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Wes Anderson, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman talk about 'Isle of Dogs'
Los Angeles — Wes Anderson, the man behind such colorful, memorable, award-winning films like “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” is back with another tour de force film, “The Isle of Dogs.”
The stop-motion animated comedy film, written, produced and directed by Wes, is set in a dystopian near-future Japan where a young boy searches for his dog after the whole species was banished to Trash Island after an illness outbreak.
It’s interesting to get into the minds of Wes Anderson who remains childlike at age 48, and his mainstays and collaborators writer Jason Schwartzman and actor Bill Murray.
We chatted with the three talented men in New York recently and here are excerpts of our fun conversations with them:
Wes Anderson (director, writer, producer)
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On convincing Yoko Ono to be in the film:
It was very simple. I had this idea that I wanted to name a character after her, just because I love her. I love her work and she is somebody who has always inspired me. Not just her work but her spirit as an artist for all these years.
So then I thought if I was going to name the character after her, I would want her permission. But then I thought, well if I am going to ask for her permission, then maybe I should just ask if she should be the character. So then she said she would consider it. Then she said she wanted me to show her more of what the project was.
So I went to see her. I showed her images, the script, what we were working on and what the character was meant to look like. She was very positive, encouraging and told me that yes she would do it.
Then we were recording her and obviously she’s got a great voice. I had a great time. When you do an animated movie, your work with the actors is done very quickly. So it’s really only a matter of an hour or something that we worked together to do the movie. But the great thing was that we could pay homage to her and have her creativity in the movie too.
On his childhood relationship with dogs and the germ of the idea that started for him:
There’s a dog in the movie named Chief and that is based on our dog when we were kids. My brothers and I, we had a dog named Chief that was quite like this dog.
As for the germ of the idea, once we started writing the script, the dogs became more like people to us and that was how we approached them as characters. Their experiences are the experiences of dogs but as soon as they are talking they become humans. Then especially once these actors started bringing them to life, it takes over the roles completely.
On the Japanese inspiration in the film
The reason it was in Japan was simply because we had two ideas for separate things. One, we wanted to go to Japan and make a movie in Japan together. We talked about that together for a long time, with no story, just that we thought it would be a great life experience to work there together. Roman (Coppola) had worked there a bit and we had all visited Japan. Roman worked there a little more than Jason (Schwartzman) and me.
But then I brought Jason and Roman this very vague idea of a movie on this garbage dump island with these dogs. Not much more than that: a title, “Isle of Dogs.” We just combined them. We said what if it’s both?
And then, I have often found, the story making begins really when you have two ideas that you join together. Then for some reason, it always seems like it goes that way. This one, we really were quite inspired. Once we had that, we really started. Then, our Japanese influences started to kick in too, because we were really seeing it in that context I guess.
On casting:
You do sometimes close your eyes and listen to actors who you know very well. Sometimes, just to say does this person sound like, because it’s a much higher pitch than this person, than I imagine when I am looking at them and things like that. But a lot of them were people who I have worked with before and the really key thing was this boy who we found, Koyu Rankin.
That was the kind of key to the movie in a way. Bryan Cranston has this very big role and Koyu has a crucial role because he is really the hero. He was only eight, and his character is 12. He is still not 12. He is only 11. But he has a great voice. He really did something that was surprising and interesting for us. It’s also almost all in Japanese, so I don’t understand what he is saying. I just get the emotion.
I have known both Greta (Gerwig) and Scarlett (Johansson) for a long time. Both of them are just the first person that I thought of for those roles. It’s as simple as I happen to have Scarlett’s email address and I have Greta’s email address. I told them. I made my pitch. I sent them images and the script. I told them what I had in mind. Then we just recorded these parts very quickly.
Jason Schwartzman (writer)
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On his writing collaboration with Wes Anderson, his fascination with dogs, garbage and Japanese movies:
Yes, I can answer all that. So the first is my collaboration with Wes on this film. The collaboration with Wes on this one begun many years ago. This was begun before “Grand Budapest Hotel” and I know this because Wes writes everything down in notebooks. All the notes are kept in notebooks and we have many, many pages of our dog movie. Then all of a sudden just goes to “Grand Budapest Hotel” from the next several books. Then it goes back to the dogs.
But Wes came to Roman and me five and a half years ago. I don't want to get the timeline exactly wrong but he said I have an idea for a stop motion animated movie and what I have right now are alpha dogs, garbage, and possibly some type of setting in the future.
That literally was that was it and that's the greatest thing about working with Wes. He is in this modern world when there's so much of everything, so many ideas and so many texts and things. He's one person I know who thinks and thinks. When he has one idea that he just has a gut feeling about, he will just pursue it for a long time. Literally for months, we just talked about dogs and trash.
I was trying to understand what it was that he was envisioning and then slowly a movie started to come from it and emerge from it. The exciting thing was as a filmmaker, he is seeing a world and he's seeing these characters.
But Roman and I were talking about it, we're picturing different things. That's really the most exciting thing about it was after years of talking about what it was going to look like — imagining what kind of breeds the dogs were and inventing breeds of dogs — when you finally see the first few frames of it the first day of shooting, I almost cried. Because you see it for the first time. You've all been picturing slightly differently and there it is. It was an incredible collaboration.
Bill Murray
On how music is part of his daily life:
I’m listening to music and hearing it. You can hear it and it gets in your head. Some of those songs we do in the show get inside of you. I find myself singing them on the streets. People think that’s strange but they really get in you. Stephen Foster can get inside of you. You start singing. Gershwin can get inside of you. You can start singing it and you start almost skipping, running and jumping. That’s why they’re made, to lift the burden.
I’ve written a couple of little songs for shows. Maybe that’s another thing writing-wise that I’m going to tend to. So it’s on my agenda.
On why he thinks people love him so much:
I don’t know. I’ve been very lucky to be associated and my career has really followed great, great people. I’ve been right behind someone who was really a trailblazer. So they just broke the ice. John Belushi was a guy who really took a lot of us behind him, towed a lot of people through the ice and into the sea.
He really made a lot of things happen. My brother Brian, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, these are people who are older than me and more courageous than me. I don’t know if I could ever intend to do what I’ve ended up doing without having these people in front of me. So I’ve been lucky like that.
I was well educated, the Second City was an extraordinary education. I saw all those people work. Then “Saturday Night Live” was another extraordinary education. If you can succeed at those two places you can keep going. It’s really a great primary school and secondary school. Then you’re on your own. You’ve learned enough. You should be able to do it.
I’ve had a lot of good fortune. I’m not taking too much credit. — LA, GMA News
Isle of Dogs is slated for a May 2018 release
