Luke Wilson Talks The Possibility Of A Wes Anderson Western & The Resonance Of ‘Idiocracy’

OK, last week on weekly The Playlist Podcast, Mike DeAngelo’s interviewed Luke Wilson about his new football drama, “12 Mighty Orphans,” which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last week. You can listen to the interview below, but we wanted to highlight a couple of interesting tidbits from it.

READ MORE: Luke Wilson Talks ‘12 Mighty Orphans,’ The 20th Anniversary Of ‘The Royal Tenenbaums,’ ‘Idiocracy’ & More [The Playlist Podcast]

We couldn’t help ask Wilson about his work with Wes Anderson and “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Wilson and his brother Owen were college friends with Anderson, and all of them launched their careers in 1997 with the hilariously deadpan “Bottle Rocket” (the third Wilson brother Andrew appeared in it too). Luke would go on to a small appearance in “Rushmore” and then the ostensible lead child in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which turns 20 this year and is also being feted at Tribeca soon in a 20th-anniversary celebration conversation with the cast.

READ MORE: ‘Bottle Rocket’ At 25: Looking Back On Wes Anderson, Before He Was “Wes Anderson”

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years!” Wilson said. We asked Wilson why Owen and Anderson haven’t made a movie together since ‘Tenenbaums,’ and the actor said he initially thought they would make a new movie together every two years, but they’ve all been busy with separate projects, and time has flown by.

READ MORE: ’12 Mighty Orphans’ Is Both A Plucky Underdog Sports Film & Sentimental Biopic [Tribeca Review]

“I mean, yeah, we keep in touch and are always kind of talking about doing something, and it’s just a matter of putting the band back together. But, yeah, when I hear it’s been 20 years – it’s like, he’s been so busy, I’ve been so busy, Owen’s been busy. In my mind, when we started out, it was like, OK, we’re going to do one of these every two years!”

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“Everything kind of went from black & white to technicolor on ‘Tenenbaums,’” Wilson said about the way all their careers changed after the success of that movie.

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But there’s still one Wes/Owen/Luke project from back in the day that they still hope to make one day, a Western, which all of them mentioned in the press around the time of “Bottle Rocket.” Anderson confirmed the existence of such a project a few years back in a Playlist interview, and Wilson hasn’t forgotten it either. “We’ve talked over the years about the possibility of maybe doing a western with the old group. So, that would be really incredible. And I’d be just like anybody else – just to see Wes’ take on a Western would be incredible.”

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File that one under: we’d love to see that one day, please. The conversation then moved to “Idiocracy,” Mike Judge‘s dystopian comedy, which many have remarked has felt more like a documentary, especially during the incompetent Trump years. Despite all the other success, Wilson says that’s the film everyone knows him from.

“[Idiocracy was] the opposite of a hit,” he said. “It didn’t even have a chance to be a flop…we found out that 20^th Century Fox hated it, dumped it, and only put it on seven screens for a week, and that was it….and then I’d hear there’s an essay on ‘Idiocracy’ in Time Magazine and Society Today, and then, yeah, with the last administration I just remember reading, ‘and someone from Carl’s Jr. has just been appointed to, you know, some high ranking position,’ and I’m sitting there like ‘wasn’t there a guy from Carl’s Jr. in my cabinet in ‘Idiocracy’?”

He added. “I’ll say to Mike [Judge], that’s the movie that gets brought up to me the most, is Idiocracy, and he says it’s the same with him.” Listen to the full conversation below, and fingers crossed that Anderson gets inspired to write that Western one day with the old gang.