Wes Ander­son: ​‘I want­ed lan­guage to play a role with­out it becom­ing an obstacle’

Is there a plea­sure quite like lis­ten­ing to the sooth­ing and ami­able voice of Wes Ander­son as he turns his mind towards answer­ing ques­tions on his own care­ful­ly-cal­i­brat­ed terms? The focus of this con­ver­sa­tion with the mas­ter direc­tor is Isle of Dogs, a lan­guage-obsessed, polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy-themed, stop-motion adven­ture con­cern­ing dogs exiled to a trash island in a near-future Japan.

Mid­way through our chat, the line goes dead. Some painful moments pass. When we are back in touch, Wes reveals that he is on a train pass­ing through Switzer­land and just went through a tun­nel. Unable to con­tain myself, I say, ​“Are you try­ing to act like a char­ac­ter in your film, it’s per­fect?” He indulges me with a lit­tle laugh before explain­ing: ​“No I have to. I’m on my way to Berlin. We’re on our way to the film fes­ti­val and I’m going from Paris so it’s just by chance.” This unas­sum­ing nature, spelling out his rea­son for head­ing to Berlin in case I may not be aware that Isle of Dogs is open­ing one of the world’s biggest film fes­ti­vals, is in evi­dence through­out our conversation.

LWLies: With pre­vi­ous films you began by immers­ing your­self in influ­ences. Where did Isle of Dogs begin?

Ander­son: I did one ani­mat­ed movie years ago [Fan­tas­tic Mr Fox, 2009] and I had the thought that I would like to do anoth­er one at some point. I had the idea of this sto­ry of these alpha dog char­ac­ters and set­ting of this garbage dump. It sounds like a very odd thing to have wait­ing in the wings: a pack of dogs who lived on a garbage dump, but that was what I had. And then I start­ed talk­ing with Jason [Schwartz­man] and Roman [Cop­po­la] about it. We had also talked about doing some­thing in Japan or with a Japan­ese set­ting and we com­bined them togeth­er. The sto­ry real­ly could have been set any­where but our big inspi­ra­tion with the movie was to make it about what we loved in Japan­ese cin­e­ma and it grew into some­thing more to do with all kinds of Japan­ese cul­ture and our enthu­si­asm for it.

Have you any clue what this orig­i­nal image of dogs on a trash island is root­ed in?

I think of things I liked when I was a kid. I loved Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. I loved this TV show they had in Amer­i­ca called Fat Albert where they had a club­house on a garbage dump. I always loved this TV show called San­ford and Son about this junk deal­er in Amer­i­ca. That set­ting always inter­est­ed me: garbage. So maybe it comes out of that, maybe it’s a child­hood thing, but real­ly in terms of where the idea comes from real­ly I have no idea.

Kunichi Nomu­ra helped with the sto­ry. He’s not part of your usu­al gang. How did you find him and what did he bring?

Kun is a very old friend of mine and Roman’s and, as soon as we start­ed work­ing on the script, I wrote to Kun and said: ​‘You know, Kun, we may need some help.’ I didn’t even tell him what it was. Jason, Roman and I were work­ing on it first. I then start­ed ask­ing Kun for more and more infor­ma­tion and before long he became one of our key col­lab­o­ra­tors. Not just on the sto­ry, on keep­ing us inspired with ideas and and also help­ing us fig­ure out what is right in Japan. Also he helped us cast the movie because quite a lot of the film is in Japan­ese and the actors are Japan­ese. Kun helped us fig­ure out who we ought to have in cer­tain parts and how to get them and he also helped me direct. Every­thing in Japan­ese was a co-effort of ours. And he trans­lat­ed quite a bit, and re-trans­lat­ed and refined the trans­la­tions. Kun is actu­al­ly in The Grand Budapest Hotel. He’s a guest in this hotel and that’s because he’s a friend. He came to vis­it us and be in the movie.

So you must trust him entire­ly because… I don’t want to assume, but do you speak Japanese?

Me?

Yes.

No. Lord no.

Lord no!

I can’t speak any Japan­ese. So yes, we were very depen­dent on Kun. There’s a lot of text that’s in Japan­ese in the movie and we have oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tors who helped in that way. Cer­tain­ly in the per­for­mances of the actors who speak Japan­ese, Kun was the one I depend­ed on.

The love of lan­guage present in all your films is pushed fur­ther in Isle of Dogs because you have this trans­la­tion motif.

The movie isn’t just in Eng­lish or Japan­ese, it’s trans­la­tion crazy. It has every dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble way of trans­lat­ing. I like keep­ing both lan­guages alive. Obvi­ous­ly, in dif­fer­ent coun­tries Eng­lish will be erased. The Japan­ese stays every­where that peo­ple will see the movie but the Eng­lish will be replaced with French, Ital­ian, etc.

I thought it would be excit­ing to do it that way. Part of the thing of mak­ing a movie is what you learn from your research – what you dis­cov­er – that you can then share. You end up changed when it’s all done because you had this expe­ri­ence with some­thing new. I want­ed lan­guage to play a role with­out it becom­ing an obsta­cle. You can sim­ply sub­ti­tle it but instead we tried all kinds of dif­fer­ent words and also let the Japan­ese speak for itself. You don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what peo­ple are say­ing a cer­tain amount of the time, but you sort of get it.

When you’re at this stage where you have the germ of an idea, do you have cer­tain rit­u­als to bring it to the fore?

Some­times things that I’m work­ing on might have had lit­tle seeds that go back five years or 10 years even, some lit­tle aspects of it. The last movie I did it was def­i­nite­ly at least eight years or so from when I first start­ed tak­ing notes and think­ing about it. I don’t have rit­u­als, but some­times it’s a long process that hap­pens while oth­er things are going on. Then I also have a great thing which is I have col­lab­o­ra­tors, some of whom I’ve worked with for years and years. I can share what I’ve been work­ing on with them. Some­times they help and some­times they just remind you how you did it before, how long it took you to do some aspects of a movie, or what I’m like even dur­ing a process so I can say, ​’Oh I see, so this is how it always is’ because some­times I block out what it was like. I forget.

Do you have a favourite stage of moviemaking?

I usu­al­ly think that I like all dif­fer­ent stages of mak­ing a movie but when you get towards the end of one of the stages you’re ready for it to end, and you’re look­ing for­ward to the next part. That’s a very com­mon expe­ri­ence for me.

Do you reflect on recur­ring stuff in your work, like all the 12-year-olds?

I don’t real­ly. Some­times I feel like, ​‘Well this is some­thing that I might have had before in some oth­er form, and do I want to do it again? Do I want to go in some oth­er direc­tion?’ Usu­al­ly if I think about it and decide to stick with it, it’s because it feels like some­thing that’s built into the sto­ry. In the end I would rather make it bet­ter than make it… Some­times I just want to go with. what­ev­er is going to make the sto­ry stronger and some­times, for me, that means links between the stories.

Films are an emo­tion­al medi­um. Do you spend much time try­ing to build emo­tion or is it a byproduct?

Any time you’re work­ing on a movie, or on a sto­ry, you’re devel­op­ing it. It’s say­ing, ​‘What have we got and how do we make it bet­ter?’ Some­times it means, ​‘How do we make it scari­er?’ or ​‘How do we make it fun­nier?’ or ​‘How do we make the emo­tion of the scene reach some­body in a stronger way?’ That’s always part of just work­ing the material.

Isle of Dogs is released 30 March. Read more in LWLies 74.