ABOUT THE SCREENPLAY
With just three films--"Bottle Rocket," "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums"--Wes Anderson has established a comically charged yet deeply human view of modern life and relationships. Each of his broadly appealing comedies has tackled recurring themes of aspiration, misfits, family, love and the fall from grace. His fourth film takes these same themes into wholly new territory as Anderson simultaneously tackles an ocean-going adventure rife with chases, shoot-outs, preying sharks and underwater wonders.
In a sense, THE LIFE AQUATIC became Anderson's own expedition into the unknown. Barry Mendel explains: "Wes took some wild risks in making this movie. He essentially threw out the 'Wes Anderson book' and reinvented himself. Far from the very precise chamber pieces of 'Rushmore' or 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' he's thrown himself into a chaotic, exterior, fantastical genre film."
Anderson's novel-like screenplays always emerge from intimate personal experience and at the center of THE LIFE AQUATIC is another character close to Anderson's heart: Steve Zissou, a world-famous oceanographer who is both comically familiar and entirely unique. Long fascinated by aquatic films and undersea life in general, Anderson had always wanted to make a movie set on a boat in the world of adventure filmmaking. "This is a movie I've been thinking about for fourteen years," he comments. "I've always been fascinated by this strange and amazing character who creates a kind of eccentric family at sea."
As early as his college years, Anderson penned a short story about an oceanographer that introduced Steve Zissou, his boat The Belafonte and the wife who turns out to be the real brains behind his operation. From there, the character continued to evolve over the years, as Anderson continued to ponder the personality and plight of Steve Zissou and at last began to collaborate on a screenplay with his long-time friend Noah Baumbach, a writer and director ("Kicking and Screaming") who also writes comic pieces for The New Yorker. Meeting at the same New York restaurant day after day, Anderson and Baumbach fleshed out the story not only of Zissou, but also of his crew of fellow dreamers who set out to sea with him. As they wrote the action-packed story of Team Zissou, their explorations of the characters brought the story's undercurrents to the surface.
"Steve Zissou is someone whose entire modus operandi in life is to create a team, to always be surrounded by a group of people who will go with him on his adventures," explains Anderson. "But now he's reached a point in his life where he's already done a lot of his work, where he's been married a couple of times, and suddenly, it all seems to be slipping away."
"So the story is about Steve Zissou, this band of adventurers that he brings together and the mission that they go on in search of a creature that may or may not exist. And, at the same time, it's about a guy who is at a low point in his career and is trying to reach for something greater than he's ever done before--to reaffirm himself. And when he meets somebody who might be his son, that suddenly brings him back in touch with some things he's lost contact with, as well as questions he hasn't asked himself in a long time, and changes the whole journey."
The screenplay went beyond anything Anderson had previously done in terms of inventing an entire world that follows its own slightly off-kilter rules of reality. When producer Barry Mendel read an early draft of THE LIFE AQUATIC, he was quickly drawn into the totally enveloping fictional world Anderson and Baumbach had created.
"The level of detail and the amount of emotional layers and the sophistication of the dialogue in that first draft was terrific," says Mendel. "Wes's verbal dexterity and ability to shift cadences and ideas in a heartbeat is something that doesn't really exist outside of his movies. It's something that I think people almost take for granted in a Wes Anderson movie--that the dialogue will be brilliant--but he takes it to the next level in this film with lines that are constantly funny, revealing and memorable."
Continues Mendel, "The screenplay really reflects the amount of fun that Wes and Noah had writing it. It takes you into a completely rambunctious, alive and energetic world filled with wonderful characters."
The script ultimately brought to life not only Steve Zissou's subtle personal transformation as he approaches fatherhood and posterity but an imaginative, whimsical undersea world even more eccentric, mercurial and magical than the real thing. "In the film, we wanted to show the way Steve Zissou sees this underwater world that he loves, that has so much magic and surprise to him, that draws him into a whole other reality," explains Anderson. "I mean, we're now all so used to seeing amazing underwater photography from flipping through the cable channels and we knew we couldn't compete with that. So we went the opposite route, trying to rely almost entirely on our imaginations. So as Noah and I were writing, we would be thinking about what creatures the team would come across, and we might start with just a stingray, but then we would say, how about a stingray with constellations on it that are glowing--and it developed from there."
From the beginning, Wes Anderson decided that rather than create this world with lavish, high-tech digital technology, he'd go back in time instead, to some of filmmaking's oldest and most classic techniques of forging creatures, emphasizing the pure pleasures of stop-motion animation.
"I wanted a handmade look to the film," he says. "There's a real personality to these old techniques and there's a feeling of craft that's very different from what you get when you do things digitally. I've always admired Henry Selick's work and I knew he would bring a great deal of artistry to the film. It just has the right quality for this story. I couldn't imagine going too high-tech to tell the story of Team Zissou and their adventures on The Belafonte."
Barry Mendel comments, "It was a completely bold concept to make a movie about an oceanographer with completely fake fish. We knew nothing like it had ever been done. But I think Wes was also very savvy in immediately recognizing that the undersea world has been captured so magnificently by filmmakers already that he needed to come up with a completely different idea. He creates a unique undersea world in the same way he created a unique New York-ish city for 'The Royal Tenenbaums.' It's fun to realize that all of the creatures and coral reefs in the film are entirely invented for the film and brought to life with the help of great designers, construction people, painters and a whole stop-motion animation unit that has put together something that is from the human imagination."
Anderson's risk-taking continued in the film's casting as he looked for actors willing to break entirely away from any preconceived molds--casting Bill Murray in his most wide-ranging and emotionally vulnerable role yet; asking Owen Wilson to make a 180-turn from his laid-back, irony-driven characters to take a completely opposite role; having the typically intense Willem Dafoe try a pure comedic role; plucking world-class actor Michael Gambon from the stage to play fading impresario Oseary Drakoulias; and allowing Brazilian actor Seu Jorge ("City of God") to blossom in unforeseen directions in the musical role of Pele Dos Santos. 

MEET TEAM ZISSOU - THE CHARACTERS
At the heart of any Wes Anderson movie are the characters and--even with the emphasis on fast-moving adventure and comedy in THE LIFE AQUATIC--the characters remain the engine that drives the film. Starting with Steve Zissou--who wears his own oversized ego like a crown yet faces moments where he pleads to his crew, "Don't you guys like me anymore?"--and continuing down through his entire ragtag crew and assorted enemies, each person has his or her own human complexities that emerge when the going gets tough. The characters include:
Steve Zissou
Producer Barry Mendel adds, "Having worked with Bill in 'Rushmore' and 'The Royal Tenenbaums,' I think it was always Wes's hope to write a movie for Bill that would really showcase a lot of what he believes Bill can do--and I think they both became very excited about the role of Steve Zissou for exactly that reason. Bill has always had a natural affinity for Wes's dialogue, but here he gives such a naturalistic and honest performance that he provides the audience with the illusion that it comes easily."
Murray was drawn in by taking on a very different kind of leading role than anything he had ever done--a literal "man of action," a bold adventurer, filmmaker and hero, albeit one forced to come face-to-face with his own growing powerlessness. In playing Steve Zissou, Murray knew he would have to approach an oceanic force of a man--with emotions that swing from the ecstatically funny to the profoundly sad, but also linger in the vast zone in between. Murray was further intrigued by the screenplay's wide-ranging ambitions.
"This thing really screams," sums up Murray about the screenplay. "There's just an enormous amount of material in THE LIFE AQUATIC--dialogue, action, visuals, humor and emotion that all come at you in quick bursts. It's also the biggest movie I've ever done in terms of production scope, much bigger than 'Ghostbusters,' even. And it really creates its own view of a world at sea."
Adding to the comedy-inflected pathos of Murray's performance as Steve Zissou was the fact that in order to play the role, Murray had to spend months in Italy for the shoot, away from his family. "For me, that was a big part of the journey--I was like this lonely sailor at sea," he notes, "and it fit with the mood of the story."
Murray felt there was no way to play Steve Zissou but as honestly as possible, flaws forward. "Steve is obviously deeply flawed, a guy driven by his desires, continually blind to people around him, almost infantile in a sense," he says. "But more than that, Steve is someone who doesn't put on a mask to disguise who he is. He simply lets fly. And you come to realize that there is also something else about him that allows him to be leading this odyssey, to have held this crew together in the middle of chaos. He has a real strong feeling of mission, and kind of childish sense of wonder that has never gone away. At the same time, he's also the most vulnerable guy in the world, because he's driven by these feelings that he's incapable of really expressing to anyone."
Murray continues, "Right now, as the film begins, Steve is in the darkest hours before the dawn. He's sort of sliding off the continental shelf, into the depths. Unfortunately, he's never been very good at self-examination, so it's really unknown territory."
Riding Zissou's wild emotional waves was a large part of Murray's challenge. "He has major mood swings--sometimes within a single paragraph," the actor observes. "He goes this way and then that way and the idea was that these emotions come up in him for fleeting moments but he just keeps barreling along. He makes a fool of himself all the time, but he doesn't stop and react to it. The beauty of Steve Zissou is that he doesn't ever lose his momentum."
"For me, this was a very different kind of performance," summarizes Murray, "because you're not stopping and selling every moment as you would in an ordinary comedy. It's more about showing up in the moment. Zissou is like a guy who's fighting the waves, and yet, no matter what, he keeps going full speed ahead. He knows he's going to get knocked around, that it's going to be tough, but he's convinced he's going to get somewhere."
Another unique aspect of playing Steve Zissou was exploring a most unusual father-son relationship with Owen Wilson, playing Ned Plimpton, who may -- or may not -- be Steve's son. For Murray, a key turning point in their relationship comes when Steve brings Ned to the beach in his pajamas to witness a multi-chromatic flood of electric jellyfish. "That's the moment when Steve sees something in Ned," he points out. "When Ned sees the jellyfish, he starts to realize that maybe there's more to this guy than he ever imagined, and of course, there turns out to be much more than almost anyone could imagine. What he and Steve hope is going to be an amazing adventure also turns out to be an emotional adventure for them."

Ned Plimpton (AKA Kingsley Zissou)
Owen Wilson, a regular collaborator with Wes Anderson, makes a distinct departure in THE LIFE AQUATIC with Steve Zissou with the role of Ned, an earnest Southern gentleman and member of The Zissou Society who has reason to believe he might--or might not--be Steve Zissou's son. As he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with Zissou, he also finds that he and his would-be father are falling for the same beautiful, yet pregnant, reporter.
Unlike most of the characters Owen Wilson has played, Ned lacks all manner of hipness or worldliness and exists in a kind of genteel, naive world of his making. To prepare for the role, Wilson rehearsed his scenes, without any of the other actors, alone with his long-lived friend Anderson. "Owen came to visit me in Rome a couple of months before filming started, and we would rehearse the scenes on the roof of the Hotel Eden," recalls Anderson. "During that period, we also developed his accent and a strong idea of who this character Ned is and where he's coming from."
Like Ned, Owen Wilson can remember being fascinated by documentaries about exploration as a kid, which helped inspire his characterization of Ned. "I think every kid wants to be an explorer off on an expedition at some point," he comments. "There's kind of a romantic notion to that. And since Ned has been watching Steve Zissou ever since he was a kid, and dreaming about his wild life, when he finally meets him, he's very much in awe of him. It's not something that is going to be taken away from him easily."
Another key to the character for Owen Wilson was to immerse himself in a kind of old-fashioned, nearly mythical gentility. "I wanted to be the kind of Southerner who comes out of that courtly tradition, who is more than polite and is really a genuinely good person," he says. "The accent we developed is sort of like I imagine people in the Civil War talking, you know, almost 'Gone With the Wind.' It's not meant to be Meryl Streep doing a pitch-perfect accent, but it's meant to be right for the character in a different way. It all fits into the world of the film, which is slightly artificial, almost surreal, while the emotions and feelings are very real."

Jane Winslett Richardson
Entering the scene like a Madonna on an island beach is Cate Blanchett playing the pregnant journalist, Jane. In one of those rare life-following-fiction moments, Wes Anderson had decided to cast Cate Blanchett well before the actress herself became pregnant. The production had gone so far as to develop a prosthetic belly for Blanchett when kismet struck. Continued …..

MEET THE OTHER CHARACTERS
A TOUR OF THE BELAFONTE - STEVE ZISSOU'S BOAT
THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF STEVE ZISSOU
MUSIC AQUATIC: ABOUT THE SCORE