cousin, he thinks that it relates to our relationship between me and our older brother, but I did not have that mind at all,” Wes continues, “So I don’t even really know what the inspiration was. We made a comic character that he’s supposed to be inspired by that one of our storyboard artists illustrated so he became part of the story.”Â
Unlike most filmmakers who tend to balk at the flooding of merchandising for a mainstream movie, Wes says he’s actually excited about one particular piece of merchandising that is said to come out.
“Usually, it seems like that sort of stuff often gets done as a promotional thing for the movie,” Anderson shares, “We haven’t done much of that, but we did make a book that Rizzoli is publishing. It’s a making-of book. I think it’s pretty interesting just because a movie like this, there is a lot to document. There’s so many people whose work, if you see what the individual processes are, there’s interesting things in it. There are so many people who worked on the movie, designers, and there are many steps to their processes. There are people who are building puppets and animators figuring out how to animate them.”Â
Anderson also shared what he loves about the original book.
“What appealed to me were a couple of things,” he says, “One, I think that I liked that the character is not only the hero who rescues everybody but he’s also the one who got them into trouble in the first place. That idea was something that grabbed me as a child. There was a little bit more complexity to this character than in other books for very young children.”Â
“And he also had kind of flair with the way he talks and he’s inventive, which is all very doll-esque ideas,” Wes adds,
Wes Anderson
"The Fantastic Mr. Anderson"
We asked Wes how Roald Dahl’s widow reacted to his film adaptation.
“I don’t want to speak for her, but she’s been very involved all the way through. She’s a good friend,” Anderson replies.
We also asked Anderson how comedy became his genre of preference.
“I don’t know,” Wes replies, “I remember a certain point in the first movie I did, Bottle Rocket, when we decided that this has to be a comedy. We were sort of making a serious criminal movie, but we kept writing funny things for it, and we hadn’t settled on it. And then there was a moment when we chose certain friends to be in the film. And as soon as we did, we said, ‘There’s nothing real about any of this. This has to all be funny.’”Â
Wes certainly is far from resting on his laurels as he reveals he’s already working on his next film idea.
“I’m working on a script, but I just started it,” Anderson says, “I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to be.”Â
One thing’s for sure, Anderson says potential commercial success with The Fantastic Mr. Fox will definitely not stop the filmmaker from being selective about who he works with.
“I’ve worked with friends in the past,” Wes says, “I’ve always written with friends whom I admire and enjoy working with. I work the same way. I don’t see my approach to writing changing, really.”Â
Wes says he even extended his intimate creative process to even his unusual appearance on the popular commercial he did for American Express.
“It was really fun,” Anderson unabashedly says of the whole experience, “I had my friends in it.”Â
