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| A scene with Jason Schwartzman |
Art Feature |
The Darjeeling Limited: Jason Scwartzman Interview
It’s at Melbourne’s Langham hotel that our hero, Jason Schwarztman—on a junket for Wes Anderson’s best work to date, The Darjeeling Limited—meets nervous journalist Annie Fox and proceeds to give her what can only be described as the best interview of her career.
Annie Fox walks into Jason Schwartzman’s hotel room. She is struck by his height; he’s a lot smaller than he looks on the big screen. They smile and shake hands. Schwartzman frowns and Fox worries that he’s noticed her clammy hand. Embarrassed she wipes it on her skirt as she sits on the sofa.
JS: Sorry my hand is really cold.
AF: No, I’m sorry, mine was really clammy.
JS: That’s ok. I didn’t notice because mine was so cold. (He places his bottle of water on the coffee table and sits down) So how are you?
AF: I’m great thank you. (She holds out her Dictaphone) Do you mind if we sta—
Schwartzman begins to gush about Australia before Fox has a chance to confirm the interview has indeed begun. She flicks on her Dictaphone while he is mid ramble.
JS: I was like, ‘please can I go to Australia for this movie?’ and they were like, ‘you’ll go to Australia?’ and I said ‘fuck yeah I will’. I love it here so I’m kind of riding high at the moment.
AF: And so set-
JS: Do you have any gum?
AF: Hmm, no (long pause). I have a mint does that interest you?
JS: It might interest me.
AF: It’s not peppermint, it’s spearmint, which I kind of prefer.
JS: I’d rather spearmint too. Hey, that’s a nice bag.
AF: Thank you.
JS: Expensive?
AF: No. (Rummaging through broken cigarettes, loose change, old receipts and pen lids in bag for tin of mints)
JS: Eclipse?
AF: Yes.
JS: Good.
AF: (weird silence) And so set-
JS: Are you from Sydney?
AF: Um, no, Melbourne. But I lived there for three years.
JS: Really? People tend to go back and forth between just those two cities right?
AF: Yeah, I guess. Though I’m in publishing so there aren’t too many options for me.
JS: This country is interesting to me because it’s all on the perimeter of the continent. Except for Alice Springs of course. (Contemplative silence followed by a long ‘hmm’) It’s very interesting to me.
AF: Why so fascinated by Australia?
JS: I don’t know really. I like it here. I’ve always liked it here. I was in Melbourne five years ago with my band and it was the first time I’d ever been to Australia and I just thought it was great. It was really exciting for me and I looked forward to coming back. It’s a drag because I wish I could stay longer. I wish I was here for two weeks or something.
AF: If you love eating out and drinking out, Melbourne is perfect.
JS: Is it true that the liquor licensing is cheaper in Melbourne than Sydney and so bars can be smaller, you know?
AF: Yeah, something like that, I’m not absolutely sure. I think they’re pushing for a change in Sydney though…(mumble, mumble for about a minute)
JS: Wow, that’s so interesting…(mumble, mumble for about two minutes)
Six minutes are now remaining. Fox still hasn’t asked her first question. Schwartzman is playing with a tuft of dark hair sprouting from the neckline of his white shirt. Her hands grow clammy again and she tries to ask her first question for the third time.
AF: So set the scene-
JS: Do you want to put that thing down instead of holding it? (Points to her Dictaphone)
AF: Umm, it’s a nervous habit; I kind of need to hold it.
JS: (Leans in to look at Dictaphone) Is it a phone as well?
AF: Yeah it’s both. And I can email on it so I can send this interview off to be transcribed when I’ve finished talking to you and it will be ready for me by the time I get home later today.
JS: Transcribed? Really?
AF: Yeah, it only takes them a few hours.
JS: Hold on. So you’re saying while your driving home this is being transcribed?
AF: Well, yeah.
JS: And it’s a phone too?
AF: Yep, phone too. It’s amazing. Except if it fucks up my life is over. No phone, no email, no Dictaphone.
JS: Oh no!
As Schwartzman sips his water Fox sees this as an opportunity to launch her first question
AF: OK! So set the scene for me here: you’re walking your dog through the streets of Paris with Wes Anderson and he says, ‘let’s write a movie together’?
JS: Sort of. I was working in Paris on this movie, Marie Antoinette and Wes was on a press tour for Life Aquatic and it ended there. He was about to go home and I said to him, ‘if you want to stay you can come live with me at my place because I’ve got extra room’. So he ended up living with me for like three and a half months and it was great. (Schwartzman smiles to himself obviously recalling some happy memories) We went shopping together and bought yoghurt together and cereal, we bought wine together.
AF: Sounds romantic.
JS: Mmm, we fed each other chocolate (Schwartzman laughs)
And I’ll just say parenthetically, that Wes and I have become best friends since making Rushmore and I have missed working with him a lot. And I’ve always thought, ‘gosh, it would be a real shame if we couldn’t work together again, especially now that we have this friendship’. During Rushmore we were friends, but it was it was just budding. I thought it would be great to make a movie now that we know each other and we have been with each other through some pretty crazy things.
Part of our friendship over the years has been, ‘what are you interested in?’, ‘have you seen a good movie?’, ‘what are you thinking about for movies?’. Wes has always discussed movie ideas. I was never thinking they were for me, it was just part our friendship to give our ideas and comments and notes on things we were discussing.
That was one of the great things about having Wes in my life, because at 17 I wasn’t unpopular or a kid who was beaten up a lot, outside my family no-one really said, ‘what are you thinking?’ or ‘what are your ideas?’. I was just kind of patronised or ignored. Wes was interested in me and I was interested in him and I remember appreciating that. And I also remember at the end of Rushmore, before I went back to high school, it was my last night in Houston and I was thinking, ‘this is the last time I’ll feel a part of this’. And I went home right back to the same thing of being ignored.
AF: So you’re in Paris…
JS: Ok, so going back to Paris. Wes opened his notebook and he reads me this scene: ‘India, exterior. A businessman runs into a taxi cab…’ And he read to me the opening scene that’s in the movie. He said, ‘what do you think?’ And I said, ‘I love that, it’s so great, what is it?’ And he said, ‘it’s a movie I want to do now. I want to set a movie in India and I want it to be about three brothers and I know there is going to be some sort of train journey, but I don’t have much else. I would like you to be one of the brothers.’ And I was just like, ‘praise the lord!’ I was so excited.
Now we’re living together and every night we’d go and walk my dog and we would talk about girls, and things they’d said and things we’d said back, kind of commiserating. And we’d make each other laugh and he would write stuff down in a little notebook. Well, after about three weeks of going on these dog walks he said, ‘I think we should bring Roman [Coppola] in on this.’ And no joke I thought he meant the dog walking and so I said, ‘in on what?’ and he said, ‘this movie that we’re making’. And that’s how I first found out we were writing a movie together. The idea was: let’s get the three of us and go make this movie-
(Schwartzman stops mid sentence and leans in to look at Fox’s wrist.)
Is that a tattoo? (Points)
AF: Oh (Pauses), yeah
JS: Of a heart?
AF: (Nods, hands grow clammy again)
JS: It’s nice
AF: That’s where I wear it (implying on sleeve)
JS: Oh wow, that’s really great (Big pause)
AF: You were saying the idea was…
JS: Oh yeah, so we didn’t have much else besides three brothers on a train through India. But more of what we had was the way we wanted to write it which was to write a script based only things that have happened to us, to invent as little as possible, to go to India and have an adventure and to write about the adventure. The way Wes pitched it to us at the beginning almost felt like Owen’s character in the beginning of the movie, ‘we need this! We’re going to see some really spiritual things.’ And he wanted us to say yes to everything. It was exciting and it was infectious. And that’s what we did for the next two and half years, it was super personal and super revealing.
AF: And so now how does the film sit with you, after having been such a personal project to make?
JS: Well it sits with me on many levels. I think it’s really funny and just a really great movie. But I’m proud of it because I know that the ‘to do’ list of how we were going to make it was how we made it. So I can check off, mission accomplished. Just technically, how we wrote it is how we shot it and how we said we were going to do it—we never backed down. We said we were going to go on a moving train, people said ‘you can’t do that’ and we did it. We said ‘no hair and make-up’, people said, ‘you can’t do that’ and we did it. I’m proud of the process. I love the movie because it has it’s own life in it.
AF: I found this quote in the UK Independent, ‘When directors need a quirky anti-hero, they turn to Schwartzman.’
JS: I don’t like the word quirky because it’s the one word people use when they have no other way of describing something. I was listening to this interview the other day with Jim Jarmusch and he was saying, ‘if another fucking person describes my movies as quirky I’m going to go, get a shotgun and kill them.’ And I thought that was really funny.
I’m dealing with my own image and my own thing on my own, you know?
AF: Yeah, but how do you separate the two?
JS: You can’t really. It does become who you are to a certain point so it’s just like, ‘oh my god’, but you know I think everybody’s quirky. I’m just happy a director turns to me. But the truth is that I would rather not be labelled in that way or any way. I’d just like to go in to work and then go home.
AF: So I want to talk a bit about your first solo album, Nighttiming.
JS: You do? (Sounds surprised, but smiles wide).
AF: Tell me a little about the album and how the solo project Coconut Records came about.
JS: Well I was in my band Phantom Planet, which I had been in for almost ten years, and I finished the tour and we went home and made one more record. After we finished making it we handed it in to the record label people and they were like, ‘OK, so we’ll get you back on tour again’ and I started to think, ‘you know what? No. This is not right for me right now.’ I can’t even explain to you why. (Pauses, looks off into the distance trying to find the right analogy)
Have you ever broken up with someone and they’ve said, ‘why?’ and you’re like, ‘we just have to break up’. You know what I mean? (Looks intensely at Fox for acknowledgement and receives a sad and awkward nod)
JS: (Realises he’s hit a sore spot) Oh I’m sorry.
AF: No, no that’s ok. I know what you mean; you feel it emotionally before you understand it intellectually so it’s impossible to explain sometimes.
JS: Yeah, right, exactly. And they say, ‘I’ll do this better’ or ‘ I’ll do that better’ and all those things sound right, but it’s just not enough.
(Extremely awkward silence lingers)
Playing a guitar or piano, and I’m not a virtuosic player by any means, is something that I just like to have in my hands. I like to play music and I like to listen to music, and writing songs is something that I enjoy doing. Just to enjoy it. And I have that program, you know, Garage Band? So I just put these ideas into the computer and after about three years of doing that I had a bunch of ideas. I was never thinking that they would become anything, but I did remember thinking to myself a couple of these I like and I would love to hear them as a better sounding version that’s not just ten seconds long. I went to this guy, Mitchell Froome who produced the Phantom Planet record we made called, The Guest. He’s always been a musical father figure to me I guess, and so I went to his house and I played him three CDs worth of songs. And I had just watched this documentary set in the late 50s-60s they’re like songwriters, people who were writing songs for other artists and these artists would go and have a hit with it. And I kind of thought, ‘that’s, the ticket’, I’ll go and write the songs and then someone else can go enjoy it and tour. And so I pitched this idea to Mitchell and he said no because the artists that I’d want to do my songs write their own songs, their not interested in outside songwriters. I thought that was a good point, which I hadn’t considered. So I asked him what I was supposed to do with all this music and he said, ‘why do you have to think of it so much, why can’t you just go find a studio and record these songs for fun and enjoy making music and then figure it out later.
Luckily I had this friend Mikey who I saw at a party one night and I kind of wanted to get out of there because I don’t like parties and he was like, ‘hey, what’s going on?’ and I was like, ‘I just want to get out of here and actually, I kind of want play drums’ because I hadn’t played drums in a long time and he was like, ‘well, I’ve got drums at my house and I live five minutes away’ so I was like, ‘let’s go’. So we left the party and went to his house and not only did he have drums, he had a bass guitar, a guitar an organ and a synthesiser. I looked in the other room and saw microphones and a mixing board and I asked, ‘do you have a recording studio here?’ and he said, ‘yeah, basically’. There’s a song on my record called ‘Its Not You It’s Me’ and we did that just that night. I put down the chords, I played the drums, the guitar and it was just so much fun. And I have never sung before, I had laid down some temporary vocals and was hoping that my little brother Robert would come sing it because he sings in a band called Rooney, and he actually can sing. So Mikey was like, ‘I’m out of here in a week, but do you want to come over in the next week and record more songs.’ So I got my dog-
(Stops mid sentence to look at Fox’s hand)
Is that a heart on your ring too? And I really like your nail colour too. Is it the same on your toes?
AF: Umm, no. My toes black, but I swap them over all the time.
JS: Oh right so one is always red and the other black? That’s nice. (Retraces his thoughts and begins again)
So I had my dog, some dog food and I got my guitar and I went over to his house and in eight days we just recorded.
(Phone starts ringing somewhere in the hotel room)
JS: Is that my phone?
AF: I think so, and I’m supposed to get out of here so feel free to get that.
JS: I don’t have a phone though so I don’t know what’s ringing. That’s so weird, maybe somebody who stayed in this room lost their phone and now their calling it.
They both start looking around for the phone that’s chiming, but can’t see anything.
AF: It sounds like it’s coming from there (points to the bin)
JS: Oh yeah (goes to investigate, but the ringing stops)
So anyway, it was really fun, recording. Friends would come by the house and I would be like, ‘hey can you whistle?’ and they’d say, ‘yeah’ and so I’d be like, ‘great, come on in and whistle’.
When I was done recording after those eight days I didn’t think anything was going to come out of it and then Robert was like, ‘you should put this out’. I contacted Dan Field who managed Phantom Planet when I was in it and I said, ‘how would you feel about thinking of a way to get this music out there in a way where it’s just us’ and he was like, ‘let’s do it’ and so we started Young Baby Records, which is really just a domain name and a pay pal account. People can go to the website and buy the CD and I did a deal so you can buy it through iTunes and I have a MySpace account and that’s basically it.
The publicity executive appears again and begins to usher Fox out of the room. They shake hands again; Schwarztman’s hand is cold and Fox’s is clammy.
JS: So, good luck with emailing the interview off (frowns at his unsatisfactory farewell).
AF: And good luck with the rest of your interviews. I hope you find that phone (awkward smile followed by an even more awkward wave).
[Scene ends]
The Darjeeling Limited is out only at the movies on December 26th
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