Wes Anderson Explains How to Write & Direct Movies | The Director's Chair

I certainly don't feel like a part of any establishment because I do feel kind of like I've got my own style and voice. There's a rhythm that's not quite reality. Old-fashioned movie techniques.

It's hard wiring that I'm not really able to reconfigure. I don't mind terribly building up a collection of films that are linked together, but I would love not to have someone say, "Well, that's just like what you did before. " [Intro Music] [Crowd noise] - Wes is one of those people who's managed to maintain a childlike perspective on the world.

- Action,Action,Action. - This infinite capacity for story and play. - Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang.

- Wes`s films I think have this quality of unusual sense of humor, which actually is holding very serious themes and quite serious emotions, in fact. Wes`s films have an unusual blend that no one else can repeat. "- And so it begins.

" - The first thing I wanted to do when I was a kid was to be an architect. And then when I was in high school, I really wanted to be a writer. [Music] But I did always do little short plays as a kid and I made Super 8 movies.

- Yeah. - So what I do now combine some of these things. People always refer to my movies as quirky and they think the characters are weird.

Almost every character in any movie I've ever made is based on somebody in real life are based on a combination of real people. [Music] - How much is "Rushmore" mirror your high school years? - I think it's a combination of my high school years and Owen Wilson`s, so, you know, we wrote it together.

[Music] And we filmed in my school. You know, literally in the same classrooms. These characters put`s on plays in the movie and those plays are based on plays I did as a kid.

Action! These are pretty personal movies, like this movie "Rushmore" is very personal. - What does that mean personal?

- Like in high school, one of the central things is to be cool. And this is a kid who's not cool at all, but he has his own ideas of the way he wants to be, things he wants to kind of accomplish. And he has this great enthusiasm for those things and this kind of drive about it and a resilience.

"Just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life. " You know, all the movies that I've made have been movies that aren't entirely comedies. Halfway through the movie, there's a shift, it turns into something darker, I guess.

[Music] There's some degree to which whatever is coming from my imagination is inspired by my background and my own psychology. Without me controlling it or choosing to, I'm in the movies. To make a good movie, you need a lot of ideas and you need a lot of material.

That's I think where it can start to be a bit of a painting, a bit of a theater production. [Music] The sets and the costumes and all those things, there's a certain exaggeration in all that stuff. And they're almost jokes in the clothes and the mustaches.

I do like clothes there's no way tonight. I like costumes for characters and stories, you know, the costume means a lot about the character. With "Grand Budapest Hotel" it has ski chases, it's got trains and it's got a huge grant hotel.

It's a big movie. If we did take this script and just hand it over to somebody who makes movie budgets, they would come back with something much, much, much, higher than, you know, an ushootable movie. But I prefer to get to a point and say, "Okay, I've done something impossible.

How are we going to do it? " That's more fun to me, anyway. [Music] I've got a lot of people who have worked with not just the actors but lots of the people who work in other capacities on these movies and we've figured out lots of different approaches that work well for my kind of movie.

As this visual stuff that you can link from one movie to another. [Music] A lot of things that I do the same way every time but it's just the way I like it. [Music] - What struck me the most is just the symmetry.

- This comes from Wes and I've been working with him, so I've done seven movies with them, so I kind of know what to expect. What we do is I have the camera assistants, take a piece of tape, so we put one on one side of one matte box, and the other on the other side and we always just run to the corners of the room to make sure the camera is right in the dead center. Because I know that when Wes walks in the first thing he's going to say to me, "Are we square to the wall there?

" and I`ll say, "Yes,we are. " So we kind of do that by habit. You know, what's great for me is that he so concerned about the frame and so if people are hitting their marks, he will be the one to say, "Excuse me.

Could you be two inches that way, you know. " - Do that for a moment but not leaning back so much. Yeah, that's it.

We're doing swish pans where we you know start center on the door we go over to the -- everything's got to be very symmetrical. [Music] "- That's all for now. " - I feel always feel like any character from any one of my movies could walk into another one of the movies and be at home there.

- Do you ever want to do something that is dramatically different from anything you've ever done? - Yeah, I do. [Music] We started the movie by saying, we have this Roald Dahl book we're going to do.

[Music] I read the book when I was very young. I loved the digging. I love that, they were spending all this time underground.

"- But I guess we have-- - I`m sorry. Maybe my invitation got lost in the mail. Does anybody know what this badgers talking about?

" [Music] "Moonrise Kingdom" is really based on a fantasy, a sort of dream I had as a child of a romance that didn't actually happen. "- Dear Sam. My answer is yes.

Dear Susie - When? Dear Sam - Where? " - That's really the inspiration for the movie.

"I love you, too. " To make a movie, it's got a hold a lot of feeling and you've got to build up something and you've got to kind of research and gather ideas. [Music] Our first inspiration, really, was Japanese cinema.

Kurosawa and Miyazaki. Those are the ones who were really inspiring us. But the other two are the woodblock prints makers: Hiroshige and Hokusai.

We were steeping ourselves in their work and putting the pictures of the walls. We wanted for the movie to be as Japanese in our foreign way, as we could make it I guess. If I feel like I have an idea what the best thing is for the story, I just want to follow that.

And most of my life is spent making these movies, I mean, this is a main thing I do. I mean, it's really the only thing I do. - You have no life outside of movies, - Not a lot.

The thing that got me my first chance to make a feature film was Owen Wilson and I, we went to school together. We had a few thousand dollars that we borrowed from our fathers and we made a short film. "Just be practical, Anthony.

When we do a job,we do to the best of our abilities, right? We're trying to do it like professionals. `Cause that's what we are--" - Wes and I were movie fanatics and just wanted to begin working on something together.

To coffee shop and come over as a nice place to work. - There was a real sense of melancholy to wear as we got towards the end. And I thought, "Well, you know, this will be the only movie ever get to make and I really love movies and, you know, least got to make one with my brothers and Wes.

" - We've managed to get that in the right hands. And that was how I got the chance to make a feature film. [Music] "- Good intensity.

- High. " We've been able to do this the way we wanted to. You know, with the cast that we wanted of our friends and the story that we wanted to tell.

We've been able to do it on a big enough scale, but without having to really compromise. - How are you feeling after these years or so that there is a theme or a sense of what a Wes Anderson movie is? There`s that an outside perception.

- It's probably better for me if it stays in outside perception because the more I think about it the more confused I get. I, you know, I have the choice of saying, here are things that people can say, "That's like what you've done before. " And I can actively, aggressively avoid them and steer away from them or I can say, "What do I want to do?

" How what would I like it to be? " And accept that there's might be some very clear threads and things that are going to connect my movies together. I have tended to say, I think I would rather just do what I love.