CHARLIE ROSE: Wes Anderson is here. His new film is "The Fantastic Mr. Fox." It is based on Roald Dahl’s children’s book of the same name. Here is the trailer. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Who am I, Kylie? Why a Fox? Why not a horse or a beetle or a bald eagle? I’m saying this more as, like, existentialism, you know? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I don’t know what you’re talking about but it sounds illegal. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Wes Anderson creates a triumph in animated story telling. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I’m seven non-Fox years old now, my father died at seven and a half. I don’t want to live in a hole anymore, and I’m going to do something about it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Don’t buy this tree. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Foxy. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: This is three of the meanest, nastiest, ugliest farmers in this valley. You’re moving into the most dangerous neighborhood for someone of your type of species. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Your comments are valuable, but I’m going to ignore your advice. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Of course you are. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Are you cussing with me? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: No. You cussing with me? Don’t cuss and point hands. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sit by the tree. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: "Rolling Stone" raves "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is a movie that deserves to be called groundbreaking. It looks like nothing you’ve seen before." UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I look good. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Yes, we do. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: "It’s proof that Pixar doesn’t have a monopoly on heartfelt and funny animation." UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I’m asking if he thinks we’re in for a hard winter. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: Academy Award winner George Clooney. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: What’s this thing you do, the whistle with the clicking sound. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That’s my trademark. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Academy Award winner Meryl Streep. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You really a quote/unquote "fantastic" Fox. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I try. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: There’s three grabbers, three taggers and a player. The center tagger like it is pine cone, chucks it to the basket he tries to it this cedar stick. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: "The Fantastic Mr. Fox". UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You run back and forth until the pine cone burns down, then you divide that by nine. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" is Anderson’s first animated film. It was made with stop motion animation, the same technology used to bring "King Kong" to life on the screen in the 1930s. Wes Anderson used some 500 puppets, 150 sets, and 4,000 props. Through elaborate set designs, off-beat sound tracks, and portrayal of quirky, flawed characters, Anderson has established himself as one of the cinema’s most recognizable auteurs. Martin Scorsese said he has a, quote, "very special kind of talent. He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness. This kind of sensibility is rare and movies." I’m pleased to have Wes Anderson back at this table. Welcome. WES ANDERSON, DIRECTOR: Thank you very much, Charlie. CHARLIE ROSE: You are just -- it’s just rolling in all over you, isn’t it? (LAUGHTER) WES ANDERSON: I don’t know. This one has actually been great. I really enjoyed making this movie and, you know, it feels like -- it’s great to have an animated movie to show to an audience, because afterwards you get nine-year-olds coming up to you and discussing the techniques and their feelings about it. CHARLIE ROSE: So what first got you to "The Fantastic Mr. Fox"? WES ANDERSON: Well, it’s a book I read as a child. Maybe the -- it’s the first book that was technically considered my property in our household, has my name on it. And I’ve loved it all my life. I have the same copy that I had when I was a kid and I’ve kept it on my shelves wherever I’ve lived. And at a certain point I decided I wanted to work in stop motion, which is like a very old-fashioned kind of filmmaking technique. But I wanted to do a stop motion movie with fur, puppets with fur. And that was literally the thing I wanted to do, and this is the right book for that. CHARLIE ROSE: Did you have some operative idea about making an animated film? WES ANDERSON: I didn’t really know that much about the process and I just knew I liked the way it looked in movies and I liked the textures of it. And I had no idea how I was going to go about it, and I learned. CHARLIE ROSE: Well, the author’s wife rejected other filmmakers. WES ANDERSON: That’s probably true. CHARLIE ROSE: You didn’t know that? WES ANDERSON: I didn’t know that, but that probably is right, because they’re very careful with the Dahl stories. They have control over them. But in fact she was so -- not only did I really enjoy her when I first met her and they let me do it, but she also invited me to his house, which is called gypsy house, and we ended up writing part of the script there, and really the movie kind of transitioned from being an adaptation of this Dahl book into being about Dahl in general. CHARLIE ROSE: What did you keep in and what did you leave out? How did you build from this book into this movie? WES ANDERSON: I knew I would have to expand the book significantly because it’s very short. So I had an idea for a sort of first chapter. But I asked Noah Baumbach to work on the script with me, and as we got going we just sort of started dreaming up new characters and new ideas for scenes. But it was always our guiding principle that we were pretending to be Roald Dahl. So everything... CHARLIE ROSE: It is an homage to Roald Dahl. WES ANDERSON: It is an homage to Roald Dahl. And we just kept saying "What might he do here? And this idea, does it feel like Dahl?" And that was just -- which was actually a great luxury for us because, you know, we both love his work and this is a chance to kind of pretend we were him. CHARLIE ROSE: And choosing voices. WES ANDERSON: Yes. Yes. You know, it’s funny, while we were writing we never -- we thought of animals. We never thought about casting. And it was only when it was done and we said OK, what do we do now? We’re going to have to record somebody. (LAUGHTER) CHARLIE ROSE: They have to talk. WES ANDERSON: Somebody’s got to say these words. And I had this thought that we ought to have the most heroic actor that we could think of. Who was the most heroic in this moment? And that seemed like George Clooney to me. CHARLIE ROSE: He had a heroic voice? WES ANDERSON: Yes. But I didn’t even think about his voice. I just thought about him. And he seemed like in a movie you really believe he is the guy that can do these things. And it was only after -- we then recorded everybody on a farm in Connecticut all together. We sort of did a documentary recording of the cast. And we had Bill Murray up there. And the animators -- you record the voices first -- the animators take their inspiration from the voices. And that gave us something great to work with. CHARLIE ROSE: And Meryl, same thing? WES ANDERSON: Meryl, I recorded in a studio in Paris in a studio, and in a great big studio where an orchestra usually works. We made a little living room in the middle of it. And we spent the day there. And in her case it was me and her, it was the two of us playing all the scenes together. And I’m sure -- well, I think it’s safe to say I will never again have the opportunity to act opposite Meryl Streep. CHARLIE ROSE: Fantastic. Take advantage. WES ANDERSON: It was great fun. And the other thing was she played it more emotionally than I had anticipated, and it was just better. And as soon as she started doing it, even right there in the moment I started thinking "This is the way the rest of the movie needs to be shaped. I’m going to need some other moments to match this level." So in some ways it was like... CHARLIE ROSE: And how did you find those moments? WES ANDERSON: The great thing with an animated movie is you basically make the movie in pencil drawings first. And as you’re slowly, slowly shooting it, you can rewrite things and you can add things, and I just wrote new moments for the other characters to kind go with where we were with her. CHARLIE ROSE: Now Mr. Fox, and we’re going to see a scene in a moment, assembles his master plan. Is that a bit of "Ocean’s 11" kind of thing? WES ANDERSON: It’s definitely caper. CHARLIE ROSE: Well, when you think caper, there you go, right? You’ve got George, and there it is. Roll tape, this is scene one. Here it is. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Let’s start planning. Who knows shorthand? Great. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Linda, you got dried paper? Here we go. Mole? What do you got? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I can see in the dark. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: That’s incredible. We can use that, Linda? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Got it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Rabbit? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I’m fast. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You bet you are, Linda? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Got it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Beaver? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I can chew through wood. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Amazing, Linda? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Got it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Badger? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Demolitions, experts, flames burning things. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Since when? OK, Linda, got it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Weasel? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Stop yelling! UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ash, you get these little kids organized and put together a KP unit or something to keep this sewer clean. It’s good for morale. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Done. What’s KP? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I think it means janitors. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: Now did they do these voices in one take or two takes, or is this like many takes? WES ANDERSON: Well, it’s funny because really what you’re recording is a rehearsal. You know, they’re standing there with the pages in their hands, and you can do as many takes as you want and it can happen very, very quickly. You can record 30 pages in a day. So it’s really -- it’s really all about capturing spontaneity, regarding these voices. That’s what I found, anyway. CHARLIE ROSE: There are those critics who look at this and they’re all saying wonderful things about you, but some are saying this is somehow a comeback for you. They look at the last two movies and they say "He’s caught his wind again." Do you have any sense of that? WES ANDERSON: Well, I definitely have a sense of -- you do these movies, you spend years -- I say you. One, I’ll say one spends many years making one of these movies. And for me these are very -- I’ve made personal films that kind of are my whole life when I’m making the movie. But you have no idea until the day it’s -- until the day people start reviewing or the day it comes out in the theaters what the response is going to be. And I sort of feel the same way about all my movies. They’re all -- I cannot dissociate myself in any way. They’re like my family members. What I like is not having a miserable season of having a movie that’s not going over, you know? When people like it, you just have a nicer time. CHARLIE ROSE: Was there any particular reason you decided to go animation? WES ANDERSON: Not really. It was ten years ago that I first started working on this, so it was really that it just finally got done. It sort of made its way to the screen. But it wasn’t -- it was just something I always wanted to do. And I would do it again. I enjoyed it so much I would like to do another. CHARLIE ROSE: Show me Mr. Fox. You brought him with you. WES ANDERSON: Yes, I happen to have him right here. (LAUGHTER) CHARLIE ROSE: Mr. Fox. WES ANDERSON: So most of the movie is animated with puppets like this, which the animators move just one bit at a time. And the arm -- you know, they’re -- it will take a different number of frames for how fast they’re going to move, but this is essentially what the movie -- the movie is acted by these. They’re probably 18 of these, and we would have many units working simultaneously each with a different animator doing a shot. And then also there are other puppets where Mr. FOX would be say this tall for wider shots, and then some like this for very wide landscapes. We have these little tiny ones with wire skeletons, and they’re -- it’s sort of a technique for communicating different scales. CHARLIE ROSE: So when you’re working on something for ten years, what are you doing? You occasionally visit it? You do other films, you come back to it, you advance the ball for those ten years? WES ANDERSON: Over the ten years, I made a couple other movies, and every now and then Noah Baumbach and I would get together and talk about this script. But once we really settle into doing it, there were two solid years where this is a fulltime job. And a year of preparing it and designing the puppets and getting everything kind of sorted out, and then a year of shooting, a solid year to shoot it. But it’s interesting. With a live action movie, the day is a series of shots in sequence -- we’re going to shoot this shot and this shot and this shot as quickly as we can. We’ll get to one and the next, and then the sun is going to go down and that’s the day. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. WES ANDERSON: With the movie like this there are 30 shots all happening once and other sets being designed and lit and puppets being built and the movie being edited and story boards being drawn simultaneously, and my day is moving back and forth among all these things continuously throughout the day and not really ending up finishing anything. CHARLIE ROSE: You also have the advantage of a movie like this can appeal to all ages, too. WES ANDERSON: Yes. We started the movie thinking of the movie as a children’s story. In the end I think it’s -- we didn’t really think about that while we were writing it. We just thought about what would be funny and what would be emotional or engaging. And so I think in the end it’s exactly as much a children’s movie or an adult’s movie, it’s no more one or the other. And I like that. I definitely enjoy having children responding to something I’m doing. It’s really fun. I mean, I’ve had children who ask me -- who want to know technical things because they’re making their own animated films right now and they are having some problems and, I’ve actually introduced them -- the other day I introduced a kid to my producer to help him sort out a camera problem he was having at home. He was nine. (LAUGHTER) CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at this and then look all the way back to some of the early films that you did from "Bottle Rocket," say, do you see some evolution going on here? Can you see a linear continuum of some kind? WES ANDERSON: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t really because I only operate on here’s the thing that I’m going to put all my -- every second of thought into for the next couple of years, and then I’m on to the next one. But what I do see is that I have a group of people that I’ve kind of managed to work with in different forms over and over and over again, and I have a kind of movie-making family. And I certainly have developed some styles with the way we work that I figured out how to work the way I want to work and not necessarily the way that it’s usually done. CHARLIE ROSE: And what way is that? WES ANDERSON: Well, for instance, with this film, for instance, the way we recorded the voices is not the way that -- you know, usually it is all done in the studio. And the idea of kind of having everybody go to summer camp together and record a movie, it’s not exactly way you do it. CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. WES ANDERSON: And the way I directed this film, I only spent about one week a month on the set in London. The rest of the time I was in other places, often in Paris with my editorial team and my story board artists and a computer system that we set up so I could look through each camera on the set. And that’s the way I directed the movie. I mean, it’s a bit different than a live action movie because things are just happening one frame at a tile. It’s so slow that you can’t observe each thing happening at once. You’ve got to move among all the things. But it was just the way I liked doing it, and I felt that I could see everything I needed to see. CHARLIE ROSE: You preferred it because of its slowness? WES ANDERSON: No, I preferred it because it let me look at more things in the course of the day than I could any other way. I could just electronically move from set 22 to set 19 to set 12a, and I talk on the phone and I talk on e-mail and I had a staff with me. But it was sort of like a command center. CHARLIE ROSE: Salinger, J.D. Salinger had a big influence on you? WES ANDERSON: Yes, he did. In some ways I feel like he made me want to be a writer. And, you know, one of the films that I’ve made, "The Royal Tenenbaums," that’s very much inspired by his work, his Glass family stories. And, yes, he’s always been a real favorite of mine. CHARLIE ROSE: Have you ever tried to meet him? WES ANDERSON: No. But I feel like in some ways I moved to New York in part of Salinger. CHARLIE ROSE: The impression of you in terms of the way you handle yourself and the way you dress and the way that Mr. Fox is dressed is a kind of a dandy. Does that sit comfortably with you? WES ANDERSON: It sits fine with me. I definitely take a moment to -- I would say that... (LAUGHTER) WES ANDERSON: This wasn’t the first necktie I put on this morning. CHARLIE ROSE: That right? That’s perfectly said. You thought about it. This was not the one -- this is the third choice. And this worked because? WES ANDERSON: It was, in fact, the third choice today. Well, because I change changed my sweater. That’s why. (LAUGHTER) CHARLIE ROSE: This is great. How many wardrobes do you have? I mean, like, are you a clothes horse, as they say? WES ANDERSON: Not really because I don’t -- you know, I’ve been wearing this same thing every day for the last month ever since I got it. I don’t... CHARLIE ROSE: When you get something you like you really give it a wear. WES ANDERSON: I wear it until it starts to come apart. (LAUGHTER) But I guess I like certain colors and things like that. CHARLIE ROSE: Do you see that in your movies, too? The same thing that you have about clothes, is it in your movies? WES ANDERSON: Yes, I think so. I think it would have to be. CHARLIE ROSE: And how would you describe that? WES ANDERSON: Well, I think it’s that I’m definitely somebody who likes things -- who -- my -- there are parameters to what works for me visually, to what I feel is -- you know, I definitely like things that I would never do. But for my own self and for my own work, there’s really only this range. And, I feel like I have tried lots of different things in that range, but there’s a certain point at which it’s not my personality anymore. I think the parameters probably can change and shift and slide and something in time, but I don’t want to do something that doesn’t feel true to myself, I guess. CHARLIE ROSE: You also love peanuts. WES ANDERSON: Yes, you’re right. You’re right. (LAUGHTER) CHARLIE ROSE: I’m just trying to figure out -- I’m going through this, clothes, peanuts, Salinger, just to sort of figure out a profile of Wes Anderson. WES ANDERSON: No, that’s interesting. Yes, in a way, because sometimes people ask me what is your style, and I say I don’t have the slightest idea. This movie is supposed to be Roald Dahl. It’s not me, it’s Dahl. But then if you bring up these things, I think it starts to bring it into focus for me. Peanuts, I always loved the comic strip, but especially the Christmas special, which that one little 24 minutes or whatever it is, is something that’s had a real affect on me. The mood of that program -- the writing is so good, the visuals are unique, and there’s the most beautiful music in it. CHARLIE ROSE: And you also like Hal Ashby, his movie. WES ANDERSON: Yes, I like Hal Ashby. CHARLIE ROSE: Called them some of the best films ever made, you said. WES ANDERSON: I think so, "Harold and Maude" and "Shampoo" and "Last Detail." CHARLIE ROSE: I didn’t realize he made "Shampoo." WES ANDERSON: Yes. "Shampoo" is one of his best. "The Last Detail" might be my favorite of his films, Jack Nicholson, Robert Town, and the script. CHARLIE ROSE: A sailor being taken back to trial or something. WES ANDERSON: That’s right, Randy Quaid. And... CHARLIE ROSE: What did you like about that? The pacing of it? WES ANDERSON: That one. I love Jack Nicholson’s character. It’s a great script. Randy Quaid is also great. But there’s something about -- you know, it takes place in a short time span. There’s not much plot. I don’t know if you even call that a plot. They have one thing to do, take a prisoner from here to there, and it’s episodic along the way. But something about the snow and the look of it and the bleakness of it was very moving. CHARLIE ROSE: You said one Jim Brooks was probably the biggest influence. WES ANDERSON: Yes, Jim Brooks. The first film that I made, Owen Wilson and I had written "Bottle Rocket." And Jim, Jim gave us the chance to make the film. It wasn’t that Jim gave us the best chance to make the film. Jim was absolutely the only person in the world who was prepared to give us even $1,000 to work on the movie. After our fathers had given us a couple thousand each, we were out. And that was -- but Jim actually was able to offer us a Columbia Pictures budget and $5 million to make the movie. And of course in movie making, you know, he spent time with us and helped us to make the script something that really worked as the feature film and taught me about editing and what to do with the character when you’re telling a story and how to reach out to an audience. CHARLIE ROSE: This sounds like a huge case of believing in you at the time. Your track record, you had nothing. WES ANDERSON: We had nothing. He picked us. There’s also two people who worked with him, Polly Plat and Richard Sakai. For some reason, these people, they chose us. And if that hadn’t happened, I don’t think I would have had the chance to make a movie. CHARLIE ROSE: You think so, or somebody else would have come along and given you the same break? WES ANDERSON: I think I would have been -- no, I don’t think someone would have come along. I think I would have probably scrambled my way to some other thing. But the movies I’ve made really are possible because of that moment, that choice of Jim Brooks. CHARLIE ROSE: I like this so much I’m going to show two more clips. Let’s see the next clip. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Basically, there’s three grabbers, three taggers, five twig runners, and the player at whack batter. The whack batter tries to hit the stick off the cross rock. Then the twig runners dash back and forth until the umpire calls hot box. Finally you count up how many score downs it adds up to and divide by nine. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Got it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Go in for Ash. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Substitution, Ash, come out, you need a breather. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: What? I still feel good, coach. Let me finish this? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: No, come on, step out. Let’s go. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Am I getting better, coach? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You’re sure as cuss not getting any worse. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Could I end up being as good as my dad if I keep practicing? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Your dad? Your dad was probably the best whack bat player we ever had in this school. You don’t want to have to compare yourself to that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Think I have some of the same raw natural talent, don’t you? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You’re improving, let’s put it like that. (END VIDEO CLIP) CHARLIE ROSE: The voice of the coach was Owen Wilson. WES ANDERSON: That’s Owen, yes. CHARLIE ROSE: How long have you guys been friends? WES ANDERSON: Let’s see, since -- we met in, I guess, ‘88, maybe. Best friends for all these years. And, you know, we’ve worked together I don’t know how many times, on basically every movie. CHARLIE ROSE: So what is it? WES ANDERSON: Well, you know, we actually had a class together in school where we -- a small class like nine students, and everyone sat around this table, except I sat in one corner of the room and Owen sat in another corner. There were two people in the class who did not bother to sit at the -- did not want to sit at the table. And I remember thinking "Who does this guy think he is not sitting at the stable?" But I was actually doing the same thing. I thought "Is he copying me?". (LAUGHTER) And we never spoke the whole time. But the next -- when we went back the next semester, the first day he walked up to me in the corridor and asked "Which creative writing class should we take?" But he acted like we were already friends because we had silently sat there in the room together for a semester, and then we were. CHARLIE ROSE: Congratulations. WES ANDERSON: Thank you, Charlie. CHARLIE ROSE: Great to see you again. WES ANDERSON: Thanks for having me back. CHARLIE ROSE: "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" getting great review. Thank you for joining us. See you next time. END 12