Worlds Of Pure Imagination: Wes Anderson, Roald Dahl and Fantastic Mr. Fox

The literary work of Roald Dahl has long been held as one of the world’s most beloved rollicking romps both through and for the childhood imagination. Dahl, the exceedingly tall, unconventional Welshman, was both a calculator of the fantastic and fantastically calculated. He created many of his stories in the private writing hut he built behind Gipsy House, his 19th-century farmhouse nestled in the British countryside, by regimentally slipping into his favorite armchair at 10 each morning and writing feverishly until noon. His outrageous plots and unforgettable character-driven tales are a film producer’s dream, and before his death in 1990, Dahl saw several of his 17-something children’s novels made into feature films (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; The BFG; The Witches; Danny, the Champion of the World); another handful have been made in the years since. So, it came as no surprise when it was announced several years ago that the next Dahl book coming to the silver screen would be Fantastic Mr. Fox-, the underdog tale of a family of foxes who outsmart and wreak havoc on a trio of nasty farmers. The cause for heightened celebration, however, may have come when it was declared that the director attached to the project was none other than Wes Anderson, the auteur behind Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and other rollicking romps of new cinema imagination.

With his first five films, Anderson has quickly asserted himself as a visionary writer and director. But, just as Dahl was more than just a writer of children’s books—he was a fighter pilot, war hero, inventor and resolute family man, not to mention author of numerous screenplays, adult fiction and a vast collection of short stories—Anderson is more than just a man behind a movie. His personality inhabits each frame of his films in a way rarely seen; his eye for detail and levels of artistic dedication create worlds that can only exist in a Wes Anderson picture. Fittingly, Anderson was invited, literally, to inhabit Dahl’s actual world, and he and co-writer Noah Baumbach explored the wonders of Gipsy House as they wrote, enabling them to come away with much more than just a film adaptation of a novel.

Guided by the goal to make each scene one that Dahl would have applauded, Anderson honored the original story while expanding its reach, filming in stop-motion animation with the voice talents of some of Hollywood’s finest (George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman). Creating new characters, finer details and the peculiar, wonderful specifics we’ve come to relish in his work, plus a new ending found in an original Dahl manuscript, Anderson found ways to incorporate glimpses of Dahl’s life into the film as well: from a tattered green armchair to a familiarly tall character frame to a fantastically mischievous, adventurous and heroic fox.

While the notion of Anderson taking on the work of another may have caused some initial shock, the product of this particular pairing reveals a perfect match. Just as it was Dahl’s imagination that so captured Anderson in the first place, with Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, we can only assume that the feeling would be mutual.

What first attracted you to Roald Dahl? Did you read him as a kid?

I did. I’ve always loved Dahl. In fact, Fantastic Mr. Fox was the first book I ever owned. I know I have an edition of the book from when I was 3 or 4 years old, though I don’t really remember first reading it—it was just always there. Dahl is also interesting because he wrote his memoirs as two books intended for children. If you were interested in his books, then you could learn a lot about him, too, because Boy and Going Solo are about his life and his experiences; he’s a character in the books and he talks about writing. He always interested me, not just for his stories, but for his personality.

Do you see Dahl as a kindred spirit and as an influence?

Yes. When Jason Schwartzman, Roman Coppola and I were writing The Darjeeling Limited, we talked about Dahl quite a bit—we even thought of a couple of his stories along the way; one in particular called “Poison.” His work is also particularly suited to movies. They adapted a number of them for The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Dahl even had a television show that adapted some of his stories. He’s definitely someone who I keep in mind through whatever I’m working.

You got to know his family while working on Fantastic Mr. Fox, right?

Liccy Dahl, his wife, represents the Dahl estate and is very involved when it comes to movies made of Dahl’s work. Liccy and I are good friends and she really opened the door to me to allow us to make this film. She allowed Noah Baumbach and me to write at Gipsy House, which was Roald Dahl’s house and where Liccy lives. That’s where he wrote Fantastic Mr. Fox. Because of Liccy we were inspired to incorporate many things from Dahl’s life that aren’t necessarily in the published work. We stayed in the annex of the house and his archives were there at the time. And in fact, the ending of our film is not in the book, but is taken from his earlier drafts of the story. Luke Dahl, Dahl’s grandson, helped us through these archives and showed us the original manuscripts of Mr. Fox in which Dahl had done drawings—kind of instructions for the illustrator. It was very helpful.

You incorporated parts of Gipsy House into Fantastic Mr. Fox’s sets. In what other ways does Dahl inhabit this film? Are there elements of him in the characters?

Other than the fact that he invented the whole premise and the main characters and the whole idea… There are many things taken from the book all through the movie, but Mr. Fox and the farmer who does most of the talking, Bean, are both partly modeled on Dahl, physically. In a number of Dahl’s books, there is a character that you sort of imagine is a surrogate for Dahl. Mr. Fox makes me think of Dahl through his inventiveness. I connect that character to the father in Danny, the Champion of the World and his ideas for poaching pheasants by putting sleeping powder in raisins and sewing them up—that’s something we interpreted for Fantastic Mr. Fox; that’s a very Dahl idea. I think Willy Wonka is a fantasy version of Dahl.

Dahl was also literally an inventor, not just literarily. His son had [hydrocephalus], and Dahl had an idea for a valve that the doctors had not tried. He worked with a medical equipment manufacturer to make it and they say it saved his son’s life. It was then marketed and used for some years and named after Dahl and the guy who machined it for him.* It’s a rare person that is a fiction writer but on the side has an idea for a medical device that saves his son’s life. But that’s very much the Dahl that we were interested in.

He also seemed to dislike some of the film directors he worked with in his time. Did you feel any pressure to please his sensibility? By most estimations, he would’ve very much liked the way you work.

Well, there’s certainly no way to know and there’s no chance of us being wildly disappointed that he hated the movie, so we’re protected against that. But our approach when Noah and I were writing the movie was to try and make a version of Dahl’s story that Dahl would’ve loved. That was always in our minds. And if it felt like Dahl would respond to this, then we went with it.

Dahl had a very regular, measured routine each day for settling down and building a nest, as he called it, to write. Do you have a routine when you write, where it’s the same every morning?

I don’t. I like organizing a little adventure during the writing. Usually I’ve written with other people and I like to go somewhere and have some kind of journey or some special place to go to help keep us inspired. For The Darjeeling Limited, we wrote in India and traveled while we wrote— that was our own way to keep motivated. It was nice going to Gipsy House—for Dahl, it was his home and he had his desk there, but for us it was a place to go on an adventure.

Dahl’s definition of a story was “a beginning, middle and end, and definite plot which progresses to a climax, leaving the reader fully satisfied.” Do you think your films work that way?

Oh, I doubt it. Dahl had a great facility for that kind of storytelling. In some ways I feel like Dahl is underrated because he works so strictly in that tradition, but he knew how to do that. I think in many of my films there’s a question mark as to whether or not they even have a plot. But, I think it’s a great advantage if you do.

Have you come across any Dahl stories that didn’t necessarily have a plot?

I don’t think so. It’s not like you have a Dahl story that’s just reminiscence or a stream of consciousness or a poem; they almost always have twists. And I think that’s why they’re well suited for being adapted to movies and TV. Personally, I like all different kinds of movies and certainly some of my favorites have none of those ingredients that Dahl describes as being the things that make a story good. But he followed those rules so well. I think the thing to really respond to in Dahl’s books is just the sound of his voice and his imagination. That’s why he’s so enormously popular.