While Wes Anderson certainly made waves in the 1990s with the heist comedy “Bottle Rocket” and the Bill Murray/Jason Schwartzman coming-of-age dramedy “Rushmore,” it wasn’t until 2001’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” that the director truly cemented his quirkiness/style with general audiences and critics alike. However, not everyone was convinced it was all great during the filming process, even from key cast members.
Legendary stories exist about the late legendary actor Gene Hackman being hard on the filmmaker and being somewhat of a jerk in the movie (Hackman playing a charming but manipulative estranged father trying to reconnect with his kids, now equally eccentric adults, after telling them he is dying). Still, co-star Gwyneth Paltrow (can be seen in Josh Safdie‘s “Marty Supreme,” now in theaters), who played Hackman’s adopted daughter in the film, provided more context during a career retrospective with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation: He just didn’t understand the tone of the film, but she said he was still lovely to work with and gave him his flowers.
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During that conversation, Paltrow revealed she loved making “The Royal Tenenbaums” because she was able to disappear into her role of Margot Tenenbaum, who in the film is married to Bill Murray’s medical researcher, and allowed her to play someone more quirky and mysterious than her usual parts.
“And in the ‘Royal Tenenbaums,’ I think it’s the only movie where I kind of don’t totally see myself. It’s like, I don’t know why, but of course it’s me. But like, there’s just something where I am like, she’s so mysterious. Like what? And so I think it’s sort of a pleasure to watch because I can’t even totally feel myself in it, if that makes sense.”
She also talked about the sense of freedom in not really being able to collaborate and make choices because the director knows exactly what they want from their cast, “I mean, Wes knew exactly what he wanted… Sometimes you do a film, and they’re like, ‘Oh, do you want to wear the gray pants? Or, do you want to wear a dress?’ And you’re like, oh, well, have you seen this designer? This could be cool. No. Wes is like, you will be wearing a Fendi mink coat, a Lacoste tennis dress, and penny loafers. And I was like, great. And he knew exactly the hair color he wanted, the barrette, and the eye makeup, and everything. Like, and so that’s also, there’s sort of, his is going to sound weird, but there’s also like in a case like that, there’s sort of freedom and the lack of collaboration because you can just totally relax on that front and feel like Wes is composing this whole thing. And I just need to like be exactly what he needs me to be. I found it to be really deeply fun and unconventional. That’s not the normal thing.”
Comedic beats mixed in with dramatic and messy family dynamic moments are what Wes has mastered tone-wise in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and yet Hackman couldn’t grasp, at the time, what Anderson was aiming for while making it, as relayed by Paltrow’s understanding of Hackman’s infamous grumpy attitude while shooting it.
“I try to sort of never feel the camera, but you feel very much that you’re in… It’s like…I feel that way about that movie, too; he was really finding and solidifying his style. It’s like the first one, which is fully Wes Anderson. And you could really feel that he had gotten a real grasp on that. And that tonally, it was coming through tonally. And Gene Hackman had no idea what Wes was going for. So, it was like there was a weird dissonance, where I think we all kind of understood it, and he didn’t. That led to interesting dynamics with Gene, but it was as if you knew that something really prescriptive and unique was happening, like, from Wes.”
Paltrow still had plenty of praise for Hackman, “Oh, my God. He’s so good. Yeah. I mean, I adored working with him. He was, I know he was, like, a little scary as far as, like, Wes was concerned, [and] he wasn’t always happy on the set, so it’s important to call a spade a spade. But with me, he was incredibly wonderful and generous.”
Despite the on-set issues and Hackman’s obvious frustration with the material, Anderson told The Sunday Times earlier in the year (in the wake of the veteran actor’s tragic passing and promoting “The Phoenician Scheme“), when talking about the pair’s creative tension, at the film’s opening, Hackman told him he “liked” the movie. Adding his lament about not getting Hackman more involved by showing him dailies/footage to give him a better idea of what the goal was, “He told me he didn’t understand it when we were shooting. I wish I’d shown him 10 minutes early on. Then, maybe, he would have said, ‘OK, I get it.'”
You can watch that full Q&A with Platrow with the SAG-AFTRA Foundation below, as the actress talks about multiple projects she’s made over the decades.
