You, Me And Dupree - Owen Wilson interview
Interview by Rob Carnevale
OWEN Wilson talks about playing an unwanted guest in You, Me & Dupree as well as his future plans for screenwriting, reuniting with Wes Anderson and why Anaconda wasn’t Jaws!
Q. Your character, Dupree, embraces arrested adolescence. Do you think more men would do this if they thought they could get away with it?
A. Maybe, yeah. Someone told me earlier about some movement called the slow movement. I’d never heard of it – maybe it’s unique to America – but it’s the idea of taking time to soak it up more. I could see Dupree definitely becoming involved in that movement.
Q. What’s the worst person you’ve ever had staying with you and why?
A. Luke Wilson, my younger brother, stayed with me for a long time – about a year. Now even if you’re a great brother that’s a long time, especially when you know that he has a house less then a mile away! He could have been staying there but chose not to because… I don’t understand why. Maybe because there’s food in my refrigerator or I think being the youngest brother, he kind of likes to have everything taken care of.
It wasn’t just that he moved in but also, from the set of The Royal Tenenbaums, of all the props that he could have fallen in love with, he fell for that stuffed wild havalina. So he brought that and put it on the wall. But for all the complaining and all the mileage I’ve gotten out of that story on this whole press junket, I kind of missed him after he was gone.
Q. Did the real-life dynamic between you, Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson ever come close to imitating that seen on-screen?
A. They always talk about chemistry and stuff and whether you have good chemistry with the people that you work with it. For me it seems like if the movie does well, then you had good chemistry; but if the movie flops, then the chemistry was way off. I had a great time with Eddie Murphy on I-Spy but the movie didn’t really do any business so all of a sudden we didn’t have good chemistry any more.
I think all of us got along really well but that doesn’t necessarily translate into the movie. It doesn’t mean the movie will be good just because you’re laughing a lot on the set. Sometimes you can get into a situation where it’s a little bit like Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise in The Cannonball Run where you’re cracking each other up and then you go to the premiere and you can hear crickets and stuff – no one is laughing at the stuff that was killing you on the day.
Q. But did you fall into the general roles you play off-camera in the sense that you have a certain Dupree quality?
A. Well, for a while I was going to play Carl and as you’ve heard from the story with Luke I can definitely relate to those feelings, maybe even easier than being Dupree. Maybe Dupree is like a dog that you bring home from the pound, who you’re not sure that you want to keep because it’s tearing everything up. But then he wins everybody over and they decide not to put him to sleep – that’s the sequel; Dupree’s put to sleep!
Q. Do you have any plans to work with Wes Anderson again?
A. Yeah, we’re going to work again at the end of November when we’re going to India to film a movie. I play the oldest of three brothers with Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody. You look at us and think ‘of course they’re brothers’! [Laughs] I think maybe my hair will be darker for that. At first I was kind of nervous because I have never been to India and I don’t quite know what to expect but Wes says it’s great. So I’ll be over there for a couple of months filming that.
Q. Has it got anything to do with the fact you’re one of three brothers?
A. Well, Wes is from a family of three brothers – he’s the middle one. I guess there’s nothing really autobiographical in it but maybe some of the feeling that Wes put in comes from his brothers or him being around my brothers for so many years. The thing with Wes is that the worlds he creates for his movies are so unusual that there’s not much danger of it ever seeming that much like real life.
Q. You’re best known for lighter roles. Do you ever hanker for more serious roles?
A. My Rainman role? Yeah it would be great to do if I felt I could do a good job. I don’t see myself as the type of actor who would be so successful at really changing my voice and disappearing into a character – maybe because that’s because I’m not a trained actor. But I would hope I could try and do something more serious, or at least something that didn’t have the burden of delivering the big laughs.
Q. Does your success as an actor mean that you’re lost to screenwriting?
A. I’m screenwriting at the moment. In fact, me and a friend this weekend were going to be doing some writing for a couple of weeks. I do think that sometimes writing feels like being back in school and having a term paper; so it’s easier to show up on set and act. A lot of times, even with the stuff you’re acting, you’re kind of tapping into the writing thing as you’re trying to come up with a scene or improve lines. It would be nice to write something from start to finish but obviously that’s going to be more personal than a movie like The Haunting.
Q. Are you writing with something specific in mind?
A. No, it’s kind of a loose idea at this point, making notes on something.
Q. What sort of scripts do you get sent nowadays? And how long do you take to decide?
A. It’s hard for me to read scripts – I’ve only read a few in my whole life that I could read from start to finish and enjoy like you could a book. For most times, they’re like a blueprint for a movie – they’re not that interesting to read. I remember reading True Romance and that was like a script you could read, it was like a book. But a lot of times it’s a matter of reading something and then you have to really wait for the director to bring it to life. When you’re reading you’re trying to imagine whether it could make a good movie, or whether it could be funny.
Sometimes I can figure out from the beginning that it’s not going to be to my liking and that’s usually when someone sends me a script that they say is really great and they have my voice. I’ll be reading it and hoping that’s not what my voice is.
I remember with The Royal Tenenbaums that I always wanted Gene Hackman to play the part and I was working with him on Behind Enemy Lines when Wes sent him a couple of letters with the script and stuff. Gene was nervous that it had been written for him because he said that he doesn’t like that so much – it almost puts some kind of weird pressure on you as you’re reading it, rather than just being able to enjoy and imagine how you would do it.
Q. Has it ever got the point where you got about three or four days into filming and realised you’d made a bad choice?
A. On every movie, at some point when you’re working on it – because it’s too disheartening to go to work every day and think that you’re making a dog – you start to think that it could be good; the crew seems into it, or the other cast members.
I remember working on Anaconda and talking with Ice Cube. We were watching Jaws down in Brazil, where we were filming, and we were an hour into the movie and Ice Cube said: “This is what we’re trying to do. But we’re not coming anywhere close to that.” [Laughs] Just after he said it we both realised we had months to go. But people did still enjoy it.
The first movie I worked on, Bottle Rocket, was the worst testing movie in Sony’s history, half the audience walked out. Luke, my younger brother, went to the second screening – I couldn’t go because it was too painful for me – and I asked him after the second one how it went. He said: “I was afraid that someone would recognise me from the movie and want to beat me up.” The movie didn’t get into Sundance but some people really like the movie and it did well. Some critics really liked it and Scorsese put it in his top 10 for the decade. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out – I guess it’s different strokes for different folks.
Q. I believe Luke used a butt double for My Super Ex-Girlfriend but you get to let it all hang out with just cushions for comfort. Did you give him a hard time and how was it for you?
A. Well, I used a butt double also in this movie. But yeah, the scene with cushions was all me. So no, I didn’t give Luke a hard time about that – not that I won’t. I just haven’t at this point.
Q. How much of an inspiration was it when you first started out to have a brother in the same line of work?
A. I think for me it really made a big difference. I was in LA when I was a freshman at college and I was very homesick and didn’t like being in Los Angeles. I thought I’d never go back. So when I went back to work on Bottle Rocket it was with my best friend, Wes, and with Luke and my older brother moved out shortly thereafter. I really got to like Los Angeles. So especially since I’ve gone along working in movies it’s nice to have the same group around me. I’m sure Luke would probably say the same thing.