I found this article awhile back. I hope it is new to some of you. Here's a direct link.
www.latinoreview.com/films_2003/wb/alexandemma/luke_interview.htmlALEX & EMMA
Interview with Luke Wilson
By Neil Nisperos
Luke I’ve seen you at several movie premieres in several months and you’re always whizzing by and going in. I was just wondering is that part of the process you don’t like?
Luke: Well I can’t think of… I’ve only been to “The In-Laws” when I think about it. I mean I’m not complaining about it but if it’s not my own premiere I prefer to not get screamed at and have my picture taken. I’m not a very good at getting my picture taken. I tend to perspire a lot when I’m getting my picture taken.
What do you like about playing this guy?
Luke: I like the idea of like a guy that’s kind of like under the gun. He’s not a dumb guy but he makes a lot of mistakes because he’s so wrapped up in his own work that he can’t really see the forest for the trees. I mean he falls in love with Sophie Marceau and she is beautiful and leads a jet-set life and looks at Kate’s character Emma who obviously has a lot more substance and is a better person.
What is the attraction for an actor to playing in a love story when you know what will happen. You know when you will be in a scene when you will be mad when you’re going to be sad, when you’re going to reconciliate, when you’re going to kiss her at the end of the movie. What is the attraction?
Luke: Well I guess I don’t think of it in those terms. I’m not good at looking at the future. I just kind of go scene by scene you know. Which I feel like might help me in that respect. But yeah I guess you’re saying in a movie where it’s like you’ve got people are starting off not liking each other and then they’re going to end up attracted to each other. I don’t know It’s kind of a challenge. But I guess it’s like every story’s been done before pretty much for the most part but I mean that’s why movie stand out when they do go against the grain.
Your brother is a writer. Did you take any personality traits from him to play a novelist?
Luke: Well Owen’s funny in that he always takes notes and writes things down that he hears and it’s always kind of funny if I go and get something out of his room and I see a notebook and it’ll just have the strangest scene written down but it’ll make you laugh or smile and yeah he’s just kind of good at doing that kind of thing. The script kind of had things laid out. So we didn’t change that much stuff to it so I don’t know. Maybe the thing is that it is kind of hard work I guess being a writer. You always wonder how you create something that’s supposed to be creative under a deadline. I always think about a painter you know. Yeah they don’t have somebody who says yeah we need this by then but it actually does happen. Some painter does a show and they need ten pieces to put on the wall. So I kind of liked the idea of that something in your job that you think is creative kind of free-flowing and you do it organically when you feel the muse. I saw it as kind of scary to not have any ideas coming and I’ve still got to finish this book. So that’s kind of the idea and I’ve seen Owen and Wes be kind of under the gun and try to get something done and you get the feeling that you got to grind through it.
Are you still living at his house?
Luke: No. I was asked to leave. I lost my privileges at Owen’s house. No, I bought a house last summer. I still kind of took a few months to get out of there. I just told him he needed to be more specific. Said he wanted me to get a house, I got a house. I didn’t know he wanted me to move into the thing.
Do you ever feel blocked as an actor and how do you get over that?
Luke: Um, I mean I feel it when maybe the scene isn’t well written and maybe you’re just kind of not connecting to who you’re doing it with. That’s just one of those things you kind of have to work through and just try and make it happen. And sometimes my first instinct would be I’d never say this. It’s not written well. But so you either try and change it or you figure out why a person’s saying something. But yeah that’s one of those things where it always kind of happens on a movie where you have a scene that doesn’t quite flow and you’ve got to try to find a way to make it work.
Can you tell us about Kate do you both work in the same way?
Luke: I think we do kind of work in the same way in that we kind of in a laid back manner maybe, but we still kind of get the job done. I mean this is a movie where I’ve had more dialogue than I’ve ever really had before and all the stuff, kind of dictating the novel and people say how do you remember all those lines for the movie and they don’t know you spend like one day on half a page. It’s not like a play where you have to get it all down. But yeah I think we do and that we kind of like to and I think the fact that it’s a comedy and that dictates the mood.
Did you improvise at all?
Luke: Yeah. I mean Rob Reiner is real good at taking good ideas and not taking ones that don’t work. Sometimes you know it’s like when I first get an idea I’m real high on it. And Rob was just really good about kind of hearing me out. He’d be like, that’s not funny. It doesn’t work Luke. And then other times he’d really like stuff. And he’s one of those people where he’s got such a great sense of humor. Obviously like the house he grew up in, his dad, Mel Brooks and Sid Caesar. So it’s like so you do a scene and you do five takes I never thought will this guy take the best take. But yeah he’s just a funny smart guy and that kind of relaxes you in a way.
What did you think about the structure of this film when you read the script and found out you’d be playing two different characters and you’d be going back in time and forward and stuff?
Luke: It was kind of one of those things that I figured out with Rob early on and because it’s a comedy and the way he wanted to do it it’s I was saying do you want the guy different you know for the period. Do you want him talking Shakespearean, you know something in an accent or something like that. But he wanted it so that he was the exact same guy. It was like he had taken Alex from present day Boston to how he says in the period part like “How you doin’” stuff like that where you’d never say that back then. But that’s kind of like the way to figure it out with Rob is he wanted him to be like a guy out of place.
Are you a storyteller in real life?
Luke: Yeah, I mean, In my family, humor is a constant so we’re always recounting things and stuff like that. You know Owen’s always prompting me to tell a story that I’ve told before. You know sometimes you’re not in the mood to tell a story and Owen will like make me tell a story and get irritated when I don’t remember specifics. I remember the last time I told a story I was like well why don’t you tell it. I mean he knows what I’m going to say, it’s just that he likes to hear things over and over. But yeah I mean I love to hear a good story. It’s just you can’t beat stuff that actually happened.
What was it like to play those scenes with the Cubans in the movie? What kind of people were they?
Luke: Those guys were both real nice those actors. It’s one of those things where you don’t realize getting grabbed all day hurts. I hate to sound like a weak actor but you just get the hunks of me. Those guys would just grab a hunk of stomach and just yank here and at the end of the day I would just kind of like be limping around and they were both real nice guys and neither one was actually a real Cuban.
Is this your first dance scene?
Luke: Yeah, probably.
Was it your idea to do Elvis?
Luke: Yeah that was one of those things where Rob was saying you’re going to need to take Flamenco lessons. And you just saw my face drop. It was like on “Old School” where you read the script and it says okay you’re going to have this whole dance sequence and one day I’m not going to lunch but you’re going to work with the Laker Girls choreographer. But yeah Rob was nice enough to let me modify the dance thing and we just did a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing with different moves from people like Pete Townshend, Elvis and Michael Jackson.