Noah Baumbach
This actually was filmed in Rome. You know, the whole film was shot in Italy. The Explorers Club was at a palazzo in Rome, and Zissou has taken to wearing an earring at the beginning of the film. Here's where he decides he's humiliated out of-- He loses his confidence. Did you place a second earring there that Owen knew where it was? I don't quite remember. - Probably. I think it was more Owen just went over and acted like he was picking something up because he could never quite find it. This is revealing some of the secrets of the trade. The deliberately low-tech effects. Yes, yes. Something I was thinking about this ship, which we didn't say in the cross-section area, but I do think is definitely another thing about the film, is the sort of deliberately artificial and sort of the things that are invented, certainly the fish and the cross section of the boat, sort of living in the same world with stuff that's very real. You know what? Okay, so this is one of the big concerns for me. How-- We want to make, you know... Most of our time is spent in how do we bring our characters to life. That's what we're inspired by, that's what we spend all our time with as writers. And then as a director, I'm working with actors, and those are my actors, and then the cinematographer, the production designer... And how can we have them come to life and have a feel for them in an environment that is so strange and unreal? Well, and I think what's sort of interesting about that too is that Zissou is somebody who, you know, makes his living sort of, you know, in some ways... - Making fake documentaries. Making fake documentaries or documentaries that are highly indulged or embellished upon. And, you know, so, you know... Yeah, so the artifice of it, for me, it doesn't actually-- This is like intellectualizing something, but for me, part of the inspiration of the movie is to create this world that's going to be set, and they're gonna wear these crazy outfits, which comes out of his character, and he's going to fly for Air Kentucky, and, you know, we're going to make these animals. But the hope is that through the fact that we've made so much, and invented so much, and through the artificial feeling, that it would make it interesting enough or have enough excitement in just the fact we're trying to create so many things. That's basically what I feel like. We're just trying to try as hard as we can to put as much life into it as we can and as many ideas into it as we can. And there's even something that you were saying, which was that the fact that the animals being this sort of handmade, stop-motion, old-fashioned style, and how it's not very real, is related to the whole concept of a movie being about people who make things and create their own world. That's what the movie's kind of about, some sort of self-invention, and making their own art and all those things. Which in this instance, there's a bunch of plastic domes with light bulbs blinking inside them on a beach in the south of Italy.
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