Day 5: The Intern Journal

Today's documentary came to me quite accidentally. I was googling info on internships and came across it. It just happens to be about one of my favorite movies of all time. Apparently one of the intern characters from Life Aquatic made a short documentary while the movie was being filmed.

Mathew Gray Gubler plays Intern #1 in the film, the perm-headed one who gets sliced with a machete but decides to stay on anyways (even though he's just getting class credit). According to the film Gubler used to be an actual intern for director Wes Anderson and that's how he landed his role in the film.

The documentary is short. Like, less than 20 minutes. But it's full of life and humor. It offers a real behind the scenes look not only of the film's cast, but of the movie-making process in general.

I remember somebody once said the magic of movies isn't what you see on the screen but rather the complicated process behind the camera. High concept films like the ones Wes Anderson tends to make probably require a lot of planning, effects, and technical work to make them happen. I think sometimes the process of a piece of art can be just as fascinating as the final product itself.

I could have a conversation about the overall decline in Wes Anderson's movies, as each movie spends more time and money on fulfilling that patented "Wes Anderson" look and less on good character work and dialogue. I'll always be a bigger Rushmore fan than a Darjeeling Limited fan, but I'll say Life Aquatic was the right mix of big budget and good characters.  

Also, who are all these people who say Bill Murray's hard to work with? I hear he's been nicknamed "the Murricane" for his terrible temper and lack of patience. But everytime I see clips of him on set not only is he nice, but he's going above and beyond to entertain those around him. Look- he's literally dancing for these people! Then he toasts the interns in broken Italian: what's not to love about this guy?

I'm also glad to see Willem Dafoe has a sense of humor. Call it shortsighted, but I just always assumed the reason he plays unbalanced murderers and crackpots is because he was one in real life. Happy to be wrong on that one.

The film is a two parter on youtube. There's also another documentary called "This is an adventure" which looks even more in-depth and is also split into parts on youtube, which I'll have to watch soon. 

Here's actor/musician Seu Jorge rocking out a cover of David Bowie's 'Changes'. Seu did a handful of acoustic DB covers in the movie, all in Portuguese!