The Cinema of Wes Anderson by Whitney Crothers Dilley

Author:Whitney Crothers Dilley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film/History & Criticism, PER004020, Performing Arts/Film/Guides & Reviews
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2017-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Opposition and Resolution: The Dissonance of Celebrity in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Twenty-seven years ago, I wanted to keep an eye permanently open into the oceans, so I equipped the bow of my new ship Calypso with an underwater observation chamber. At that time, I was convinced that the oceans were immense, teeming with life, rich in resources of all kinds; during the long crossings in the Indian Ocean or in the Atlantic, I spent many hours, day and night, looking through my undersea portholes, dreaming of Captain Nemo in the Nautilus.1

Jacques Cousteau, The Ocean World, 1985

When he was still in college at the University of Texas, Wes Anderson wrote a short story based on the life of Jacques Cousteau, fourteen years before the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was made in 2004. The story was just a bare-bones treatment of a male protagonist (who would eventually become Steve Zissou) and the character of his ex-wife (the estranged wife in the film, Eleanor, who would be played by Anjelica Huston), along with a description of the ship, the Belafonte, and the story’s main setting. Anderson reworked the story obsessively in college, and it was Owen Wilson who goaded him into turning the ever-unfinished story into a screenplay. Anderson was intrigued by the figure of Jacques Cousteau (to whom he dedicated the film), not only because of Cousteau’s boundless energy and drive – he had worked with the French Resistance during World War II; he had invented various submersibles; he had built a successful empire on oceanography research – but also because of Cousteau’s experience with nearly unprecedented international fame. (Cousteau’s lasting fame even affected the film’s dedication in the credits; according to Anderson, he simply wanted to dedicate the film to Cousteau, but the wording of the dedication was changed by Cousteau’s company to add a disclaimer disavowing any connection to the film: “In memory of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and with gratitude to the Cousteau Society which was not involved in the making of this film.”) The character of Zissou was originally supposed to be named “Steve Cousteau,” and besides being an oceanographer-documentarian like the fictitious Zissou, Cousteau also had a research vessel named the Calypso which, like Zissou’s Belafonte, had a mini-submarine, a gyrocopter, and a research balloon; Cousteau’s crew were similarly costumed in red knit caps and uniforms; and Cousteau’s son Philippe was tragically killed in a plane crash while piloting the Cousteau amphibious Flying Calypso seaplane.2 The film was shot in the studios at Cinecittà near Rome where Federico Fellini made many of his most famous films, and it shares its film-within-a-film structure with Fellini’s 8½ (1963), along with its portrayal of the lonely helmsman’s problems of finding inspiration and financial backing; at the same time, Murray’s Zissou is colored with the melancholy of 8½’s Fellini alter ego Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni). According to Anderson, Steve Zissou is an amalgamation of Mastroianni’s character in 8½, Cousteau, and Murray himself.3

The screenplay by Anderson and Noah

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