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Post by itsanowenthing on Dec 17, 2004 19:13:48 GMT -5
No Shanghai Dawn.
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ozarka
Ned Coleman's Partner
Posts: 196
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Post by ozarka on Dec 17, 2004 22:07:43 GMT -5
Thanks for the article ozarka! I don't think he meant "superficial" to be a negative thing. I got the impression he meant that it was something that was not a substantial similarity or difference between he and Wes. Does that make sense? Thanks Remi! Yes, that makes perfect sense. When I re-read the sentence I realized that this was exactly what Owen was trying to convey. Unfortunately, because I was reading the article on the sly, I read it too fast and totally misinterpreted the point he was making. Lesson to be learned: When you're at work, then do your work! Leave the Owen reading for when you get home Thanks to O-thing and WilsonFreak as well!
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Post by Natalie on Dec 18, 2004 18:17:59 GMT -5
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ozarka
Ned Coleman's Partner
Posts: 196
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Post by ozarka on Dec 19, 2004 0:02:45 GMT -5
ok, this is just depressing..... here's an expert from an interview with Wes: Anderson has been batting around the idea for "The Life Aquatic" for some time, but when he sat down to write it two years ago, Wilson, an old college friend with whom he had written all his other films, was unable to find time to collaborate. Following "Bottle Rocket," Wilson was offered a lot of character roles and has become a laconic lead in middlebrow action comedies like "I Spy," "Shanghai Noon" and "Starsky & Hutch." One story had Anderson telling Wilson that if he didn't help write "The Life Aquatic," their partnership was over and that their friendship was ruptured. "Hey, Owen's in the movie, isn't he? I wrote the role for him to play. But will we write together again? Maybe not. He's into his acting career now, which I completely understand. And while I was little worried about writing with someone else at first, it turned out to be a great experience. Noah (Baumbach) and I had a similar sensibility, I guess, and we had a lot of fun working together." Baumbach is also a writer-director, whose first film, 1995's "Kicking and Screaming," was an art-house success; two later films, "Mr. Jealousy" and "Highball," both made in 1997, went straight to video essentially. "An actor like Owen, once you get good at it ... you have to stay in the game. You really can't take a year off to write a movie because the business moves too fast," says Anderson. "I have respect for the choice he made. "I could never be an actor. I sort of tried once. I was told that there was part for me in 'Armageddon,' and I read it and basically said OK, and then I was told I would have to audition, which was sort of humiliating in itself. But I did, and I was so nervous I was just terrible -- and that was even more humiliating. Then here's the weird part: They ended up offering me the part, but by that time, I felt so bad I just said no." Wes and Owen not writing together again...that just saddens me
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Post by bunnypanda on Dec 19, 2004 2:00:01 GMT -5
Thank you very much for posting it, ozarka I agree with you ozarka that it is very sad they will probably not write together again. I'm sure many people here agree too. ...I am going to be a bit emotional on this. I may write loads...bear with me everyone I remember both Wes and Owen talking about "a story of an oceanographer" Wes got an idea of and had told Owen about. It was around the time of the release of TRT. Wes and Owen were going to write TLA together at first. I also remember how sad both Wes and Owen were about the fact that they couldn't write as much of TRT together as they wanted, because Owen was so busy with acting. I imagine Wes and Owen had a lot of thinking and talking and had to come to terms with a lot of harsh reality when they came to the decision that they would not write TLA together. I sometimes imagine what it must have been like for Wes to see Owen becoming bigger and bigger as an actor and, on top of that, having great partnerships with people like Ben Stiller and Jackie Chan both on-screen and off-screen. I imagine, however much Owen was always close to Wes, Wes must have felt like everyone was pulling Owen away from him. Here is an excerpt from an article by Lynn Smith in LA Times, December 2001: Anderson is wistful and a little sad that Wilson's career is taking them further apart. An actor, after all, lives a different, more public life than that of a director. "Owen and I have created a sensibility together. We formed each other. Over 10 years or so, we have made our own voice. Owen is acting a lot more lately, and it's hard for him to be around for all this stuff .... He's becoming a better actor, and next time I put him in a movie, he's going to bring even more things into the mix." Anderson says he has a role in mind for Wilson in his next movie, but he adds, "Hopefully, Owen is going to be able to make enough time."And here is an excerpt from an article by Christine Spines in Premiere Magazine, December 2002: Wilson insists that his life remains relatively untouched by the changed brought with the realization of Platt's prophecy. But when asked how is screenwriting process with Anderson has changed with each project, he's clearly conflicted about what it says about him and who he is as an artists that he's allowed his acting career to push his screenwriting with Anderson into the margins. "[During] Bottle Rocket we were living together. Rushmore and Tenenbaums, it was just trying to find the time…" he trails off. "I don't know how to type or use the computer so Wes would do that stuff. I'd use notebook paper or say it out loud or send it to Wes," he says, brushing his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes. " I should write more. Writing's hard." He looks heartbroken when asked about their next project together, in which, tellingly, Wilson will participate as an actor, but not a writer. "Wes has a story about an oceanographer that he came up with a long time ago. He has an idea or me and Bill Murray to play this father-son thing," says Wilson. "He's writing it. When he gets a draft done, he'll show it to me and maybe I can, uh, be helpful as an actor."(articles thanks to the World of Owen site) You know, I just think that, now Wes is out often promoting TLA, he must be getting loads of people asking him if he will write with Owen again, and it must be hurting him like hell. And it must be the same for Owen too. It hurts us to think of the fact they will probably not write together again. It must hurt Wes and Owen even more. But it is great Wes and Owen are still best friends. Isozooid on the Yankee Racers board went to the Wes & Noah event at the New Yorker Festival on October 2nd this year and reported that Wes said Owen loves his acting career and he would never want him to give that up. Isozooid also wrote that Wes praised Owen throughout the evening and what came across was a very warm friendship. And just look at this: How gentle and trusting they are when they look at each other. I adore Wes and Owen for keeping and developing their friendship throughout all these years, while going different ways in their careers and despite all the fame, which has changed so many other people's friendships. God, I can't bear to see them go like Lennon-McCartney... Thank God, and thank you Wes and Owen.
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Post by Librarian on Dec 19, 2004 9:39:28 GMT -5
Thanks Ozarka and Bunnypanda. Can you imagine a relationship like theirs being scrutinized publicly. It is probably difficult to summarize in an interview or sound bite.
It is interesting where their different paths have taken them - and in the sometimes hateful industry of film to have still remained very close friends says a lot about both of them.
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Post by bunnypanda on Dec 19, 2004 9:57:31 GMT -5
Yes indeed, Lib. They must be very mature and, above all, know what is really important in their lives. It must take a lot of trust in each other and respect for each other to be like Owen & Wes. Ahhhhh:-/
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Burnett2
Team Zissou Intern
Simply Irresistible
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Post by Burnett2 on Dec 21, 2004 1:00:40 GMT -5
The Dec.24 issue of Entertainment Weekly has a picture of Wes and an article The Life Melodic talks about how Wes uses music and film to convey his ideas. (p.42)
(p.22) A pic of Owen at TLA premiere. "That's pretty cool," said The Life Aquatic's Owen Wilson ( on the red carpet Dec.9) of having Bill Murray as his on-screen dad. "Growing up and loving all those movies that he did."Countered Murray: "Oh, everyone just wants to hug Owen."
This was just a small article. Owen and Bill obviously had a great time working together.
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Post by bunnypanda on Dec 21, 2004 8:57:05 GMT -5
Thank you for the info Burnett2! I saw the scans of those articles and they are AWESOME:-/Especially the EW one OHHH:-/And I loved Bill's words on Owen too ;D because it's SO TRUE!!!!! I think someone may be able to post the scans of these articles. If not, I am sure my friend will let me post her scans here. Btw ever since I read the article ozarka posted above, I have been thinking so much about what role it was in Armageddon that was offered to Wes. I CANNOT stop thinking about it. Whatever that was it is SO CUTE:-/TOO CUTE:-/OMG how am I supposed to get over the cuteness of Wes acting?! Oh God. Oh my God. And I haven't even seen it I am just so excited by the imagination of it. DarkRoan, sculpturedsound, HurlT, PiD, you MUST be thinking the same thing!?
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Burnett2
Team Zissou Intern
Simply Irresistible
Posts: 142
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Post by Burnett2 on Dec 22, 2004 10:09:26 GMT -5
USA Today has an interview with Bill Murray and a cast picture of TLA that includes Owen.
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Post by sculpturedsound on Dec 22, 2004 22:17:03 GMT -5
Btw ever since I read the article ozarka posted above, I have been thinking so much about what role it was in Armageddon that was offered to Wes. I CANNOT stop thinking about it. Whatever that was it is SO CUTE:-/TOO CUTE:-/OMG how am I supposed to get over the cuteness of Wes acting?! Oh God. Oh my God. And I haven't even seen it I am just so excited by the imagination of it. DarkRoan, sculpturedsound, HurlT, PiD, you MUST be thinking the same thing!? Of course! I do wonder who Wes would have played and I really would have loved to see Wes acting! He couldn't possibly have been THAT bad! As far as Armageddon goes though, I think Wes could do so much better for his acting debut! Perhaps a nice black and white film (I'm obssessed with black and white films). Steve Buscemi is my ultimate favorite actor, and we all love Owen, so let's keep those two elements in Wes' black and white acting debut film. Perhaps Woody Allen could direct... ;D
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ozarka
Ned Coleman's Partner
Posts: 196
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Post by ozarka on Dec 23, 2004 19:42:24 GMT -5
Here's another "Wes and Owen" type article. This one is from the Toronto Star.
Wes and Owen, beneath the surface Friendship in college spurs surprising career Life Aquatic star liked pal's script even as a paragraph
GEOFF PEVERE MOVIE CRITIC
NEW YORK—The nearly expired year of 2004 has meant many things to many people, but to the creative team of Wes Anderson — the director-writer of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and now The Aquatic Life With Steve Zissou — and Owen Wilson — the co-writer of Rushmore and Tenenbaums and the laconic blond action-comedy star of Armageddon, Shanghai Surprise, Starsky & Hutch and, now, The Aquatic Life — it marks an anniversary. Fifteen years since the playwriting class that changed the course of American cinematic history. Sort of.
It was 1989. Although they had yet to meet, both Wesley Wales Anderson (then 20) and Owen Cunningham Wilson (then 21) were enrolled in the same playwriting class at the University of Texas. It was a small class and students had to sit around a table in a seminar room.
Anderson, sitting one December afternoon on the 21st floor of a luxury hotel with a stunning view of the Statue of Liberty (not to mention a telescope with which to view her), still remembers his first impression of his future collaborator.
"I didn't ever meet him in the class," says Anderson, now 35 but still looking highly seminar-friendly in corduroys, plaid shirt and sock feet. "The class was only nine people. It was a playwriting class. We were sitting around a table, like about like that, except there was one guy who was sitting in the corner of the room with a newspaper. Which I noticed on the first day.
"After a couple of days I decided, well if this guy's not going to sit at the table I'm not either. I would rather be watching it from the other side of the room, too. So I sat in the other corner and I remember him kind of noticing. It was like he was thinking `This guy's taking my idea.'"
"And then for the whole semester," says Anderson, "There he was over there and here I was here. I never spoke to him."
Wilson remembers it a little differently. He remembers it as a class of 12. And, in a different room in the same hotel with a different view ("What is that over there?" a veggie-crunching Wilson asks in his signature sleepy drawl, "Is that Soho?"), he does not mention his future friend and collaborator's defiant appropriation of Wilson's corner-sitting gambit. He remembers Anderson's weird clothes.
"Wes, over the course of the semester, seemed to have sort of a uniform. It seemed to be L.L. Bean boots with shorts. Not short shorts, but kind of like more down-to-your-knees, corduroy, big corduroy-type shorts."
Wilson pokes a finger beneath the cellophane wrapping of his room service veggie plate, carefully prodding out a slice of red pepper.
"I thought that was kind of odd, wearing these kind of L.L. Bean boots. But we never spoke."
Wilson chews over the memory along with the pepper. "But yeah, the first time we met he was wearing the L.L. Bean boots and the shorts."
He pauses a moment, chewing.
"And maybe a monocle." Crunch, crunch. "But that may be just the extravagance of memory. I'm not 100 per cent sure on the monocle."
The Dallas-born-and-bred Wilson had already been kicked out of high school, and had spent a few years in a military academy. He was studying English because it was the only subject that didn't bore him.
Anderson, Houston born, was also bored by just about everything except English, but what he really loved were movies. He crazy-loved movies and he yearned to make them. He even took a job in the projection booth at one of the university's student cinemas.
This development helped solidify their burgeoning friendship and future collaboration. Partly because Wilson shared Anderson's love of movies and partly because, as Anderson recalls "Owen didn't like to pay."
Being friends with the projectionist meant free movies.
"He got a job working at Blockbuster," recalls Anderson, "and I got a job working in the projection booth ... I screened us The Godfather movies in a 500-seat auditorium. I had one of the guys who worked there running the projector, and Owen and I were the only people in the audience. We had a great screening of The Godfather movies there. Both of them. I and II."
They became roommates. As legend records it, they lived in an apartment with broken windows their landlord refused to fix, so Anderson and Wilson staged a false break-and-enter and fled in the night. They were subsequently tracked down by a private eye hired by the landlord.
This was how their first collaboration came about. Inspired by their petty criminal misadventure, they wrote the first part of a movie called Bottle Rocket. It was about suburban upper-middle class kids who longed to live the gangster life. Anderson directed and co-wrote the short film with Wilson, who also acted in it along with his brother Luke. More than anything else, the casting of the Wilson brothers was a budgetary consideration.
The short was sent to writer-director James L. Brooks (As Good As It Gets, Spanglish) by a friend of Wilson's dad, and Brooks liked it. Next thing you know, Wilson and Anderson were handed the budget to make a $5 million movie from it.
Wilson got to work writing. Anderson cast Wilson and Wilson's brother Luke, neither of whom had never planned on being an actor.
"It was something that Wes had been planning," he stresses, nibbling. "Wes always wanted to be a director and he wanted Luke and I to act in this. I kind of expected him to want to replace us. And that never happened."
While Bottle Rocket fizzled handsomely upon initial release in 1996 (total domestic gross: $1 million U.S.), it brought attention to Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. Anderson got some money to make another movie, and hired Wilson to co-write it. It was called Rushmore. Bill Murray saw Bottle Rocket and liked it. He agreed to appear in Rushmore for a most unstarlike fee of $9,000 (U.S.).
And Wilson, almost presto-chango, became a movie star: Armageddon, The Haunting, Behind Enemy Lines, I Spy , The Big Bounce ... His schedule is currently so busy he's practically had to leave writing behind. Since Rushmore his only major collaboration was the script for Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums. His participation in The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, which opens Saturday, is purely on-screen: He plays Bill Murray's possibly illegitimate son.
Anderson wrote the script with New Yorker contributor Noah Baumbach. But surely Wilson, the former English major, playwriting seminar non-participant and phony B-and-E stager must miss writing?
The peppers gone, Wilson now works on the carrots. "Not really. Maybe now I'd like to because I'm slowing down. I don't want to keep doing movie after movie. It would probably be nice to write but I've never been a prolific writer. It's kind of something I've got to agonize over.
"It's a lot easier to go act in a movie, and write on that movie, and change stuff in that movie than to sit down and try to dream up something new. Having said that, I think I would try to write something. I'll write something again. It's just finding the right thing."
But while Wilson's participation in his old college buddy's new movie has been scaled back, he maintains a key historical role in The Life Aquatic's long gestation. It was back in University of Texas days that Anderson first got the idea for a movie about a nearly washed-up oceanographer on an unseemly ocean-going revenge mission. He wrote the idea up in a paragraph and showed it to Wilson.
"I remember it very well," drawls the actor. "I remember the paragraph that he had written that had all the elements, or a lot of elements that are in this movie. It had Steve Cocteau, who became Steve Zissou. It had Eleanor, his wife. It had the Belafonte, his boat, and it had Zissou ever in pursuit of the jaguar shark ..." — here Wilson begins to quote the paragraph verbatim — "a species so rare as to quite possibly constitute a one-off mutant fluke."
On another floor of the same hotel, Anderson admits that the movie he's in this place to talk about today might not exist if it weren't for Owen Wilson.
"That's true," he says, sliding sock feet across the glass coffee table. "I had loved Cousteau and I just wrote this one paragraph.
"I remember at the time I wrote it, I thought it was funny," Anderson recalls. "But I couldn't quite think what happens in it. I couldn't come up with any story. I just had this paragraph, and then after a few weeks I thought this was pretty stupid. I don't like this after all.
"But Owen really liked it," he stresses. "Owen often really criticized the things I was writing as too out of touch, but he liked that one. And over the years he would often bring it up and say `You've gotta do something with the Steve Cocteau thing.' And eventually we did."
END.
"Bill Murray saw Bottle Rocket and liked it". I could've sworn I had read in more than a few articles that Bill Murray had never seen Bottle Rocket........Wes had sent it to him when he was trying to get him to do Rushmore, but Bill never got around to watching it?
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Post by WilsonFreak on Dec 23, 2004 20:12:37 GMT -5
I remember seeing or reading that also, that Bill had never seen Bottle Rocket. And I remember Bill saying that Wes had sent him a copy of BR, then another, and another and he was joking that he had copies in the liquor cabinet and in with his movies and in the closet..................Yes, I remember that also.
Owen eating his veggies..............cute!!
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Post by Gage51 on Dec 23, 2004 23:07:53 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing that Ozarka. Owen really loves his veggies doesn't he? It made me hungry just reading it. Beth
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Post by bunnypanda on Dec 24, 2004 21:49:59 GMT -5
Thank you very much for the article ozarka! Oh yes I LOVE "Wes and Owen" type articles I am totally in love with this part: And ozarka and WF, you are right about Bill not having seen BR before agreeing to star in Rushmore. In the interviews in the special features of the Rushmore DVD Criterion Collection, both Bill and Wes say that. Wes cutely talks about how he talked to Bill on the phone trying to convince him to be in Rushmore and Bill talked to Wes about a movie Wes had not seen (I can't remember the title of the movie...I think it was something quite well-known) for 30 minutes and then at the end of it suddenly agreed to be in Rushmore and Wes was like, "What...?...did that talk just now convince him to be in Rushmore?..." Wes is decisively CUTE
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