The Royal Tenenbaums: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that gives you the secret history and little known fascinating facts about your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and the more. My name is Jordan Runt Talk and my name is Alex Tiger. What are we talking about today and this week? With the fastidious attention to detail of a boy who would walk around high school with this bow tie every day, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Wess Anderson. I am so sorry. I don't know if Wes Anderson actually walked around high school with a bow tie, but could you know? I was more into corduroy jackets. Also, like Wes Anderson, that was more of a cravat guy. No, I haven't been a cravat guy. I did want to. I did spend a year during the r I p the Peter Bogdanovich bandana thing. Anyway, Wes Anderson Baby, twenty years of Royal Tenant Bombs. Let's go, one of most influential movies on the past two decades of pop culture. And I get jazz about this movie the way people do like Rocky four. I love this overly precious mannered tweet, pseudo J D. Salinger, mid century American white people problems. I love it. Just give it to me. I'm I'm num bing bomb strapping. I'm getting way too excited about Royal Tenant Bombs. I don't know this movie is great. I'm not a movie critic. I'm not going to talk about this movie's influence. I just think it's a truly perfect thing. It's like Rushmore. It's just a great start to finish. It's great collaborative. It's such a great cast. And I don't know about how you feel about Gene Hackman, Jordan, but Gene Hackman is one of my favorite of that middle era of Hollywood. Like I dearly love French Connection, I dearly love Scarecrow, the converse Sandu. Yeah, so like having this be such an appropriate uh Swan song for him. We're not going to talk about Welcome to Mooseport his his actual last movie. Act I in my mind, I really thought that Royal ten Obaums was his last movie, and then I actually looked it up and I was horrified. I thought somebody had hacked his Wikipedia account and may Welcome the moosepart his last movie. But it really was that was his final on screen appearance. Well, we're not gonna dwell on that. We're gonna focus on happier times. Uh not really, higgle. We're gonna talk about how Gene Hackman didn't enjoy himself on the set and made sure to tell Wes Anderson at pretty much every available opportunity. We'll also talk about Anderson's dictatorial approach to fashion, the time Angelica Houston's haircut on fire in the middle of a scene, and when Mordecai the Falcon was helped for ransom by a random New Jersey resident. But yes, of course there are some happier moments too, like the time Gwyneth Paltrow took Paul McCartney out on a bowling date, which sounds like my personal fantasy, and also how the film inspired elements of the sitcom thirty Rock but also almost killed the show arrested development. And of course it's also quite a bit in here for you typeface nerds as well, so keep an ear out for that. So, without further ado, here is everything you didn't know about the Royal tennem bombs Royal Tenembom's baby. All right, how did Royal Tennan bombs, Get It Start, Jordan's hit Me. So it's after Rushmore and Owen Wilson, who's Wes Anderson's writing partner as well as his frequent on screen running buddy uh suggested that we was write a screenplay about his parents divorce, so that was the jumping off point. But the more Wiz Anderson wrote, the less he said the family resembled his own family, and as we'll talk about in a moment, that's probably for the best. Though they were both collaborators, Owen Wilson had become much more in demand as an actor since Rushmore, and as a result, was Anderson really took the lead on the writing on this more than he'd had in the past, and their relationship with him a lot more collaborative before that. Can you imagine Wes Anderson writes up Owen Wilson and he's like, hey, man, I've been revisiting that idea about, like, you know, writing a screenplay about my parents divorce, and he's like talking through it, and Owen Wilson's on the I was like, I gotta go shoot anaconda. That was a bad Owen Wilson. It'll get better as I go. Don't worry, I'm gonna get about an hour to HEA's into it. But yeah, he shot Anaconda starring Ice Cube and John Voight, and you know, probably did some other stuff. But I really just wanted to stress that Owen Wilson was in Anaconda and Wes Anderson presumably at some point was left on red because because Owen Wilson was off shooting Anaconda with Iced Tea and Jennifer Lopez, so was. Anderson delves into his parents divorce alone at the recommendation of his friend and writing partner Owen Wilson, but it becomes as he as he goes further down the process as a writing and he realizes that it's, you know, not really about his own family, but instead about this fictitious group of predatornaturally gifted children who then grow up and deal with no longer being precocious. I mean, it's a movie about gifted kids syndrome, you know, And I hate to use that because it's such a Twitter meme at this point, but it's like, it's just a movie about gifted kids becoming like sad adults. So it's great if you identify as either one of those things. Um like a lot of Wes Anderson stuff. The laundry list of that he has attributed to going into this movie is insane. So we're just going to do it as a lightning round. He imagined supposedly the story that would later become the film, while listening to Modice Ravel's string Quartet in f performed by the Britton Quartet, which is yeah, of course he did. I mean, what, here's the thing about Wes Anderson. He's like he could have come up with this story while listening to Slayer or like fog Hat, and he would lie to you because he has his image to maintain, so you know, like Grand Funk Railroad, like he was just listening to like American Band on repeat with like a trucker hat. But then he's still gonna lie to you and give you some kind of high falution. Chumba Womba was a major influence Royal Tonan bombs. This is just the tip of the hat. So we're, like I said, we're gonna lightning around it. So first up, we have Frank Capra's nineteen thirty eight adaptation of You Can't Take It with You. Then we go we skipped forward four years for Orson Wells two film, The Magnificent Amberson's, which was probably one of the biggest influences of all the Laundry list of influences that was Innerson decided because it's about this kind of gifted, slightly mythical family. And then we moved forward about eight years because we're doing this chronologically, because why not. We're looking at Jean Pierre Melville's Les Enfance TB from nineteen fifty, which is a specific inspiration for the character of Richie and Margo, and we're not going to do We're not going to get super granular on the plot here. We're assuming that you've watched this movie, so spoilers. Also, I guess we have to say that the next influence we have, which is one of the more obvious ones to my mind, it's where I come with these characters from his Frannie and Zoe, which is a Salinger from nine which has a lot of this like predator, naturally smart and precocious children stuff, along with a character named Tannenbaum, so that seems kind of obvious. Next up, where we got George. This was my favorite EO. Konenberg seven book from the mixed up files of Mrs Basil Eve Franken Wilder the Great Kids Book. In that book, the kids run away and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which obviously inspires the story of Richie and Margot hiding out in the museum overnight. Four years later, we've got works of French director Louis mal including Murmur of the Heart from one and a movie from eight years previous called The Fire within the Ladder. Of that film contains a line translated as I'm going to kill myself tomorrow, which you may remember a bearded Luke Wilson in Toning into the Mirror set to the ungodly harrowing strains of needle in the hay. While we're talking about films from nineteen seventy one, we have Francis Trufous Two English Girls, which is also a film that you see this visual device of multiple book covers sort of meticulously used to fill up the frame of the film and to kind of not specifically tied to movies, but two personalities really will continue to inspire the some characters. Oh yeah, the famous neurologist Oliver Sacks, who is the man behind the Robin Williams movie Awakenings, and he wrote The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and all these great, really interesting books about the human mind. He inspired Bill Murray's character, and he looks just like we'd wear turtlenecks and had a big bushy beard and these round glasses. So it's definitely a nod to Oliver Sacks and who else we got Cormick McCarthy. Baby, Yeah, Corvin McCarthy is a model for the brief segment of Owen Wilson's writing that we actually hear from his Custer novel, which can I just read that? Yes? Please, I want to read this entire quote. I mean, I've as someone who once had the Twitter handle Cormick McCartney, Like, I'm a huge Cormick McCarthy fan. So this writing is so damn funny to me. It is so pitch perfect. He's doing a reading of his book and the passages the crickets and the rust beetles scuttled among the nettles of the sage thicket. Vaminos, amigos. He whispered and threw the busted leather flint craw over the loose weave of the saddle Cock, and they wrote on in the Friscalating Dusk Light that is pitch perfect m McCarthy parody. I love it so much. Now that we've gotten dispensed with the fictional influences on the book, that's move into some queasier territory Jordan's. Apparently Wes Anderson really had a childhood friend who was actually love with his own sister, Like, not his adopted sister, but his actual sister. Um yeah, um. Now that now that we've lived through Game of Thrones, people forget, No, people don't forget. Incest is still a weird thing to put in a movie. People don't forget. Game of Thrones didn't normalize that anyway. Now we're get into casting. I mean I spoke at length and loudly about the cast for this movie, which is perfect. But the lynchpin of the whole thing is Gene Hackman. He's so He's just truly perfect. And Anderson wrote this with Gene Hackman in mine and getting him to sign onto this movie was such a herculean task and I love every bit of it, he says. He wrote the role. He told Vulture in that he wrote the role of role tenebond for Gene Hackman against Hackman's wishes, because when he met Hackman to talk about it, Jean said to him, I don't like it when people write for me because you don't know me, and I don't want what you think is me. So perhaps obviously after hearing that, Anderson added in this two thousand thirteen interview that Hackman was very difficult to sign. The money was too low. The size of the cast meant that everyone had to work for scale, which not very much money for sixty days of shooting. That he is a main character, and Alec Baldwin jokes I think around that same in that same round table that Hackman's agent once told him that Jean doesn't even open his eyes for less than three million, but Anderson credits that same agent with convincing him to take the role. And in some other truly great bits of almost casting news, Gene Wilder and Michael Caine were supposedly alternate picks for Royal, which I don't try to indulge in too much alternate casting history, but those both also would have been incredible um and Gene Hackman has also said in an interviews that he was a little hesitant to accept the part because he felt there was a little um it reflected on times in his life that he had sort of behaved in similar ways to his family, and he didn't want to see that up on screen. So he actually went and talked to his family about this part and saying he was with this cut a little too close to the bone, with this feel a little too much like our own lives? Should I not do this? And they agreed that he would accept the part, but um having midwife this role through fire and blood, Game of Throne reference to Gene Hackman gets to the set and it is not like it is not a bed of roses. Yeah, I means you can probably imagine giving a whole lead up to this. He was a bit prickly to work with on the set, and I guess he knew that this was getting towards the end of his career, and he signed on to this movie under the promise from was Anderson that you know, this would be a fun and relaxing experience, and I guess, um Jean did not find it fun or relaxing. And there was a point I guess when he actually just shouted at we was on the set Hey, Wes, you said this was supposed to be fun and relaxing for me. Well, I'm not having fun. And this was just one of many instances of Gene Hackman apparently just writing and verbally abusing we was on the set. According to Angelica Houston, there was a moment when Jean told Wez to quote, pull up your pants and act like a man. I mean, it's just like having to Doyle. It's like having Popeye Doyle on your set, like screaming at you, and that this sounds terrifying. The fact that we could not make the movie making experience fun for Gene Hackman really really hurt him, especially because he knew that Gene was, like, you know, one of his last roles. They really wanted to make it something personal, but I guess the cast really rallied around Wes. Bill Murray would show up on days when he wasn't required on the set to basically act as like a buffer and protector for Wez from Gene and uh. Angelica Houston was saying about how the scene when when Doyle confronts her on the street after not seeing her for all those years and telling her that he's dying and then walks it back and says he's not dying, and she slaps him. She says that she slapped him for real, and like she's all the imprint of her hand on his cheek, and she knew that she really went too far because he I guess when he was reading the script he felt really uncomfortable saying damn. And when she smacked him, he said damn. And it's like he wasn't acting. He just was actually reacting to getting the smack down from Angelica and she was like, oh God, you know he's gonna be furious now. Yeah. So he was apparently not exactly welcomed presence on the set, but you know, I think he did maybe come away with it a little positively because Wes Anderson asked his brother Eric to sketch out designs for the family, and one of which he sent to Hackman, like a sketch of him as royal, and he later asked if he could borrow it, and Hackman either had lost it by that point or didn't want to give it back. I like to believe he didn't want to give it back. It's like a nice memory for him. But you know, while we're talking about Lightning Round. Fun fact, Wes's brother Eric does all of Young Richie's drawings in the film, and Young Richie is incidentally played by John Tatura's son Amadeo. So if you want to tweet us about this episode, please use the hashtag Amadeo Tuturo. We'll come back to that later on. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. And I, you know, I had mentioned about what it would be like to have Popeye Doyle on the set of your unbearably tweet dialogue driven films screaming at you that he wasn't having fun and to pull up your pants, and to pull up your pants and act like a man. Wes and Anderson actually was not above sticking in references to his stars other more famous films into the Royal tenembomb So Jordan, what are those? Uh? There's a not of course, to the French Connection. French Connection as one of the greatest car chases in cinematic history. Uh? Was Anderson pays tribute to that when Royal takes Chassis Chilled or an Aria Newsy to go go karting and they're driving under this like almost looks like a subway. I think it's one of the elevated it's one of the standing elevated tracks. And that original scene is stunt driver Bill Hickman tearing ass around Brooklyn for real. They did not obtain a permit. It's crashed into a real car. Yeah, this is the French connection. By the way, we did not aid. Yeah, that car chase in the middle really livened up the whole dialogue heavything. But that's not the only tribute to another star's work in there. Wes Anderson loved Danny Glover, which I think is a noble Yeah, exactly who doesn't. But in Witness in the Harrison Ford crime movie, Glover's character shoots Ford and Ford's responses I know you, which is you know You'll remember, Hackman says to Owen Wilson's character at one point. That's when he's escaping out the window. He looks down he says, I know you, um, but you know there is a very uncomfortable moment in the film between Gene Hackman and Danny Glover's characters, and you know Jordan's do you want to talk us through this one? Sure? There's a scene when Gene calls Danny Glover Coltrane as a slur, and apparently there was a long discussion not whether or not to use that slur at all, but I guess Hackman wanted to change the line to satch Mo as in Louis Armstrong, but I guess Danny Glover agreed with Wes Anderson that Coltrane worked better as a slur, which I mean, the character is supposed to be, and like it's supposed to be. I understand why it's in there. It makes sense from like an art point of view, but just imagining like two white guys sitting there like earnestly discussing with Danny Glover which slur that they would rather use on him is God, that's so cringe. Another fun fact about Danny Glover, that's right. His look on the film was modeled after U N Secretary General Kofe and non apparently this is Wes Anderson's idea after Danny Lover, who apparently knows Kofe, personally introduced Wes Anderson to him at a UN event. That's incredible. Hi, I'm Danny Glover, this is my friend. U N Secretary General Kofe and On, please meet this slight corduroy clad man who is making a dumb movie. Not the World ten, Mom's dumb. Just on the scope of things that kofe and On has to deal with during the day. Where are we at? Okay, Angelica Houston incredible in this and she's incredible and everything whatever. I don't need to talk about how Angelica Houston is amazing, But Jordan, why don't you talk us through a little bit of the stuff that Wes Anderson was working through with Angelica Houston. So it sounds like Les Anderson was working out some kind of mommy issues in the character that he wrote for Angelica Houston, and he wrote it specifically for Angelica. But there was a weird moment during shooting when um, I guess was gave Angelica multiple photographs of his mom, who, like Ethelene, was an archaeologist, and I think he gave her one of like a locket that his mom used to wear. And finally Angelica used to just asked him, like, where am I playing your mother? And he said no, But I guess that the glasses Ethylene wears in the film are actually his mother's glasses, So uh, West, am I playing your mother? No, but put on these glasses and don't ask further questions. Yeah, there's there's kind of a lot to impact there. But but moving right along. Apparently in the scene when they're filming Margot's birthday and sort of the opening montage and Angelica Aasan's carrying in a cake with candles on it. While shooting that film, an errant Campbell set her hair on fire, and the actor who played Pagoda had to like think quickly and just I think he liked did he like throw water on it or something? I forget he might have had like a dixie cup. I don't know, but quick shout out to Pagoda. Kumar Polana, he's part of the Wes Anderson rap. You know, he's a bit part in most of the movies. And apparently Polana used to work at Anderson's favorite coffee shop in Dallas, so he brought him with him to The Big Time Baby. That's how he met Pagoda. Yeah, and that's and he went on to later save Angelica Houston's hair. So that's a nice arc. Well, speaking of body parts and other parts of the body that got maimed in the production of Royal Tennant Bombs. Talking about Margot's wooden finger, Well, there's a lot of hand trauma and Royal Tennant Bombs. You know. Margot has this wooden finger that she's like always tapping on hard services to annoy people, I guess, but it's it was supposed to have been a thing from Rushmore that was originally intended for um Sarah Tanako's character Margaret Yang in Rushmore, which she was supposed to have lost in a science experiment supposed to go into her character rather than a wood chopping accident, which incidentally is how Jerry Garcia lost one of his fingertips, which derailed him from his career as a bluegrass banjo player. I'm not making that up. And then, while we're on the topic of hand trauma, in In the Our Hands was Anderson's like feet, hands and Moms Baby. The BB gun, an incident in the film, is an oft mentioned part of the film's legacy. Owen Wilson shot his brother Andrew in the hand with a BB gun while they were kids, and in the movie, the shot of Chaz showing his father the bb that's lodged in his hand like just under his skin and moving it around. That is Owen Wilson's brothers Andrew, that's his real hand. And fun fact, Andrew Wilson plays the farmer who accidentally chops off Margot's finger. Um. He's also in the movie when he serves as an announcer for one of my other favorite scenes in the movies, which is when Richie has his breakdown mid tennis. It's so perfect. He's taking off his shoes and one of his socks and actually, Jim, I think he's crying. That's West Wes Anderson and Andrew Wilson. And you know what, we're still not done talking about hands because just like you know, yeah, I don't think I realized this thing for hands here. So of the film opens with the book being barred from the library. Um, and that is Wes Anderson's hand stamping the library card. Another big part of this film, as with all of Wes Anderson's films, is the music. So Jordan's let's talk a little bit about the music of the Royal Town of Bombs. To me, one of the biggest, you know, most iconic music moments of the whole movie is when the adult Margo steps off the bus and Richie's there to meet her as Nico's These Days is playing. And I guess that whole audio visual combo had been in Wes Anderson's head for years, long before he had this movie in mind. He just knew that this song these Days would just fit with the image of somebody walking off a bus. You know. He didn't know who. He wasn't even sure if it was a bus, but something about somebody arriving with this song playing, he later said an interview. But the thing I didn't know about was the expression on her face, which is the thing I think that makes it work. Apparently, weirdly, Margot's appearance was modeled on Nico, with her you know, her eye make up and probably her sadness to um. Gwyneth Paltrow said that shooting that scene when she's stepping off the bus was one of her favorite scenes she's ever done. Apparently, her late father, Bruce Paltrow was visiting the set that day, which you know, really, you know, made it special for and Um. She later said in an interview, I really hate hate seeing myself in a movie that's kind of like the only scene that I can watch myself, like of my whole career, which is you know, it's it's it's a good scene. Its scene. The best part is Jackson Brown, who wrote the song These Days and played guitar on the song in the movie, he forgotten that he'd given permission for the song to be used in the film until he just went to go see it, uh like, because you know, he said. He later explains, like, you know, you get these things in the mail that he signed off on, you don't really know what they're talking about, and you just kind of like give your permission and it just sort of goes off and you forget about it. And he said, You're sitting in the movie theater and there's this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of the bus or something, and I'm thinking to myself, I used to play guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it's Nicos singing these Days. And then he puts it together and realized, oh my god, it's him. Which is But um, speaking of music and music permission and licensing and all that, I guess Wes Anderson put Gwyneth Paltrow on Beatles song duty, trying to track down and schmooz Paul McCartney to try to get the Beatles version of Hey Jude for the picture, and I guess she took him out bowling, and I think they showed him a rough cut of the film too, which she apparently loved. But for some reason they weren't able to get the rights to the Beatles originals, which Paul McCartney famously doesn't own. And that's a discussion for another day. It will get me very heated. But in any event, the rights holders for the Beatles songs, which I think at that stage still included Michael Jackson, they either refused to let it Wes Anderson used the songs, or maybe they wanted too much money. Uh. They wound up having to use the orchestrated version of the song for the opening scene instead of the the Beatles original cut. But I guess some of the early cuts that played like the New York Film Festival contained a couple of Beatles songs that they ultimately had to remove because you know, they couldn't get the right For a film that has so many moments that are so tie you think of it as something that like arrived fully formed, which like the Nico scene, but it closes with that the Van Morrison song and the like Clavinett intro to that song is so like whimsical and so like perfect for the moment. It's I don't know the demo version of I'm Looking Through You that would have gone, that would have gone through there. You do though, probably think you know I do. It's on the anthology too. I just think it would have been distracting having the Beatles like these songs. I mean, especially if they were going to open the movie with the original version of Hey Jude. That seems distracting. But maybe it just would have been so jarring because I'm so not used to hearing Beatles songs, you know, you know, Hollywood movie style setting, almost like when they used Tomorrow Never Knows in Madmen, which I remember there was a big thing about how you know, it was the first time an actual Beatles track had been used in like produced you know, it wasn't like a documentary but like a you know, a drama. It was powerful because you're so not used to seeing those songs in that setting. So who knows. It might have worked out really great, But but I think the version that's in there is Mark Mark Mother's Bab had done the arrangements. Yeah, it's credited to the Mutato Music Orchestra, but it is orchestrated by Mark Mother's Ball, who does other parts of the score as well. Mark Mother's Ball, of course, from Devo, has done so much with Wes Anderson. His stuff in Life Aquatic is really good too. I love the little like cassio keyboard stuff that plays whenever they're going around. Yeah. Anyway, so we've talked a lot about how great the music cues are in this film, but there is a darker side to some of the musical choices that Anderson made. Yeah, there's a really kind of eerie, uh, extremely upsetting coincidence in the bathroom scene where Richie cuts his hair and beard and eventually his wrists the music playing Needle in the Hay by Elliott Smith. I guess Eliot Smith was supposed to cover Hey Jude for the opening also, that was an idea that they had, but was Anderson later said that he wasn't in a great mental or physical space, and just a few years after World Teneblums came out, Elliott Smith committed suicide through self inflicted stab wounds. I think while his girlfriend was in the shower. I thought there was some bathroom in the apartment. Choosing the apartment, there was some bathroom related component in there too, I thought. But it's eerie to hear that song for that scene when when Richie is cutting his risk knowing. I couldn't listen to that song for a while. That was actually the first place I heard Elliot Smith, because I grew up in not in central Pennsylvania. I didn't really grow up somewhere where people were throwing at Elliott Smith around as a musical reference. But that was like the first place I heard Elliott Smith, and he was a huge Beatles fan. There's versions of him doing like because yeah, it's beautiful. I also missed Goodwill Hunting as a child, so I didn't hear like say Yes or some of the other soundtracks or miss Misery, so I had only ever heard this song, and it just like bowled me away. I can't imagine hay Ju again like a lot of the other stuff. I can't imagine a cover of Hey Jude by Elliott Smith that wouldn't feel samarial. Yeah, yeah, like Jesus. But that's not even the only suicide connection to the music in this movie. Yes, the song playing when Richie returns to the Tennem bomb House is by Nick Drake, who's believed to have died by suicide in nineteen seventy four. Um, he took an overdose of medication prescribed to help him with his depression, and there's some debate about whether or not he intentionally took his own life. There's this amazing BBC documentary you can find on YouTube called A Skin Too Few, and they speak to Nick Drake's sister and others close to him, and they all sort of speculate on whether or not he intentionally took an overdose of his medication, and his producer used the phrase I'll never forget. He said he preferred to imagine Nick making a last desperate lunge towards life by taking an excess of his medication designed to help him, rather than a calculated surrender to death. That's just a phrase that always stuck with me. Um. Having said all that, I'm completely blanking on what song they use. What Nick Drake's song did they use in the World ton of Bombs. It's either Pink Moon or Fly Yeah, it's fly right around. Yeah, Pink Moon was in the volks right right around the same time. I think that Nick Drake Estate was licensing a bunch of stuff around this time because Pink Moon had famously been in a Volkswagen commercial that got people up in arms, back when that was the thing people cared about. Well did it get But I thought, in my I've read the thirty three and a third book on We're going into serious nerdery here on Pink Moon, and I thought that was, like the thing that brought Nick Drake to prominence was that song being in the Volkswagen commercial, because he really outside of I think some nerds, right, I mean, he was not really well known. I mean, I could be wrong, but I thought I remember that being you know, a major point in that in that thirty three third book. And you know, if you disagree with us, with any of our with any of my pitches about alternate music, please feel free to tweet at the podcast using the hashtag Amadeo Tuturo and we will be sure to engage in a conversation with you about that. Now, back into the province of whimsy and away from the province of crushing depression, that is the other hallmark of Wes Anderson's work. Let's talk about some of the fastidious, awesome fashions of the film. Oh yeah, I mean Margo's outfit. I feel like one out of every four of my classmates in high school dressed up as Margo at some point, you know, our Halloween during my high school experience. I mean, her look is just so cool. So, I mean, it's like the prototypical hipster millennial look. I mean, the whole the whole production and look of the film is you know, it's designed to be era ambiguous, and really it's supposed to be. You notice that the characters has grown ups are wearing in some cases the idea annical looks that they're wearing his kids, because the whole idea was to telegraph this sense of arrested development, and they wanted to to cling onto the era when they were at their best. So, I mean, you know, Margot in the beginning of the movie, she's twelve years old and wearing a mink coat and a tennis dress, and later on she's wearing the exact same thing. And you know, you could see it two ways. You could see it as her knowing who she was at an early age, but a whole like you know, precocious kid, child, genius thing or just they're all in a state of perpetual arrested development. But a custom designer, Karen Patch, got Margot's famous mink coat design from a kind of obscure Peter Seller's movie from nineteen sixty four called The World of Henry Orient. Peter Sellers plays this concert pianist and these two teen girls are like obsessed with him in like Beatlemania style, but instead of like four guys playing rock and roll, it's this like Liberace style concept. It's weird, but it's it's really funny. Uh. And one of the teen girls runs away in is dressed in this this mink coat. So where did the codes come from? They were actually custom made for the film by Fendi. I actually am not familiar with Fendi. Can you tell me a little more of Fendi? Have no idea what Fendi Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, Fendi Fendi product basically, so I don't even want to. Don't you remember that song creation, No, Fend's what Fendi's. I was in my room listening to Simon and Garfunkele whenever that came out. What I I don't even know who that is. Oh that rapper creation, Yes, currently residing in the where are they now? Files? So Fendi, which is an Italian company formed and known for its use of fur and fur goods and leathers, they made two of these, one for Gwyneth Paltrow and one for young Margot, custom made for the film. They got to use them for six months and then probably sent them back because it was like a quarter of the film's budget. Karen Patch also made the La cost dressed in the film that Margot wears from scratch because the company apparently only made solid color dresses, not stripe, so she basically just asked them for what does fabric come in bolts bolts bolts of fabric and just stitched it. But then they also had to get permission from the company to put the alligator logo on there because it was not an official product, and the I guess the cost is apparently very touchy about protecting its brand. But you know what, we're just warming up here with the wardrobe stories connected to this film. So we talked a little bit about Gene Hackman losing his cool with Wes Anderson, So let's talk about one of the most Wes Anderson incident of losing your cool? What Why did he do it? Why did you do that? So it's kind of amazing. I mean that there's stories of Gene Hackman calling Wes Anderson the C word on the set and like just being really awful to him, and yet he kept as cool. But the thing that raid was Anderson apparently fly off the handle. The only time on the set concerned Luke Wilson's cuffs. Luke Wilson's character, Richie's got this kind of hippie, shaggy tennis look going on that was inspired by the seventies tennis star Bjorn Board. But I guess when they were fitting Luke Wilson's character for a suit, they were at you know, some really high in New York tailor, you know, one of those boxes in the middle of the room, and they're fitting them for this beautiful camel hair suit, and I guess Wes kept raising the level of the cuffs and so they were getting too high for Luke Wilson's taste. And so I guess whenever Wes Andison would turn around, uh, lukeuid motion to the tailor and say, you know, hey, can we get those lower down a bit. So they kept being this back and forth with the tailor about lowering the cuffs, bringing them back up, lowering the cuffs, bringing them back up. And then I guess we was finally realized what was happening. Yanked Luke Wilson off the thing that he's standing on the middle of the room in the tailor's office, pull him the side and goes, this is gonna be the level of the cuffs, and then he goes and then and then they're talking about this story years later. I think it was like the twenty anniversary round table, and uh I was saying, oh, yeah, I do remember that. I feel bad about raising my voice. I don't think there was any I don't think they're does any need for it. I think that's something to be said for. Is the actor comfortable with what you're putting them in? And then the cherry on top of this story is oh yeah. I was like, oh yeah, we we framed you above the waist of the time. Anyway, no one ever saw the cuff, so it was all he got hot unto the collar for literally no reason, but not everything in there was So I don't want to say frivolous because I guess it turned out to bear a real wedge issue, but not everything in there was solely aesthetic. Ben Steller asked Wes Anderson at one point, why the track suits? Why are my character and his son's dressed in red track suits? Anderson replied that because Chas was so obsessed with the safety of his sons after the death of his wife, that wearing red would make everyone easier to see in case of an emergency, which is very poignant and like a great bit of behind the scenes characterization. But then on the DVD audio commentary, he basically just says I had no real reason for them to be wearing it. I just always imagined three characters in red Adidas track suits. So I kind of got the sense that Ben Stiller's character in this movie was basically his character from Heavyweights. Do you remember like that? Wasn't he always in like a track suit and just kind of like, alright, ready, I gotta go. Then when he like orders gene hackmen like he lights out. Uh, he kind of reminds me of the character in The Happy like the sociopathic nurse. We're moving towards a unified theory of Ben Stiller here, so steering this ship back on track to the production. So we've talked about wardrobe. Moving on to the set and setting of the film. Anderson and his assistant Will Sweeney were driving around New York with the third guy, whose name is George dreck Culius, and in Life Aquatic, the character that Michael Gambon plays Oseiri drek Julius, is a reference to him. Anyway, They're tooling around New York there in the Hamilton's Heights section of Harlem, and they spot this house at three thirty nine Convent Avenue. You know, it's a cool house. It's got the drum tower. It's just I mean, if you know, you know, if you don't stop listening, don't do that. We sold ads against this, and so Anderson rewrote the film to accommodate this house. But I couldn't get in touch with the guy who owned it. They literally just left a note on the door. They couldn't find these guys because it was a vacant home. It had been vacant and they weren't living there. They were planning to do extensive renovations on the house, and in one of the great instances of either accidental or just negotiated New York real estate. No, how the guy bought the house after it had been foreclosed, and he paid the exact amount that the production wound up paying to use it. So he essentially got a free house out of the world Tenant Bombs and it's the Royal Tenant Bombs House. Although that is probably more of a millstone around his neck these days given the people who want to probably show up and take pictures in front of it. I imagine one of the selling points for the production was that it was pre any kind of big renovation, so they could, I imagine, go in there and do whatever they wanted to it. I wonder if the owner left it a low own. I mean, just think about I mean, obviously there's just twenty years before Airbnb, but I mean, can you imagine, like if the house was just left the way that it was during the spice and stuff around? Oh yeah, it would be amazing. Um, while we're talking about locations, let's talk about you know, I think a favor of yours whenever you stay in Manhattan, Jordan, isn't that right? Oh? Yes, of course the Waldorf story. Actually, I don't think they have hotel rooms anymore. I think their condos now, like like the Plaza and Chelsea hotel places are are moving from being hotels to to condos and stuff. But um, this was apparently was Anderson's first film shot out of Texas, and you said earlier, I mean, in addition to this being era agnostic, it was also place agnostic too. I mean, was intentionally avoided virtually all shots of skyscrapers and really distinctive New York landmarks because he wanted this to be, in his words, a fairy tale city. It was a scene when Royal and Pagoda are talking in Battery Park, which is way at the southern end of Manhattan. I guess as Anderson had the character Pagoda stand directly in front of Statue of Liberty on purpose, just so I wouldn't show up on the shot, which is something that I guess Gene Hackman was teased Wes Anderson's were disturbed by. He thought it was so weird to like block out this incredible, you know, iconic landmark. But Wes Anderson really wanted it to be this kind of strange, dreamy, fairytale place. In addition to using the house up in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem. They used the world Orf Astoria for the hotel shot. What is the Lindbergh Hotel kept a couple of rooms at the Lindbergh Hotel Storia for those of you who don't know, it was a very very very upscale hotel, and I guess they didn't really want their ritzy locale sullied with film production team, so they only even two hours to use the location to shoot, which is why when you look at the overhang where you know it says Lindbergh Hotel right out front, it's just covered with fabric, Like they clearly just put up a little piece of fab over the world offer story of signs to cover it up real quickly because they were working on such a tight deadline. Well, the rest of I mean, as you might expect from filming in that part of Manhattan, somebody's always got to make a stink. That's right. They were filming, you know again Manhattan. People with money there maybe not necessarily want, you know, a film crew block in their home. There's a scene where Gene Hackman's chasing Angelica Houston down the streets. It's the same one where she slaps him. The one where she he tells her that he's dying. There's a moment when he kind of picks up his pace to kind of chase her down. There's a mattress on the street, and the mattress was placed there to block out the home that didn't want to be on camera, Like they just refused a great like you don't want to be on film, We're just gonna cover your house with a dirty mattress. Um. Continuing around the setting of Not New York, they filmed the tennis scenes at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens Um very fairy famous tennis stadium. So it's the iconic matches were there, don't they They call a wind swept fields or something because you think so, yeah, strange days of wind swept fields. Yeah, and so there's a plaquet Forest Hill Stadium that says on these hallowed grounds. Richie Tennenbaum played the worst tennis of his life, long lived the Bomber. It's so good. And having said all that, we'll be right back with more too much information right after this, well, from Tennis to Felonies, Richie has his falcon. Mordecai. The falcon was played by four different birds. I think it's actually a hawk in the long shots of it flying at the end of the movie Autobaum Society listeners. But apparently at one point one of the Mordecai falcons flew away and was found by a resident in New Jersey who kept it and tried to get ransom money for it. And I guess in Jersey, and I guess like the production got cops involved, and it took two weeks to get this bird back. And uh was Anderson? I think it was in the in the common director's commentary DVD track, he said, just putting an incredible understatement. It's very complicated the fly birds in the city, and it really shouldn't be done. And while we're on the topic of questionable animal practices, let's talk about the Dalmatian mice. And these are the mice that will poke it. Other mice at the character of Chaz Bread as a young boy, which are kind of like a recurring character throughout the film. They're always popping up. They they're not real. They were just white mice that somebody sharpie dots onto, which was Anderson later admitted that he quote doesn't know the legality, but um the Royal Tenebounds still got the no animals were harmed marked by the American Human Associations. It all checks out. If anyone's looking it was. If anyone's looking for the line that the American team in Association will draw, it's that you can color mice and still not have harmed animals. Maybe they didn't know, maybe they Maybe we're blowing the whistle on that now years later. I also have no good segue for this one. But now we're just gonna talk about Eli. Baby. I can imagine your favorite fair He's so good. It's such a weirdly specific arc type of like literary man obsessed with the American West and like doing mescaline and having all these weird celebrity friends, like like the like the guys he's listening to reggae with. It's just it's so funny and so specific. I love him so dearly. It's such a great character. Um. The painting hanging above his couch. When you in the aforementioned Uh, did you just say you're on mescaline? Indeed I am very much so. In that scene. The painting hanging above the couches by Mexican artist Miguel Calderone and that actually belongs to Wes Anderson. Can you describe that painting? I mean, I I just saw it last night and I can't describe that painting. It is uh, it's it's also I don't know. Everything about this character is so good. It's so in keeping. It's like that kind of like chest beating American Southwest machismo. It's so funny. Yeah, I mean, this is the one of like the guy being beaten or pulled apart by people in masks. I don't know. I can't believe was Anderson has that. That doesn't really seem in keeping in you know, his whole yeah, mm hmm. But it's not the only audio visual reference. The Wilson's mother, Laura Wilson, she was actually a close collaborator of Richard Avedon, very famous photographer anyways, and specifically she worked on his in the American West series. It's a blink and you'll miss it part. It's the photo clipping he like hash sends to Ethelene and where he's holding like a snake that's been cut in half, like a rattlesnake, bare chested and um, that is a reference to a portrait from the Avedon series of a young man holding a snake, which is apparently like an inside joke for them. They have like a recurring family bit between the Wilson brothers about this abandon thing. So that's a much more culturally high salutant reference than I would give them credit for. But continuing on, one of the lines that own Wilson ad libs is after his stint in rehab or he's doing rope tricks and he says, winds blowing up a gale today. That is I don't even know how we found this fact. The second time he's ad libbed a line about wind blowing up a gale, he does it behind behind enemy lines. I mean if if if you add libble line twice, is that living? Oh yeah, when it behind enemy lines come out two thousand one, same year, so he's probably just shooting them both at the same time and just recycled his line. Good for Owen Wilson, but it's a it's the other Wilson brother who has the record for most intense ad it's when he punches the glass. He goes, do you want to do you want to get? The guy punches the glass in in uh the guys sleeping with Margot? Yeah, what should we do? Do you want to get him punches? The window in that was improvised and that the cut, so that must have been real glass. Well, so that's why they do the cut then, because they pull in a tight shot on his face because Wes Anderson was like, oh, I bet he just like cut his hand open there and when it just immediately to keep shooting went to a ghost to a tight shot. But he's fine. Another just file in the hand trauma category under the Yeah, we really got to get on that. Wikipedia just adding the hand fixation category. And while we're talking about royal ten em bombs, we have to talk about type faces, and that one for all you type faces out there, this one goes out to you. Let's play the hits future future of fucking bold um. But you know it's not just Futura. No, you've also got that filthy, prestigious woman of the night Helvetica. You can cut all that personifying font type face is like, didn't they make the documentary about Helvetica, like helveticas Like, I'm not familiar. I think it's that's just the mescaline trip. If you with me, men, like the backstory about your favorite font type face. It's not even my favorite font type face in the movie. It's my favorite type face in the movie now that you mention it is the one that they used for Ethelene's a Family of Geniuses, which is Milano. So there you have it. Jordan's If you're interested in sharing what your favorite uh type faces from West Anderson's film The World, Time of Bombs or otherwise, please tweet at the podcast using the hashtag on the do tuturo. Al Right, well we burned two minutes about type face. So the heart bosses are in their offices right out, like, wow, Alex and Jordan's pitched this is a pop culture show and now they're fetishizing fonts. Should we do something? Yeah, adds against typeface and then adds against type face. Baby. So now let's move into what they call the trades. What the trades reported on Royal tenements of the time, Jordan, how to do critically, how to do commercially? How to do an awards season? Yeah, I mean, despite it's it's really strong reputation, it kind of got a lukewarm response. Um, it did better than Rushmore. Wes Anderson's prior movie, but it wasn't a huge smash. I think domestically it gross fifty two million on a twenty one million dollar budget. It also didn't clean up during Award show season. I want to alone Golden Globe for Gene Hackman, which is kind of hilarious after all that, and I was also nominated for the screenplay. But yeah, like I really focusing on the fact that for all of Gene Hackman's bitching and moaning about wanting to retire, he apparently did a few more films after The Royal Tenant Bounds. His final film role was apparently Come to Moose Sports with Ray Romano, and I'm I'm pretty sure that, like it wasn't like something that he filmed years earlier than it came out later. Like, I think that was the last movie he like went and made with Ray Romano. The Everybody everybody truly does love Raymond. Maybe he liked the script they wrote for him, the part they wrote for him, he felt they did. He felt the writers too sport. Yeah, you guys really know me. I mean, I have to say, I've never actually seen that movie. I'm just assuming that it's it's a giant Stephen Pile. I really, let's see it has a rotten tomato score. Oh man, Gene, what are you doing? That's you have to edit? You have to edit all that in? Just how's he doing? Should we do a news a news result for Gene Hackman? His birthdays coming up? Well, let's dedicate this episode to Gene Hackman and his least favorite cinematic ex evans. You know, Jordan's The film's bigger legacy might actually be on television. That is absolutely right. So the rest of the development, creator Mitchell Hurwitz had been inspired to create a similar sort of Sallenger style rip off, which is his words about a big family, and he was discouraged when he saw the Royal tennem Bombs because he thought the idea was too similar to what he wanted to do with the rest of development, So he actually shelved the idea for a year. And meanwhile, Alec Baldwin, who narrated the Royal tannem Bombs, said that he based his performance as Jack Donahey on Dirty Rock on Gene Hackman's performances Royal, which kind of makes sense. The lovable but the really strange part was the narration in the movie almost wasn't used, according to Baldwin at least, and you've got to consider the source here. Uh. Baldwin said that uh was Anderson approached him or when he was doing the narration, basically said, I don't know why the producers are insisting I have a voice so or and I'm never going to use it, so don't worry. Just just just dash it off, just you know, don't worry, I'm gonna use it. Wes Anderson denies that that exchange ever took place, So maybe he was just trying to like loosen Alec up, and maybe it was like a directorial strategy or somebody's lying because I guess. Later years later, at the twentie Anniversary round table, Alec told this story, and Wes said, you know, like your voice is a bigger character as anybody else's. I mean, you're the whole movie. Your voice is just a strong thing. So it remains to be seeing whether or not that's actually true. But yeah, that was, Um, I guess that. Really, I have nothing to add to that. I was waiting to see you if you were just punching myself out, I got there's gotta be a fact. There's gotta be something cut me mick. Um, yeah, I I the only thing. I mean, I already yelled at this. I don't really have anything to add to this. I love this movie dearly. Um. There's a quote I found here from Sophie Chajara's review at Enemy, which is sure it's endlessly quotable, both verbally and visually. Have you seen that color palette? But it's the pain and sweetness at the center of the world tenembombs that will keep you revisiting this twenty one century classic. Well said person that's not Heigl, George, do you have anything? Uh no, hell yeah, well royal tenembombs, Baby, I don't know what else. That's we're going out. We're going out gracelessly. It's punching ourselves out, and I mean I wish we had some kind of like incredible Wes Anderson needle drop to to end this episode on well, to cleanse the listeners, to cleanse your speakers of these this hour of TWEE, we're gonna broadcast the sound of monster Trucks. I'm Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Tak. Thank you so much for listening to too much information. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows