Both Anderson brothers also made the childhood artwork hung by Etheline in the foyer.
Another key contributor to "The Royal Tenenbaums" who has been with Anderson since "Bottle Rocket" is costume designer Karen Patch. Since they first began working together, says Patch, Anderson has had a great interest and appreciation for clothing, and over the years has become increasingly sophisticated and knowledgeable about what makes great costumes: "He is so creative and fascinating to be around. He's full of wonderful ideas. It's a huge pleasure to work with a director who understands the importance of wardrobe in building character."
Patch and Anderson began speaking about costumes for "The Royal Tenenbaums" in April 2000, before the script was completed. They kept up a running correspondence of sketches and nightly emails for nearly five months before she actually saw the script.
In the film, each character has a "uniform," an idea that Anderson likes to include in each of his films.
In "The Royal Tenenbaums," the "uniform" also helps to reinforce the idea that the Tenenbaum children peaked in childhood. "We see these people at age 10, and then suddenly at age 30. And part of the story is how they're connected to the way they were then," says Anderson. "So much of who they are is formed at that young age - they have the same clothes and the same hairstyle."
Paltrow says, "As soon as I knew I was wearing the little Lacoste dresses and loafers and a fur coat, I said to myself, okay, I get it. It became pretty clear to me who Margot was."
Filming on "The Royal Tenenbaums" began in March 2001 at the Hamilton Heights location. Mendel points out that "it's a film with 240 scenes in it and we have 60 days to shoot it, so mathematically that means we are shooting four scenes a day. It was a breathless pace.
In addition to the central location of the Tenenbaum house, scenes were also staged at the Centre Court of the West Side Tennis Club the roof of Boy's Harbor School overlooking Central Park, the Waldorf Astoria (which stood in for Royal's residence, the Lindbergh Palace Hotel), and out at sea on a ship, the Kingspointer.
For Anderson, shooting on location in New York City constituted a complete change of pace.
"There's a certain tension that exists on a set shooting in New York. New York can definitely bring that out," Anderson says. "But sometimes that's the right thing. The movie s about New York after all, and we couldn't really film it any other place."
In addition to the principal urban setting, the script also contained vignettes of Tenenbaum family history that circled the globe. Remarkably, Anderson and his team managed to create very real versions of Jamaica, Antarctica, the Amazon, New Guinea, Indiana, North Dakota, Paris and the Himalayas in places like Yonkers Westchester and New Jersey.
The experience of directing a cast of movie stars was also new for the director.
"One of the differences is that established film stars have their own method of working that's already developed, whereas on 'Rushmore,' for example, the leading role was played by Jason Schwartzman, who had never acted before," Anderson says. "Jason and I figured out how he works as an actor, what he needs and what he wants.
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