Wes Anderon, Roman Coppola Interview, Darjeeling Limited

MoviesOnline caught up with Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola at the Los Angeles press day to promote their new film, "The Darjeeling Limited,” a comedy adventure directed by Anderson from a screenplay by Anderson & Coppola & Jason Schwartzman. Joining Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Schwartzman in the cast are Anjelica Huston, Amara Karan, Wally Wolodarsky, Camilla Rutherford and Irrfan Khan.

In "The Darjeeling Limited,” three American brothers -- Francis (Wilson), Peter (Brody), and Jack (Schwartzman) -- who have not spoken to each other in a year set off on a life altering train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and bond with each other – to become brothers again like they used to be. Their "spiritual quest,” however, veers rapidly off-course (due to events involving over-the-counter pain killers, Indian cough syrup, and pepper spray), and they eventually find themselves stranded alone in the middle of the desert with eleven suitcases, a printer, and a laminating machine. At this moment, a new, unplanned journey suddenly begins.

Wes Anderson has already chronicled the often simultaneously funny and calamitous vicissitudes of love and family relations in a prep school setting with "Rushmore,” a household of former geniuses in "The Royal Tenenbaums” and below the decks of a marine exploration ship in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.” Now, with "The Darjeeling Limited,” he sets his story of a reunion between three estranged brothers in perhaps the most intriguing locale yet: onboard a train headed across the deserts of Rajasthan, speeding the shell-shocked brothers through vast foreign terrains both physical and emotional.

From the lavish sophistication of "Murder on the Orient Express” to the chaos of "A Hard Day’s Night,” trains have been a means of kinetically propelling all kinds of characters on all manner of journeys. "I’ve always wanted to make a movie on a train because I like the idea of a moving location. It goes forward as the story goes forward,” Anderson says. "I already set a movie on a boat.” The trains that called to Anderson, however, were not just any locomotives but those that crisscross the world’s most train-centric country – the explosively growing nation of India.

Anderson had never been to India before he conceived of the film, but had long been in love with a landscape that had popped off the screen in some of his favorite movies, especially Jean Renoir’s "The River,” a coming of age story set on the banks of the Ganges, and the sweeping, emotional films of the master Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. The idea of bringing his own comically bittersweet sensibility to a world so different from his own intrigued him.

So all three of these story strands came together – and Anderson found himself setting off on his own three-man quest to India. "I decided I would like to make a movie in India, I decided I would like to make a movie on a train, and I thought I’d like to make a movie about three brothers,” Anderson says. "Then I asked my friends Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola to join me in writing the movie and we all went to India together.”

Anderson’s co-writer, Roman Coppola, grew up in the world of filmmaking and has worked in many capacities, from sound recordist to cinematographer, to writer and producer. He began his directing career with visual effects and second unit direction of "Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” and his rookie effort garnered a BAFTA Award nomination for Visual Effects. His first feature film, "C.Q.,” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was well received critically. Most recently, Roman has lent his talent to 2^nd Unit Direction on ‘Lost in Translation,” "Marie Antoinette,” and Wes Anderson’s "The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou.”

Before India, Anderson, Schwartzman and Coppola started writing while all three were temporarily living in Paris. Jason Schwartzman recalls this process: "I know this sounds kind of corny and picturesque but we started writing a lot of the film in little French cafes late at night,” he recalls. "Then at some point Wes just said: you know, maybe it would be good if we went to India. And so we all went in March of 2006 and that’s when we began participating in the very things we were writing about.”

Much of the initial inspiration for the characters came from Anderson, Schwartzman and Coppola’s own personal relationships and travel experiences, notes Coppola. "We each ended up sharing our experiences and germinating some of the ideas that factor into the story,” Roman explains. Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola are fabulous guys and we really appreciated their time. Here’s what they had to tell us about their recent collaboration on "The Darjeeling Limited”:

MoviesOnline: So how far along were you in this story when you decided to leave Paris for India?

WES ANDERSON: Well we’d written maybe 50 pages. (to Roman) Is that what we were saying the other day?

ROMAN COPPOLA: A little over 50 pages.

WES ANDERSON: Yeah, a little over 50 pages and then we went there. In fact, we went on our train journey but we’d already written the whole train part. But then I think we learned different things about just what it’s like.

MoviesOnline: What was incorporated into your script from the actual experience of being on the train?

WES ANDERSON: (to Roman) You brought up one the other day, right when we arrived in Delhi.

ROMAN COPPOLA: The Sikh temple.

WES ANDERSON: Right.

ROMAN COPPOLA: We had one experience. The spirit in which we wrote is reflected in the movie: say yes to everything. So when we were traveling, we would take any opportunity to appear in some place. On one occasion, we jumped in a rickshaw at 1:00 in the morning not really knowing where we were going and ended up in a Sikh temple and we were all there in a scene that is very reminiscent of the one that appears in the movie. So that’s one specific example.

WES ANDERSON: When you go into a Sikh temple, if you’re not wearing a turban and you’re a man, you cover your head. There’ll be a basket filled with colored scarves and you tie one on your head like they do in the movie and then there was a very beautiful song that they played. It was 2 o’clock in the morning filled with people including children but it wasn’t like the main ritual where they have the big book. They have their book. It’s after they have put the book away and they’re all sitting on the floor and there were guides singing and everyone was singing with them and it was this great song that just goes on and on and on doing the same thing over and over again. It’s a chant. And then we got the guides from Delhi to come to Jodphur for when we did the scene. Then we kind of recreated that moment and got the same guys and they’re on the sound track album too.

MoviesOnline: You’re really carrying the banner for the 60s and 70s and the spirit of that is in every single movie that you do. Where does that come from?

WES ANDERSON: That’s interesting. So you’re saying more thematically than just visually?

MoviesOnline: Yes. Visually too, with the yellows, as well as the 70s music.

WES ANDERSON: I think thematically you’re probably right. We would probably be a little more at home producing a movie like this in 1975 than we are right now, although our experience of making the movie was great. We approached the movie as a very modest production. We wanted to make it quickly, you know, on a small scale and maybe in 1975 we might not be at Fox Searchlight, we might be with 20^th Century Fox.

MoviesOnline: Or you’d be shooting gonzo style, stealing your scenes on the train that no one knew you were shooting in?

WES ANDERSON: That’s the other possibility. Yeah. The 70s could mean either of those things. It means "Two-Lane Blacktop” is a big studio movie and at the same time it could also mean John Cassavetes who’s shooting in his own house. So, I don’t know. I like both of those.

MoviesOnline: All your characters seem to be creative, bohemian, and eccentric. If any of them drop from one movie to the other, they would all somehow get along. Apparently you guys live in that world together because you were able to blend it.

ROMAN COPPOLA: I visited that world. [laughs]

WES ANDERSON: (laughs) You’re a tourist.

MoviesOnline: Can you say something about that -- where that came from in your background?

WES ANDERSON: Well I bet that it’s more in Roman’s background than it is in mine, and for me, it’s a little more like the background I wanted. But I will say this, at a certain point it’s the background you wanted ends up being the present that you might get. Then you’re drawn in a certain direction. Sometimes I definitely think about it. It’s a very hackneyed thing to observe but I do feel sometimes with the actors, with Roman, with the group of us out there, I kind of feel like, you know, we’re these Gypsy show people. It’s kind of a silly observation to make but I really do like it. I mean it’s like the smell of the grease paint, that whole thing.

MoviesOnline: When you’re in the audience, you get the feeling of it. It’s like you’re proxying it for us.

WES ANDERSON: Is that so? That’s nice. Did you say something about 70s India?

MoviesOnline: If Satyajit Ray were alive, he would really enjoy this movie because it really has that feeling and I thought it was great that you picked that music. The scene where all the people showed up after the funeral to meet the brothers, those moments were so Ray like

WES ANDERSON: Well he really was our inspiration. For me, he was the Bombay experience.

MoviesOnline: And it was also reminiscent of James Ivory’s "Bombay Talkie.”

I know the Merchant Ivory movies over the years but I was led to "Bombay Talkie” by Ray because of Ray scoring "Shakespeare-Wallah.” Then I started listening to other Merchant Ivory movies that weren’t scored by Ray but started using those scores.

MoviesOnline: What are your other movie influences because I also sense there’s sort of a Nouvelle Vague theme going on with the brothers?

WES ANDERSON: Well there’s a Nouvelle Vague… (to Roman) Do you remember the one that you and Jason watched in Paris in my apartment right when we started?

ROMAN COPPOLA: Oh the "Peau Douce”?

WES ANDERSON: "La Peau Douce.” That one I think the opening of our movie is really inspired by the opening of "La Peau Douce.” He’s on his way to the airport. The opening scene of the Francois Truffaut movie "The Soft Skin” is like a thriller chase scene except that the chase is just he’s going to miss his flight. So it’s racing through the city but he’s not… There’s no big chase scene. It’s just he might miss his flight. He’s got to go to somewhere else in France, to Dijon or something like that, to go give a talk. Or no, he’s going to Spain.

ROMAN COPPOLA: He’s going to lecture.

WES ANDERSON: The first time he’s going to Portugal.

MoviesOnline: How does that incorporate into your own ideas about filmmaking?

ROMAN COPPOLA: He forces you to make a choice.

WES ANDERSON: He patches two things together by cutting to something that you don’t really need to cut to. He’s got a problem here and he’s got to fix it so he’s going to cut to the empty corner for a second then back to the scene. It’s in a way that you can tell it’s a band aid but it almost becomes part of his style. This is a tool we can use in the editing room and let’s get on with our story.

MoviesOnline: Sometimes your films have that feeling of casualness. They are also extremely meticulous, controlled at moments, almost tableau-like. In the short, did you choose all those things we see in the hotel room -- the books, the titles, etc.?

WES ANDERSON: The short is very simple. It’s all my stuff. What it is, is we wanted to make the movies very, very personal. That was kind of our credo with the whole thing: make it personal. So with the Paris stuff, we had a tiny, tiny crew. There’s an aspect of his character in that situation that resembles what I was going through in that period of time, just that I was living in Paris and there was a little something there. So I just brought all my stuff over there and that’s what that stuff is. It’s not carefully chosen or anything. It’s just my stuff. Like the music box that’s playing, that ends up that I had those music boxes there but that song that Natalie Portman plays in the music box is the song "Champs-Elysees” which we then used at the end of the movie. But that was only because she played it in the short. We thought well we’d used it again. We ended up making a sequence based on it and it just is serendipitous.

MoviesOnline: Roman, what do you think was your contribution to Wes Anderson’s movie? What elements did you bring to it?

ROMAN COPPOLA: I just got it and I wanted to jump in and help wherever I could. Obviously a big task was the writing so it’s hard to quantify that contribution but we all threw out ideas, each of us contributed words and lines and suggestions and so that’s hard to sort of tear apart but the movie is a reflection of all of our perspectives.

MoviesOnline: Do you think if you had directed the script that all of you wrote that you would have been too far away from what actually became the final product?

ROMAN COPPOLA: Well I don’t look at things so compartmentalized. We worked on the script but the act of working on the script was also watching films and thinking about it and discussing it. Jason would say something like, "Oh wow!” or "Do something. You have to do that.” And then we’re researching the trip going to India and we’re meeting people and the porters on our train are saying, "This is a great guy. He’s our porter.” We’re casting, we’re researching, we’re costuming, we’re location scouting, so it’s not really so true an arc in this experience, like you’re writing it, you’re doing this, you’re shooting it, so that’s our experience.

WES ANDERSON: One thing that we always felt in part why we went to India to keep writing was because I don’t like feeling like we’re just working on a script. I like feeling like we’re preparing for this film that we’re going to make and we are going to make this. And because of that, while we’re traveling around, we’re finding locations. By the time we went there to make the movie, we’d already found almost all the locations in the story. Right? We changed where we shot Angelica’s sequence but more or less everything else we’d found.

MoviesOnline: And you cast a lot of people too in that process?

WES ANDERSON: Yeah.

MoviesOnline: Why did you cast Natalie Portman in the short?

WES ANDERSON: Why choose her? Well I guess two things. One is just I’m a great fan of Natalie Portman’s. I loved her in "Closer.” I thought she was very good in that movie. And then second, I had an idea that she and Jason standing together that that might be right, that the two of them might have a nice feeling together which they did. I felt like they had a real chemistry and I could easily see a movie. It doesn’t have to be a short.

MoviesOnline: In the writing, whenever there are pauses, by the time the pause is answered you always somehow know what the answer is going to be. That’s very unique. When you’re writing, do you have a specific architecture or any tricks that you bring to it that help you get that rhythm?

ROMAN COPPOLA: (laughs) We don’t want to give away our tricks. But I think one trick – I don’t really like to use the work ‘trick’ – but it’s basically to eliminate things, take things out. You have a whole sentence to explain something. If you just subtract a couple words or a sentence out of that, it usually comes out more interesting.

WES ANDERSON: All through the process of writing it, we were trying to simplify it and trying to omit anything we could. I will say that. And the other thing is, we always said… We’re trying to figure out what happens next, what do they say next. Well, what has happened to you? Did anybody say something to you somewhere along the way that was like that? And we tried to see is there anything that had happened to any of us and somebody would say… Jason would say, "My mother says that to me.” Or I would say, "I had a teacher in 4^th grade or a cop when he pulled me over” or whatever it is. You know, use that. That was something we tried to do.

MoviesOnline: How much of the Indian culture did you incorporate into the film and how did you approach that?

WES ANDERSON: What I’d say is we’re writing about Indian culture from the point of view of foreigners. And in the movie, they’re foreigners who are almost totally ignorant of this culture that they’re participating in and are not even really tuned into it for the first part of the movie. They’re not even paying attention to each other, much less this new place that they’re meant to be learning about. But, for us as writers, it’s a place we have to… I mean I’ve been fascinated with India for a long time. I have great curiosity about it but I couldn’t pretend to write about it from any point of view except as a Western tourist. But a Western tourist who’s completely taken with the place.

"The Darjeeling Limited” opens in theaters on October 5^th.