Post by Librarian on Apr 18, 2007 22:03:48 GMT -5
Luke is in this issue of Best Life magazine.
Click here for article and amazing pics
The Book on Luke
By: David A. Keeps, Photographs: Andrew Macpherson
Apr 14, 2007 - 4:23:58 PM
He's the (even more) laid-back Wilson brother, a favorite son of Austin, Texas, and an actor-writer-director with big talent and a restless soul.
Whatever the reason, Luke Wilson, the baby brother of documentary filmmaker Andrew and quirky screen idol Owen, hasn’t spent much time worrying about the question, What does it mean to be a grown-up?
“I think that will happen when I have kids,” says Wilson, who’s 35. “As it is now, I feel pretty much the same as I did when I was 20. I don’t have that many responsibilities besides paying a mortgage and showing up on time for work. I don’t like to blow things off, and I don’t like to be late, but I hate making plans. I don’t know what that says about my personality, but I like to be off the clock when I’m not working.”
Wilson is almost always on the clock. Since the 1996 feature remake of the short film Bottle Rocket, which launched the careers of the Wilson brothers and director Wes Anderson, he has racked up more than three dozen screen credits. When he isn’t cast as the puppy-dog boyfriend of one of Hollywood’s big blondes (Cameron, Reese, Uma, and, in the forthcoming Blonde Ambition, Jessica Simpson) or playing the straight man to comedy’s Frat Pack (Ben, Vince, Will, and brother Owen), Wilson goes in for loftier pursuits. He reads biographies of men such as Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and Sam Peckinpah—currently, he is deep into one about fellow Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson—and he scribbles out film scripts in longhand. One of those scripts was recently turned into a film titled The Wendell Baker Story, which will appear in theaters this year. Wilson not only wrote it but also plays the lead and codirects.
Wilson owns a home in Santa Monica, but when he’s off the clock, he can often be found in Texas, visiting his folks in Dallas or, according to the plan he has made for today, getting in a round of golf with old buddies in Austin. The hippest city in the Lone Star State looms large in the actor’s life. As a teenager, he hung out with his brother Owen and Wes Anderson on the campus of the University of Texas. He filmed Mike Judge’s 2006 comedy Idiocracy and much of The Wendell Baker Story here. He has been looking for a place in Austin for a couple of years now, he says, “but I just haven’t pulled the trigger.” Instead, Wilson bunks at a four-star hotel, where he is such a regular that the hotel lets him keep his recently purchased 1968 Camaro convertible in the garage.
“Let’s go to Joe’s and get some coffee,” he suggests, seconds after shaking hands in the hotel lobby. Some actor-writer-directors are happy to pull up a chair and rattle on. Wilson, a former track star, seems more relaxed when he’s in motion. It’s cold in the garage, and he hunches his shoulders against the chill. He’s wearing a stone-colored corduroy jacket over a navy-blue country-club golf sweater and Levi’s cords, and he has immaculate Converse One Stars on his feet. His new set of wheels is equally pristine, with a pale-yellow custom paint job, black interior, and bucket seats—a true muscle car that Wilson drives with a proud, satisfied grin.
At Joe’s, he talks about the Camaro with Liz, the proprietor of the drive-up coffee stand, which is next to the San Jose, a motel she has transformed into a resort. Liz invites Luke to have an early look at a boutique trailer park she is building in Marfa, Texas, and he says he will. “I feel good being around people who have different projects going on,” says Wilson, driving off, coffee in one hand. “It’s one of those follow-your-bliss–type deals.”
To understand Luke or any of the talented Wilson clan, it’s helpful to examine their bliss-following DNA. Bob Wilson and Laura Cunningham were New England Yankees who relocated to Dallas in 1968, when Bob landed a plush job at the Scott Paper Company. By the time Luke Cunningham Wilson (all three brothers share their mother’s maiden name as their middle names) was born, three years later, his father was running Channel 13, the PBS affiliate in Dallas. Mom, an accomplished photographer, taught her favorite subjects—Andrew, Owen, and Luke—how to be comfortable in front of the camera. Dad, who brought Monty Python to Texas TV screens, took his kids to see films such as The Man Who Would Be King and Scarface.
After 10 years at PBS, Bob Wilson switched careers again and opened a small advertising agency. “He always seemed to love what he was doing and never seemed to be doing the same thing,” recalls Luke.
The family, though well-off, were outsiders in Dallas. “We were Catholic, which is slightly odd for Texas,” says Wilson, “but then, we did not even go to church.” Despite the creative atmosphere in the Wilson home—and a strict upbringing (even today he is the well-spoken, sit-up-straight-in-your-chair gentleman)—the brothers were still boys. “When I was 10, it was just like juvie hall at times at home. In the summer, Owen would come up with some new task every day, and just to be able to hang around with my older brothers, I would have to do some kind of incredible physical trick, which always ended up with me semiconscious.”
Luke lived among role models. He started reading the newspaper as a little kid to emulate his brothers and father, and he thought he’d become a photographer like his mother. He attended the Lamplighter School, a progressive elementary school in Dallas. From fifth grade through high school graduation, he followed his brothers at St. Mark’s School of Texas, an all-boys prep school, where he set records in the 400- and 800-meter sprints, and played football too.
His real education, though, began after classes. When he was an early teen, he recalls, “Blockbuster arrived in Dallas,” and he spent hours watching classic movies on video and reading up on his favorite directors. Wilson reveals all this over a plate of scrambled egg whites with hot sauce and a side of bacon at a restaurant near the university. He wolfs down his food, but as the place fills up, he grows quieter. He looks down at the tape recorder as if it is a machine designed to suck his soul out through his nose. Then he’s in motion again. He asks for the check, pays it, and barrels out the door before I can get my arms through the sleeves of my coat.
We drive through campus. “I just couldn’t really get it going in college,” he says, even at three different schools. “I think if you’re going to have a certain trade, you need to go, but I certainly didn’t.” By then, he had pretty much become a serious, self-taught film scholar. Of course, he was also schooled in more popular fare such as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and James Bond flicks. So when Owen and his University of Texas classmate Wes Anderson offered Luke a role in Bottle Rocket, a film they had written, there was no hesitation.
“What was interesting was that they thought they could do it,” he says. “In Texas, making a movie would be considered weird. It was like playing in the NFL. It just did not seem like something that could be done.”
He kept on, and the Wilson brothers, along with Anderson, cemented their reputations as artists with a collective sense of offbeat humor, working together in Anderson’s more successful films Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Luke embraced his opportunities like a journeyman, “taking every part that came my way,” and Hollywood embraced him as a sturdy, if not quite studly, leading man. While Luke has been the more prolific actor, appearing in franchise films such as Charlie’s Angels and Legally Blonde, Owen has managed to amass the bigger box-office clout.
And now there are signs that Luke Wilson is beginning to build his own legacy. He recently wrapped Vacancy, a creepy thriller with Kate Beckinsale that Wilson describes as the kind of movie designed to open at number one. And then there is his own work. “The closest thing I have to a philosophy is that doing films like Legally Blonde, which may not be to my taste, would make it easier to get my own films made.” When The Wendell Baker Story came together with Wilson as auteur, he turned it into a complete family affair: Andrew signed on as codirector and Laura Cunningham Wilson (Mom) worked as the still photographer on the set. The film, about an indefatigable con man who ends up the unlikely protector of the residents in a retirement hotel, wrapped up late last year.
Working with family, Wilson was able to communicate in shorthand. “You don’t have to waste time. We all know what parts we play in the family,” he says with a broad grin, “so I’m always ready for these guys to try to f--k me over.” In fact, codirecting with his eldest brother had advantages. “I was so amped up, either really happy or really mad about stuff, that I was exhausting myself,” admits Wilson. “Andrew keeps a cool head, so I have learned that from him.”
Despite an affable, low-key demeanor often described as laconic, Wilson is ambitious. “In terms of drive, I’m somewhere between David Geffen and The Dude [Jeff Bridges] in The Big Lebowski,” he says. “I’m always kind of churning, and I never feel that content. Sometimes I have to make a point to think, This is a day off, it’s a beautiful day, let’s get some good food, have a beer, and relax, and that really is good enough for me. There are times when I am happy, but there is always something off in the distance, something that I want to get done.”
Click to enlarge in all their glory:
Click here for article and amazing pics
The Book on Luke
By: David A. Keeps, Photographs: Andrew Macpherson
Apr 14, 2007 - 4:23:58 PM
He's the (even more) laid-back Wilson brother, a favorite son of Austin, Texas, and an actor-writer-director with big talent and a restless soul.
Whatever the reason, Luke Wilson, the baby brother of documentary filmmaker Andrew and quirky screen idol Owen, hasn’t spent much time worrying about the question, What does it mean to be a grown-up?
“I think that will happen when I have kids,” says Wilson, who’s 35. “As it is now, I feel pretty much the same as I did when I was 20. I don’t have that many responsibilities besides paying a mortgage and showing up on time for work. I don’t like to blow things off, and I don’t like to be late, but I hate making plans. I don’t know what that says about my personality, but I like to be off the clock when I’m not working.”
Wilson is almost always on the clock. Since the 1996 feature remake of the short film Bottle Rocket, which launched the careers of the Wilson brothers and director Wes Anderson, he has racked up more than three dozen screen credits. When he isn’t cast as the puppy-dog boyfriend of one of Hollywood’s big blondes (Cameron, Reese, Uma, and, in the forthcoming Blonde Ambition, Jessica Simpson) or playing the straight man to comedy’s Frat Pack (Ben, Vince, Will, and brother Owen), Wilson goes in for loftier pursuits. He reads biographies of men such as Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, and Sam Peckinpah—currently, he is deep into one about fellow Texan Lyndon Baines Johnson—and he scribbles out film scripts in longhand. One of those scripts was recently turned into a film titled The Wendell Baker Story, which will appear in theaters this year. Wilson not only wrote it but also plays the lead and codirects.
Wilson owns a home in Santa Monica, but when he’s off the clock, he can often be found in Texas, visiting his folks in Dallas or, according to the plan he has made for today, getting in a round of golf with old buddies in Austin. The hippest city in the Lone Star State looms large in the actor’s life. As a teenager, he hung out with his brother Owen and Wes Anderson on the campus of the University of Texas. He filmed Mike Judge’s 2006 comedy Idiocracy and much of The Wendell Baker Story here. He has been looking for a place in Austin for a couple of years now, he says, “but I just haven’t pulled the trigger.” Instead, Wilson bunks at a four-star hotel, where he is such a regular that the hotel lets him keep his recently purchased 1968 Camaro convertible in the garage.
“Let’s go to Joe’s and get some coffee,” he suggests, seconds after shaking hands in the hotel lobby. Some actor-writer-directors are happy to pull up a chair and rattle on. Wilson, a former track star, seems more relaxed when he’s in motion. It’s cold in the garage, and he hunches his shoulders against the chill. He’s wearing a stone-colored corduroy jacket over a navy-blue country-club golf sweater and Levi’s cords, and he has immaculate Converse One Stars on his feet. His new set of wheels is equally pristine, with a pale-yellow custom paint job, black interior, and bucket seats—a true muscle car that Wilson drives with a proud, satisfied grin.
At Joe’s, he talks about the Camaro with Liz, the proprietor of the drive-up coffee stand, which is next to the San Jose, a motel she has transformed into a resort. Liz invites Luke to have an early look at a boutique trailer park she is building in Marfa, Texas, and he says he will. “I feel good being around people who have different projects going on,” says Wilson, driving off, coffee in one hand. “It’s one of those follow-your-bliss–type deals.”
To understand Luke or any of the talented Wilson clan, it’s helpful to examine their bliss-following DNA. Bob Wilson and Laura Cunningham were New England Yankees who relocated to Dallas in 1968, when Bob landed a plush job at the Scott Paper Company. By the time Luke Cunningham Wilson (all three brothers share their mother’s maiden name as their middle names) was born, three years later, his father was running Channel 13, the PBS affiliate in Dallas. Mom, an accomplished photographer, taught her favorite subjects—Andrew, Owen, and Luke—how to be comfortable in front of the camera. Dad, who brought Monty Python to Texas TV screens, took his kids to see films such as The Man Who Would Be King and Scarface.
After 10 years at PBS, Bob Wilson switched careers again and opened a small advertising agency. “He always seemed to love what he was doing and never seemed to be doing the same thing,” recalls Luke.
The family, though well-off, were outsiders in Dallas. “We were Catholic, which is slightly odd for Texas,” says Wilson, “but then, we did not even go to church.” Despite the creative atmosphere in the Wilson home—and a strict upbringing (even today he is the well-spoken, sit-up-straight-in-your-chair gentleman)—the brothers were still boys. “When I was 10, it was just like juvie hall at times at home. In the summer, Owen would come up with some new task every day, and just to be able to hang around with my older brothers, I would have to do some kind of incredible physical trick, which always ended up with me semiconscious.”
Luke lived among role models. He started reading the newspaper as a little kid to emulate his brothers and father, and he thought he’d become a photographer like his mother. He attended the Lamplighter School, a progressive elementary school in Dallas. From fifth grade through high school graduation, he followed his brothers at St. Mark’s School of Texas, an all-boys prep school, where he set records in the 400- and 800-meter sprints, and played football too.
His real education, though, began after classes. When he was an early teen, he recalls, “Blockbuster arrived in Dallas,” and he spent hours watching classic movies on video and reading up on his favorite directors. Wilson reveals all this over a plate of scrambled egg whites with hot sauce and a side of bacon at a restaurant near the university. He wolfs down his food, but as the place fills up, he grows quieter. He looks down at the tape recorder as if it is a machine designed to suck his soul out through his nose. Then he’s in motion again. He asks for the check, pays it, and barrels out the door before I can get my arms through the sleeves of my coat.
We drive through campus. “I just couldn’t really get it going in college,” he says, even at three different schools. “I think if you’re going to have a certain trade, you need to go, but I certainly didn’t.” By then, he had pretty much become a serious, self-taught film scholar. Of course, he was also schooled in more popular fare such as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and James Bond flicks. So when Owen and his University of Texas classmate Wes Anderson offered Luke a role in Bottle Rocket, a film they had written, there was no hesitation.
“What was interesting was that they thought they could do it,” he says. “In Texas, making a movie would be considered weird. It was like playing in the NFL. It just did not seem like something that could be done.”
He kept on, and the Wilson brothers, along with Anderson, cemented their reputations as artists with a collective sense of offbeat humor, working together in Anderson’s more successful films Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Luke embraced his opportunities like a journeyman, “taking every part that came my way,” and Hollywood embraced him as a sturdy, if not quite studly, leading man. While Luke has been the more prolific actor, appearing in franchise films such as Charlie’s Angels and Legally Blonde, Owen has managed to amass the bigger box-office clout.
And now there are signs that Luke Wilson is beginning to build his own legacy. He recently wrapped Vacancy, a creepy thriller with Kate Beckinsale that Wilson describes as the kind of movie designed to open at number one. And then there is his own work. “The closest thing I have to a philosophy is that doing films like Legally Blonde, which may not be to my taste, would make it easier to get my own films made.” When The Wendell Baker Story came together with Wilson as auteur, he turned it into a complete family affair: Andrew signed on as codirector and Laura Cunningham Wilson (Mom) worked as the still photographer on the set. The film, about an indefatigable con man who ends up the unlikely protector of the residents in a retirement hotel, wrapped up late last year.
Working with family, Wilson was able to communicate in shorthand. “You don’t have to waste time. We all know what parts we play in the family,” he says with a broad grin, “so I’m always ready for these guys to try to f--k me over.” In fact, codirecting with his eldest brother had advantages. “I was so amped up, either really happy or really mad about stuff, that I was exhausting myself,” admits Wilson. “Andrew keeps a cool head, so I have learned that from him.”
Despite an affable, low-key demeanor often described as laconic, Wilson is ambitious. “In terms of drive, I’m somewhere between David Geffen and The Dude [Jeff Bridges] in The Big Lebowski,” he says. “I’m always kind of churning, and I never feel that content. Sometimes I have to make a point to think, This is a day off, it’s a beautiful day, let’s get some good food, have a beer, and relax, and that really is good enough for me. There are times when I am happy, but there is always something off in the distance, something that I want to get done.”
Click to enlarge in all their glory: