Anjelica Huston adds, "I just love working as part of an ensemble because you get so much from everyone else and from the way all the relationships evolve. And you meet all the people you've admired for so long. I'm ravished to be in a movie with Billy Murray, and extremely proud to be in one with Gene Hackman. And everyone got on. There were no bummers in the group. That's sort of unusual."
Another Wes Anderson passion is music. Anderson uses music in every step of the filmmaking process, as early as the writing stage. According to Mendel, "Wes is very inspired in terms of how he uses music and he makes choices that are constantly surprising. It's very fun to have him very early in the first draft of the script play you a song and explain each moment of what's happening and then a year and a half later you see exactly what he described."
During production, Anderson has the advantage of knowing a great deal of the music that he would like to use in the film and plays the music on the set. Gwyneth Paltrow finds it an enormously helpful tool.
"Every time he put on a record, it was like everything is being fleshed out. All of the sudden you know exactly the tone of that bit of the film. It just facilitates having every aspect of yourself there. It makes it very sensual. I wish other directors did that, because it really works."
Anjelica Huston agrees, "It's really great to have an idea of the kind of music that Wes is going to use for the film. He played Ravel for us, a particular piece that is very lyrical and upbeat, but it's also a little dark. There's a lot that you can take from that to influence what you're aolng.
The score by Mark Mothersbaugh also adds an important element in the texture of the film.
"When we first started working I felt that we needed the music to feel magical in order to support a character like Royal, to keep everything in the right tone, the magical tone" Anderson says. But their collaboration led them in unexpected directions. "As we were working on it, on a cue by cue basis, the goal changed. Mark can quickly bring a magical feeling to it, but his desire for it, and mine, became more and more about deepening the movie. His music was more ambitious than the music we had done for the two previous films.
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