WA: Well, in that case, I thought it was funnier, if we just saw it in the background - Anthony keeps talking in the foreground, and Dignan's back there getting beat up. And then I sort of like the visual of it too. I think we have a couple of those. Does Bob get beat up in the background of a shot, by his older brother?

C: He does - it's almost off camera, you can just hear it.

WA: Right, mostly you hear it, you just see a glimpse of it. I can't even remember which stuff is in the movie and which stuff was cut out of the movie, it's been a long time since I saw it.

C: Now in The Royal Tenenbaums, there's the scene where Richie and Margot meet off the bus, and in the background again, there's this line of white-uniformed naval officers, walking round the corner in strict formation. There's something heart-breaking about that scene to me, I don't know if you see it like that.

WA: Yes, it does feel sad to me. I don't know why, I don't even know what it means. I just know that I had them walk through there in single file, and after doing a couple of takes, I thought I - I'll tell you what it is. It has less to do with anything than this slow sweep behind him then, which gives some emotion to the scene. And I think it helps that they're dressed in white, and that there's something kind of pristine about them. But yeah, I remember really impressing our First Assistant Director by doing that, because it wasn't really a planned-out thing. I think he thought I really had something all figured out there, and it was just kind of luck.

C: So it wasn't scripted or storyboarded?

WA: No, it was just me sort of trying to fix the shot and build it up, as much as it could be.

C: I didn't even notice it the first time I saw the film, I just noticed Richie's and Margot's faces, and the way he blinks at her like a sleepy cat. But then I saw them the second time, and I don't know what it is about them either, maybe it's the uniforms and the front of order.

WA: Yeah. And I think sometimes it's just the way something moves, you know? That's the thing you can predict about it, is how a movement is going to feel.

C: A lot of directors just don't bother with that kind of stuff. Are you conscious of being unusual in this respect?

WA: Aah, well, I don't know. I mean, I'm conscious of people thinking stuff that I'm doing is unusual, but when we're making the movie, all I'm really conscious of is, what can we do to make this better, to give it a little extra something? That's really what I'm focused on.

C: How about when you're writing the script?

WA: Same thing, except then it's really more, what's going to happen in the first place, what happens next, and who are these people? That's the biggest struggle, making a script, because you're really starting from scratch.

C: How long does it take you?

WA: Well this last one took the better part of 2 years.

C: How many drafts?

WA: I don't really do drafts. I just do an ongoing reworking, so I make a new script every day or two, and it's a tiny bit different. Usually every two weeks, I would have a new version that incorporated all these different things that I would then give to people. Especially when it got closer to the end, I started showing versions to Scott Rudin, one of the producers, because I really need a lot of response, and [co-writer] Owen Wilson wasn't around as much, so I didn't have him to get response from, so Scott was someone who I kind of leaned on in that way.

C: So every couple of weeks, you'd have something substantially different?

WA: Yeah, something. In the case of Scott, usually every couple of weeks I'd have something that tackled the problem we'd been talking about for the last time.

C: It feels like there's an enormous depth of stuff in there - there's probably a lot of stuff you know about this world and these people that we aren't seeing.

WA: Well there are characters that aren't even in there. There's certainly a five-hour version of it that could've been made with the material, because there's lots of scenes, stories even, that aren't in there. There's a whole other character that was going to be played by Jason Schwartzman, there's a character that was going to be played by Toni Collette. She was going to be the nanny from New Zealand of the little boys. Schwartzman was going to play a little kid who lived in the embassy across the street - there was going to be an embassy across the street, now the embassy's next door, but he was going to be in this embassy. Now it's some kind of Asian country; this was going to be, I don't know what his people were going to be, French or something. And he was going to have escaped from school in Switzerland and gone to live in the attic across the street - the embassy was shut down because everyone was away. And there was a cable that went from the top of the Tenenbaum house over to the embassy, and he was trading things back and forth with two other characters who aren't in the movie. But those characters I won't describe because they're going to be in the next movie.

C: What's the next movie going to be?

WA: I'm a little bit torn about what direction I'm going to take it, because I have one idea of it that involves the construction of huge sets and a lot of invented artificial things, and at the same time, I'm also inclined to do a story where it's more sort of simple and emotional scenes, where it has more of a documentary feeling. So I'm not sure how exactly this thing will end up, but maybe I can mix both, we'll see.

C: Well, in this one, I think you've already got more artifice and more simple emotion than in your others.

WA: Yeah, it's definitely darker, it's maybe sadder, I don't know.

C: There's sad stuff in Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, but here - especially on a second viewing - there's a lot of pain. But I've noticed that in screenings, people laugh at different things. Are you conscious of that?

WA: Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. This movie more than any of the other movies I've done. We've had screenings where I was a little thrown, because the reaction felt like a Farrelly Brothers movie kind of reaction - it just felt like all comedy, and a lot of the stuff I never really expect people to laugh at, even stuff that's there because I think it's funny tends to be stuff where it's funny but a little puzzling. But then I've had screenings where it seems like people just view it as a tragedy or something. It's totally unpredictable. But the room tends to take a certain position, you know. I've had people tell me who've seen it more than once that they've had different experiences with the audience.

C: Your stuff is always on the razor's edge, and it seems that different people will find a given thing funny or tragic. It's all about the tone, I guess.

WA: Right, yeah, I think everybody's going to have their own take on it. In the end the tone to me is the most important thing to track, because there's so much of stuff in the movie where if the tone is not just right and if things are not performed in the right way, then it's a disaster, things just won't make sense, won't add up to anything.

C: Do you feel any of it is like that?

WA: It would just be so hard for me to tell. If I felt that way when we were shooting, I'd say, 'We have a problem, we've got to solve the problem.' If I felt that way in the editing and I'd missed it during the shooting, I'd say, 'It's out.' But it'll take a while for me to get some distance.

C: Can you describe the tone you're aiming for in words?

WA: I don't think I can. (long pause) It really has to do, in the end, with filtering it through myself. That's what could make it kind of coherent, is if it's always got a particular perspective, one person's perspective.

C: It feels like it does, to a very unusual degree. You're doing this stuff which is clearly very auteurish, but you're doing it through Disney, and increasingly with big movie stars. How do you juggle all that?

WA: Well, in the case of this, I've got these big stars, but they're also sort of my favourite actors right now. Some of them are obvious choices for favourite actors - Anjelica Huston or Gene Hackman or Danny Glover or Bill Murray - but Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow are also people who I really love in movies. Paltrow, I loved her in Emma and I loved her in Seven, and I don't always see some of the ones that, y'know, the ones that maybe more people know her from.

C: I've never seen her do anything like this before. To me, you've completely transformed Gwyneth as a screen figure.

WA: It is kind of different take for her. But I heard she'd liked Rushmore; she let me know that. Then I met her, and I really liked her - she's smart. She reads the script and calls me back 12 hours later, telling me she's definitely doing it for nothing. So then I tell everybody else, 'Well, Paltrow says she's not getting paid,' - and then they have to do it for nothing, too. And then she wants to talk about the script a lot - she's into the script and not just her character, she's into the story. And the clothes and stuff, she's excited about it. Not all the actors are going to be that way. I mean, Hackman, he doesn't care what he has to put on - he might be a little annoyed that the pants are going to be shorter or something, but he's not going to excited about it.

C: You've said that you basically stalked Gene Hackman until he agreed to do the film.

WA: Well, I just didn't want him to not do it, so I kind of kept after him. But I had to. He's 72 years old, and he was ready to let this one go. I couldn't allow that to happen, because it was written for him.

C: Your films have quite a delicate sensibility, and to someone just watching them, the idea that you must be incredibly tenacious might not come over - but you must be, to get where you've got.

WA: Yeah, I guess you have to be. I would say, Robert Altman, from the perspective of his movies, he allows his actors this tremendous freedom, and that's what he's all about - he allows all the different people to do their parts: the decorators, the sound guys, and everybody makes this great contribution and has their own take on things. And yet if you meet him and you know anything about him, you know he's about as tough a guy as you're going to get, and he's as tenacious as anybody, he's not like this hippie or something. So, I feel like, my movies aren't even as free as Altman's - mine are actually very, you know - just to get everybody to dress like that, you've got to be pretty bull-headed about it, just to get them to that point.

C: Especially Ben Stiller in the red tracksuit?

WA: Ben probably wasn't that eager to do that. And you know, Owen, Owen doesn't want to put on the hat!

C: Well, he's done yellow jumpsuits before.

WA: He's done yellow jumpsuits. Luke [Wilson] didn't want to wear those yellow jumpsuits either, Luke thought it was stupid.

C: Now Luke, in this film - you've got these famous actors, but I think Luke's the best thing in it as Richie, he's incredible, so melancholy.

WA: Oh, good. Yeah, he's very sad. There's something kind of soulful about Luke. And I always felt a real sadness from him when he had that beard and his hair and hidden behind his glasses and everything - it just seemed like he had retreated from life or something. I had three months of rehearsal with Luke, because he'd grown a beard, he wasn't going to take any other jobs. So he came to New York, and he went on location scouts with us, and he wore his camel's hair suit every day, and he was part of the gang. To me that was really important. We practised together with Seymour Cassel, the three of us played a lot of scenes together and helped me figure out some stuff, and that certainly gave Luke a chance to really learn what his character was going to be. And yeah, I was really happy with Luke. I also just like having somebody who's going to come visit the set on days when he's not working. Most people, I mean, Owen's not coming to the set when he's not working.

C: He's becoming a big star now.

WA: Yeah, Owen's kind of a bigger star.

C: Is it funny for you that these guys you came up with are going off and becoming stars?

WA: Yeah, it's always funny to see them in another movie. To me, it's always like I'm watching a movie, but then I'm seeing documentary footage of them, so it's hard for me to accept them in them. But then I'll think they're really funny in them too.

C: Will you ever do the equivalent - make someone else's script?

WA: Ah, probably so, but I don't have any plans to. It requires me not having something of my own that I'm working on, because otherwise I'm probably not going to read the other script. It's got to be at the right moment, and then it's got to be something that I really want to do.

C: Some people feel with The Royal Tenenbaums that it's almost overload, especially in the opening, you're throwing so much information at the screen. Is that a conscious choice?

WA: It's a conscious choice to make it kind of an onslaught, to really hit you with a lot, to hit you with a huge amount - and then to fly this bird around the place. It does have a design to it, to lead to that. But I want all the information to be stuff that gives you more about the characters and draws you closer to them. If somebody feels they can't follow it any more, I want to say, 'OK, stop the movie, go back to the beginning, try again.'

C: How about the irony / sincerity thing? Some people think you're an ironist, some see you as sincere. Where do you see yourself?

WA: Yeah! Well, with the irony people, I say, 'But I really feel a lot of affection for the characters.' With the sincerity people I say, 'You can't tell me we're not being ironic with some of this stuff!' Maybe the right description would be to say that it's both. The irony is not cynical, but once you put the yellow jumpsuits on, there's got to be something ironic, or I don't know where we are.

C: It seems to me that you're in the characters, but you're also outside them. It's another razor's edge thing, like being funny and sad at the same time. You're both in and out.

WA: That's right, you're both. You kind of laugh with them, but you also laugh at them. But you don't laugh at them in a mean way.

C: Can you think of anyone else working in that register?

WA: I don't know. (long pause) Not really. Well - this isn't exactly cutting edge stuff, but Bogdanovich? Some of the Bogdanovich movies are a funny combination - like The Last Picture Show is as sad as it can be, but it's also really funny stuff. I guess it's always pretty realistic, is the main thing.

C: A lot of people have compared The Royal Tenenbaums to JD Salinger, and his Glass family stories, like Franny and Zooey. What do you think of the comparison?

WA: I worry about over-emphasising it, because there's some pretty basic stuff for this movie that's stolen right from Salinger. Just the family of geniuses, in New York, that idea, Jewish-Irish, whatever it is. But in the end, I feel like the movie's probably not that close to Salinger. You know Lillian Ross? She writes for the New Yorker; she knew Salinger and was as close to the Salinger stuff as anybody. She had this impression that it was all going to be Salinger, and when she saw it, she didn't see the Salinger any more, even though in the description it sounded very Salinger to her. So I don't know.

C: Something that comes to mind about the people you're been compared to - Salinger, Bogdanovich, Orson Welles - is that they're all people who started out very brightly, with extraordinary promise, a bit like the characters in the Tenenbaums. They were doing big things which were somehow still very individual - and yet they all faded away in one way or another.

WA: This is all stuff I've thought about in relation to this movie, because it's so much about failure, about early success and failure.

C: Can we relate it to you in any way?

WA: Well I haven't had a big smash sensation or anything like that. So it's - something to look forward to (laughs nervously).

C: But you've got this stuff in under the radar, you've got Disney chucking $25 million at you to make what is emphatically not a mainstream studio film, in the same way, say, that The Magnificent Ambersons isn't a mainstream studio film.

WA: Yeah, it's true.

C: And they haven't cut you to death!

WA: No, I know, but I didn't go to South America either. Some of those guys, they choose to - they do! Welles chose to have this tragic - well, I don’t even know how tragic it is, because he made a lot more great movies, but things took a dark turn for him. It's kind of in his personality to make it happen to himself.

C: So you don't foresee anything similar happening to you?

WA: No, I just hope things don't turn out too badly.

SF Said