Well, okay. I’m just gonna say it. There’s a scene at the end of the movie when George Clooney’s character, myself, my cousin and the opossum, Kylie are all on a little motorcycle driving back to our home. And we’ve just rescued my cousin, and we stop and we see a wolf on a distant hill. It’s a really beautiful, beautiful scene. It’s, like, so heart-warming, because it’s just a beautiful moment between these foxes and little animals and this really, like, mysterious wolf who we’ve heard about the entire movie, and who doesn’t talk in this scene, and he’s not wearing clothes. He’s kind of... he represents, I guess, the wild. He’s a wild wolf and animal. It’s a beautiful moment where they have this great connection, and in that moment, it really—like to me—the point of that scene is: Let’s keep on being free. Let’s keep on being animals. And it’s such an uplifting moment, and like when I’ve seen it with audiences, a bunch of people break into huge cheers and hooting. It’s such an awesome, awesome scene. It really just blows my mind.
And actually, when we did the movie, you know, we did the movie basically living together as a cast. We didn’t do the scenes, like, separately in recording booths—which is how typical animated movies are done. This one... Wes Andersen had us literally go and move onto a farm and we all lived together. And we’d wake up in the morning, have breakfast and then if there was a scene, for instance, that took place underneath a tree, George Clooney and Bill Murray, everyone would walk over to the tree that we’d find, we’d take our scripts out and we’d just start acting out the scenes. And it was basically like doing a movie—just with no cameras. So there were actors, the director (Wes) and a sound man. And we were running around, growling and hootin' and hollerin', and if we had to eat a bunch of food—like, in the movie, we always are eating French toast or biscuits—we would literally be eating French toast and biscuits. I mean it was so much fun.
Anyway, one day when we were doing this particular scene with this wolf. We were all about to shoot it, and then Wes said, "You know we should really get someone to play the wolf so that the guys have someone to act opposite." And we looked around, and Bill Murray was standing there with his hands in his pockets. He took his hands out and said, “I can be the wolf.” And Bill Murray just took off running, or I guess trotting. And he ran, ran, ran, ran really far away until he was tiny. And he turned around and actually became the wolf, like, he—it’s almost as if he embodied the wolf. And he acted it out for us, and it was so inspiring and so beautiful. And Wes actually took out his camera phone, filmed it, and then sent that footage to the animators to base the wolf off of Bill Murray. So Bill Murray is the uncredited wolf in this movie. And he actually—it was so good—it was as if he practiced it. I mean, it was incredible: his wolf performance. So, I think because of what the scene means, what it represents in the movie and the great warm message that it has in the scene—plus knowing the behind the scenes, what went into that scene... I think that’s my favorite scene in the movie.
Jason Schwartzman's favorite part. I have a Bill Murray story too. Ask me about it.
