Interview

ANDERSON: The thing is, you’re French. You’re French for generations. You’re genuinely French.

DESPLECHIN: I’m not that French.

ANDERSON: Well, you’re quite French. But most Americans will say, “I’m Swedish.”

DESPLECHIN: Are you Swedish?

ANDERSON: Yes, I’m half Swedish, half Norwegian. If somebody asks you what your background is, you don’t have to go back very far before it’s outside of America—unless you’re part Cherokee or something. Anyway, I certainly don’t think I’ve chosen to be nomadic. I always wanted to live in New York, and it took me a long time before I got there. But once you start moving around a lot . . . I don’t know. The difference between exile and nomadism is probably just your mood.

DESPLECHIN: You’ve seen a lot of movies. I wonder if you learned to watch a lot of films from someone like Martin Scorsese. One could say that there are two kinds of directors: those who love to see films and those who actually don’t see that many.

ANDERSON: If you are going to pick directors that make you feel like you should watch old films, I think that would be Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich. There are so many films I was introduced to by them in one way or another. For example, on the laser-disc commentary of Raging Bull [1980],Scorsese mentions something about MichaelPowell, and I had never heard of the Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger films before. From Bogdanovich, I think I first learned about Howard Hawks and LeoMcCarey. Bogdanovich saw everything. He had this metal file cabinet with drawers filled with notes. Every time he saw a movie, he typed up a little card that would list the title, director, writer, description, the date he saw the movie, and what he thought. He’d give it a rating. Then if he saw it again, he’d take the card and add a note: “I saw it again, and actually I thought it was a little better this time.”

DESPLECHIN: Do you do that?

ANDERSON: No.

DESPLECHIN: I think it’s a critic thing.

ANDERSON: Bogdanovich started it when he was, like, 15 years old. But I think he stopped the week that he went to Texas to make The Last Picture Show [1971]. He stopped as soon as he really became successful as a filmmaker. I think the first director I was ever aware of was Alfred Hitchcock—before I even understood the idea of a director. I was aware of Hitchcock because of The Alfred Hitchcock Collection. That was the first time I was aware that there’s a guy who is not in the movie who’s on the front of the box. He’s responsible. I loved those movies.

DESPLECHIN: Those were the first films that mesmerized you as a kid?

ANDERSON: Well, they were the first films I took note of and thought, This is interesting, and it was directed by this particular man. Before that I was interested in Star Wars [1977] and The Pink Panther [1963]. Actually, the first movie I saw when I got to Paris was one of the Pink Panther movies. I remember because I remember having to figure out how to say “Un billet pour La Panthère Rose . . . ”

DESPLECHIN: I’m not able to name the moment I wanted to be a director because I also didn’t know the word for that. I couldn’t distinguish between producer, director, and author. I just wanted to be the guy in charge—the guilty one! [Anderson laughs] But, you know, as a kid I was not precocious at all. I had such bad taste. I loved Hitchcock but for the wrong reasons.

ANDERSON: What are the wrong reasons?

DESPLECHIN: I don’t know. Today I try to see some of his films and, you know, I’m failing him because I’m not moved. But other times I’m shivering and crying because what he tried to achieve is so amazing. It’s such dedication. I think he’s almost a saint. I can see all the unbelievable emotion in it. Before, I thought the big thing with him was that he was clever. Actually, I don’t know what I love about him. Is it that he accepts that he’s stupid? That he’s clever? That’s he’s vulnerable?

ANDERSON: He follows the thing that he’s drawn to over and over again. Sometimes, if I have to do a scene that involves suspense or drama or just some basic genre storytelling, I think, What’s the Hitchcock way to do it? There’s a Hitchcock solution that’s clear and simple and sort of professional and says, I want the audience to feel something specific. Usually when I’m doing a scene, I don’t want it to feel specific—I want to make something that different people will feel in different ways. But the greatest thing about Hitchcock is that his scenes do have very specifically intended effects—even while the overall film would still be interpreted wildly differently from person to person.

DESPLECHIN: Are there other directors who you think about like that?

ANDERSON: Yeah. I mean, it depends on the thing I’m working on. One other director I feel thatI always think about when I don’t know how to approach something is Steven Spielberg. He would know how to do it. But, ultimately, if you’re asking me which director I think about in terms of just living my life—maybe this is crazy, but I’m going to have to say Stanley Kubrick, which I think is a bad sign because that is someone whose whole thing was about controlling his life. I mean, he apparently had a great family life, and he had his work arranged in a way that fit into the way he wanted to live. And people went to see his movies. And he only did the movies he liked to do. He didn’t do one movie for the money, so he could do the next one because he liked it. He only did the ones he wanted to do. He had total, utter, complete creative control over not just the movies but also the life of making them. He had a system, which you need because there are too many things to keep track of.

DESPLECHIN: I have a friend who visited Hitchcock’s house when he was really old. My friend had written a famous book on Hitchcock and was so proud to visit. Hitchcock showed him his basement. At this time, he wasn’t allowed to eat anymore because he was too fat. But he was keeping food in a basement storage area. He had enough to feed, like, 100 people, just to be sure he wouldn’t ever lack any food, which was absurd because he wasn’t allowed to eat it. He was just visiting his food. That’s beautiful, no?

ANDERSON: That’s beautiful, yes.

DESPLECHIN: I wanted to talk to you about music in your movies. You have a very personal way of working with scores—such an exact taste and combination of songs.

ANDERSON: I like working on the music for my own movies—which is about the only music I’m interested in working on.

DESPLECHIN: Do you play an instrument?

ANDERSON: A little bit, but barely anything. For Fantastic Mr. Fox, we had Jarvis Cocker make a great song—he’s also the voice of one of the animated characters in the film. And, right now, we have Alexandre Desplat in the middle of doing the score. There’s much more music than I had any idea we were going to need. It’s like an hour or more of music that he’s written.