At some point in the movie, Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) says something about 11 being his favorite age.

Oh yeah. Cate Blanchett's character says, about her baby that's going to be born in a few months, "In 12 years, he'll be 11 and a half." And Bill Murray says, "That was my favorite age."

It seems like all of your movies capture some essential energy from around that age.

Definitely this movie is like that. [Zissou's] whole mission is not exactly the most grown-up one.

What is it that you want to re-create about the experience of being that age? Why are you so interested in that imaginative, childish experience of the world?

Um, I think that is ... Hmm, that's a good question.

That's a tough one, I guess.

Yeah, I almost feel like we'd have to start at the shrink's.

Yes! What trauma occurred to you at age 11? But I like the fact that you're not afraid of those cute details, like Cody the three-legged dog in "The Life Aquatic," or the little crayon-drawn flight plan that Max's crush has for her miniature plane in "Rushmore." American directors don't typically embrace sweet, absurd details as much as European directors -- Jeanne-Pierre Jeunet comes to mind.

Yeah, Jeunet and those guys wouldn't shy away from that. And also Michel Gondry, I think.

Are you influenced by those two?

Well, those guys I would say no, but I bet I'm influenced by a lot of the same directors that they're influenced by. I can't speak for them, but some of my favorite filmmakers are French, in particular Truffaut, but also Renoir and Melville. You know, who else you could relate to that is Cocteau, to both of those filmmakers, and to the kind of details you're talking about.

You never went to film school, right?

No, I never went to film school. I wanted to, but it never happened. When I was in college, I started to write "Bottle Rocket" with Owen Wilson, and when we got out, we started trying to figure out how to make it.

There are a lot of disaffected wealthy people in your movies. How familiar are you with these kinds of people -- did you grow up around them?

I didn't grow up around that too much. It's a little bit of a romanticized thing. I've known enough people who are somewhere in that area, but I've read about a lot of people in that area, or seen movies about people like that. So it's more of a fantasy almost. Salinger or Gatsby. I like Louis Malle's movies, and there's a certain aspect of that in his movies.

Does the alienation in your films, by chance, come from experiences growing up in Texas?

Probably so. I mean, I know that one of the movies we thought about a lot when we were making this film was "L'Avventura," the Antonioni movie. There's a degree to which our movie is really about these friendships and these familial kinds of relationships. But there are a lot of people not connecting, and Antonioni is almost entirely about not connecting. And so we definitely talked about it. We didn't talk about that as a theme, but we always were thinking about that movie.

Do you consider Bill Murray your muse? How has your relationship with him changed since "Rushmore"?

Well, I don't know if I consider him my muse, but he's one of my favorite actors in the world. He's one of my favorite actors of all time. For me, Bill is like -- there are a lot of great actors in this movie. There's Owen, who I have a relationship with that goes much further back. Owen and I grew up together. So we're connected in a different way. But there are all these favorite actors of mine: Anjelica Huston, and Goldblum, and Willem Dafoe, and Michael Gambon, Bud Cort. All these great actors. Cate Blanchett. Bill is one of those ones who's, to me, and maybe a lot of people might disagree with this, but for me, he's kind of a Brando kind of actor, which is where I put people like Pacino and De Niro and Gene Hackman and people like that. I feel like he's one of those. That's a special thing -- it's the kind of actor where, as great as somebody else might be in a part, one of these guys brings something that takes it to another level. So we wrote the movie for him, because he's this special kind of creature. And my relationship has changed because, well, when we were making "Rushmore," I was just getting to know him. Then we became friends after that, and then when we did "Tenenbaums," he was just there and we'd have little visits, we'd have Bill Murray for a day or two.

But this was the first time -- certainly the first time since "Rushmore" -- but the first time, as somebody who knew him well, that we did a whole movie together and he was there every day. So the process was different -- it was just a different experience than I've had with him because of the intensity of it. But the thing with him is that he's one of these people who can walk into a room and just own everything. There's something just heroic about him in that way. People just get swept up by him. I've never met anybody else like him.

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