Remember a few weeks ago when we posed the question, “Did Martin Scorsese trigger Wes Anderson’s ‘Darjeeling Limited’ idea?” We had found an old 2002 Premiere article where Scorsese had first screened the 1951 Jean Renoir film, “The River” to Anderson. Set in India, we thought might have been the inspiration and spark for Anderson’s ‘Darjeeling’ script.
And it turns out we were right. According to EW’s fall movie preview piece, Anderson directly got his motivation from this film screening. ”I owe a debt [to Scorsese], definitely,” Anderson told EW. “‘Seeing [‘The River’] was the moment that made me think I really needed to do this.” We also wrote about Wes connection to Satyajit Ray, the legendary Indian director who he also credits as inspiration for the Darjeeling.
When Wes first had the idea for the film he apparently asked “Rushmore”‘s Jason Schwartzman, “How about a movie with three brothers on a train?” Schwartzman’s response was off-the-cuff. “I was like, ‘Uh, yeah, it sounds great!’ And he said, ‘Just think about it.’ I didn’t think it was an invitation to help him write it.”
But that’s exactly what it was. Along with Sofia Coppola’s older brother Roman Coppola (director of the highly under-appreciated “CQ“), Schwartzman and Anderson, over the course of two years, in various locales banged out a script about three estranged brothers who try and reconnect after the death of their father via a spiritual journey.
‘The movie’s about how you can be in a beautiful place and someone you love can push your buttons, and you’re like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening! Not here, not now!'” Schwartzman told the magazine.
A lot of critics have focused on the wackiness and hyper-detailed world of Anderson’s films, but Owen Wilson emphasized the film’s heart as being the connection between brothers. “Sometimes people focus on the eccentric stuff in Wes’ films,” Wilson said, ”and the other stuff gets lost, that there’s a real emotion in his work. It’s definitely there in this one.”
A lot of production tease pieces have been floated out to various mainstream publications. MTV has a short, Day 1 production on-set video piece called “Temple of 1000 Bulls.” Yahoo also has a video production diary called, “Production Day 39: Jodhpur Desert,” and both MSN and Moviefone have a behind-the-scenes look as well.