We talk for a while about his ideas for the soundtrack, which at that point includes the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” Nico’s “These Days,” the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah,” and Elliot Smith’s “Needle in the Hay.” We talk about what he calls Luke Wilson’s “soulful” portrayal of the failed tennis pro Richie Tenenbaum–an understated and startling performance that is the best acting of the younger Wilson’s career. When I mention Anderson’s girlfriend, who appears briefly in the film, he looks stricken.
“Yeah, Jennifer,” he says, sounding two decades younger than he is. “She’s a New Yorker. But you know, I don’t know. It’s embarrassing.”
Anderson has a facility for tapping into what it feels like to be 12. By maintaining his connection to what slighted or thrilled us as kids, he has developed a more sophisticated grasp of what motivates us as grown-ups. He’s not cute. He’s not juvenile. It’s just that suddenly childhood doesn’t seem that long ago.
When Anderson was a child he filled a sketchbook with drawings of fancy houses. “There was this certain phase I went through where I was really obsessed with being rich. So I was fairly interested in Rolls-Royces and mansions,” he says. Has that obsession gone away? “Yeah–at least, hopefully, I have a lot more irony about it now.”
“Kids get embarrassed,” he says, recalling how, for the longest time, he refused to accept that his parents had separated. “Somebody says, ‘Your parents are getting divorced,’ and you’re like, ‘No! No! Where did you hear that? That’s so wrong. They’re figuring some stuff out.’”
I ask if he would ever direct a movie he didn’t write.
“I kind of feel like a children’s book I could do, though I’d like to adapt the script myself,” he says. “With a children’s book you’re sup, posed to make a separate reality. And I just feel like the details I would bring in would be better understood.”
Anderson needs sleep. Promising to meet again the next day, he prepares to say good night. Then I mention Peanuts, and he brightens.
“The real thing I responded to is that Christmas special,” he says, remembering the animated TV show in which the parents are always unseen and everyone wears the same outfit day after day. Anderson loved A Charlie Brown Christmas so much that he has put its tinkly music in both Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. “It’s very sad,” he says admiringly. “And very funny.”
“We always had the books, growing up. I especially liked Linus, because he was kind of a genius, but he still carried a blanket and sucked his thumb,” he says, straightening his wrinkled seersuckers. “I had this book that said Charles Schulz skipped a grade. Now I’m like, ‘Why were we so into the fact that in third grade Schulz got all As?’ But at the time I was really interested in somebody who could skip grades. I was really hoping to skip a grade.” He is quiet for a moment. Then, Linus-like: “I never skipped a grade.”
We share a cab uptown. Anderson notes that in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center, New York City sidewalks, even in Times Square, are strangely empty at night. He says the tragedy has only made him feel more loyal to his adopted city. It has occurred to him, he admits, that when The Royal Tenenbaums comes out, people may not be the least bit interested.
But the opposite seems to be true. I remind Anderson about a man who approached him after seeing the movie at a screening earlier in the week. A third-generation New Yorker, he wanted to thank the director for creating such an idealized vision of his city. “I love your New York,” the man said as Anderson shook his hand shyly. “I really appreciate it right now.”
Before the cab drops Anderson off, I compliment him on his royal blue blazer. “Varn made this,” he says, pleased that I’ve noticed. He smooths the fabric lovingly, and for a moment he’s somewhere else. He’s inside the walk-in closet that is his head–a place of stored memories where the clothes are less important than how they make you feel. “Corduroy is really great,” he says, earnest. “It used to be what I wore to school every day. You know, it can be almost like velvet sometimes.”
