Wes Anderson is one of those names all film journalists would delight in interviewing, regardless of how they feel about his work. Admittedly, my feelings toward his films vary from project to project. I enjoy his early work most, particularly RUSHMORE, and I liked THE DARJEELING LIMITED and THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX quite a bit. But some Anderson films just don’t flow well for me. I make no secret that I hated (yes, hated) THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, and that’s coming from a hardcore Bill Murray fan… and I wasn’t particularly taken with MOONRISE KINGDOM like so many others seemed to be. All that said, his newest film THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL may just be one of his greatest. Taking a page from classic European directors, and borrowing the madcap style of old movie serials from the early days of cinema, this new film is a wild and wacky ride that’s exciting and great fun. I had the opportunity to sit down with Wes during the South by Southwest Film Festival earlier this week in Austin, Texas. Getting face time with the eclectic director is becoming more and more of a rarity, as he lives overseas now and rarely gets back to the states. Check out my questions and his answers below, or to listen to our portion of the small roundtable chat just CLICK HERE to hear it streaming, or you can right-click and save the MP3 to your desktop.  My sincere thanks to Wes for taking time to do this, and to the fine folks at Fox Searchlight Pictures for including me in the very limited press opportunities.

Mark: So this is probably your… I think it’s safe to say this is your most exciting movie, overall. I remember watching it, especially in the moments in the snow, I remember thinking, like “This is really intense! This is probably the most intense Wes Anderson film I’ve ever seen.”

Wes: Yeah, it’s got some real, it’s got some little actions scenes and things. I don’t know if we’ve had any quite like that before. But I’ve had, you know, BOTTLE ROCKET we had a couple of robberies…

Mark: You had a major shootout in this one.

Wes: Yeah, in this we had a big shootout. Yeah.

Mark: Can you also talk about – you mentioned it last night in the Q&A – sort of the madcap zaniness of like you using the foreign directors sensibilities, but with the madcap sensibilities of serials and things back in the day.

Wes: Yeah, yes, well I think anyway like 30’s… 30’s Hollywood movies, they just had a different kind of pace and energy. So I think, without really planning to, the 30’s part of our story, we kind of gave it the rhythms of the movies of that period, maybe.

Mark: One of the things I love about your movies is you have the most amazing cast of “Wes Anderson players”, and it almost feels like I’m going to a very welcoming theater, and watching these cast members I’ve kind of grown up loving playing out some wonderful story. Plus I love seeing who you bring in new to that mix as well.

Wes: Yeah.

Mark: But when you work with these guys, especially when it’s people who you’ve worked with several times before, are there moments… in particular in this film, are there moments where they surprise you. Like “Wow, I didn’t expect to see that come out of them for this.”

Wes: Yeah, I mean sort of the whole thing is like that. The way we end up working, well, I just feel like the actors – they do the script, they don’t make up the lines, but they make up everything else. And everything else is a lot. They sort of improvise how they’re going to do it.

Mark: So the characterization, a lot of that comes from them, and then your input as well.

Wes: Yeah, but I think it mostly comes from them. I mean they each have their own thing. They own it. Like Jeff Goldblum for instance, he has just loads and loads of dialogue. He has these long speeches to give. He shapes them and works them. I’ve seen him on stage quite a bit, and he’s always just amazing. And you know when somebody is on stage, it’s up to them. There’s nobody there, it’s just the actors are there. Every night they’ve got to make this thing come to life. These guys know how to do that, just take control of it.

Mark: Do you think there’s one that maybe changed more than others, from page to screen, like in terms of what they started out to be and then the finished product?

Wes: Yeah, I’m just looking at the thing over here… (stares at the film’s poster)

Mark: Heh-heh, which of these people…

Wes: Lucky to have a complete inventory.

Mark: A reference guide, yeah.

Wes: I think, well, they’re all… none of them, even once I had picked, cast them, and they’ve agreed… I didn’t that strongly picture any of them. They’re all people where when they were sort of doing it, when they all had their costumes and they were all figured out, when they were started doing it, and I was surprised by every single one of them and they made me laugh and they appeared. But Murray Abraham, I think in particular, I didn’t really envision what this would be, putting him with these… He has an amazing voice, and more than, even in a group like this he jumps out as somebody who can give you a line reading that puts some extra feeling or information about his character. You understand something more about his character, just by the way he says something. So maybe I’d go with Murray.

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