FILM;Their Feet in Texas, Their Heads in the Clouds

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February 4, 1996, Section 2, Page 13Buy Reprints
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WE KIND OF LIKED 'The Godfather' and those Scorsese movies, and we started out trying to do kind of a gritty movie," explained Owen C. Wilson of the script that five years later became the movie "Bottle Rocket."

Then reality bit.

We weren't tough guys," Mr. Wilson cheerfully acknowledged, referring to himself and his fellow Texan, Wes Anderson, with whom he wrote the script. "We didn't have the backgrou'd to do a tough-guy movie." So they made "Bottle Rocket" instead.

"Bottle Rocket" has all the components of a hard-to-get-made, hard-to-release, independent first feature. But looks can be deceiving. The film's executive producer is James L. Brooks, the Oscar-winning writer, director and producer of "Terms of Endearment" and "Broadcast News." And "Bottle Rocket" is being released by Columbia Tri-Star Motion Pictures. The studio had planned to open the film this Friday in 30 theaters but decided last week to delay the opening until Feb. 23, which will help it steer clear of "Broken Arrow," a multimillion-dollar John Woo action film starring John Travolta that opens on Friday and is expected to attract huge audiences.

Normally a studio the size of Columbia would not be fretting over the best date to open a movie in 30 theaters. But "Bottle Rocket," a virtually starless little movie with an impossibly low $5 million budget, has managed to get and to keep Columbia's attention over a long gestation period. "Bottle Rocket," which stars Mr. Wilson, 27, and was directed by Mr. Anderson, 26, follows a trio of misguided, middle-class fellows who, under the tutelage of a mentor in crime, try to pull off a petty heist. Their aim is modest, and they make more noise than anything else, hence the title.

"Bottle rockets are these cheap little fireworks that only go about 40 feet pp, and they make a little pop," Mr. Anderson said. "But that's all you expect from them."

The movie, set on Mr. Wilson's and Mr. Anderson's home turf of Dallas, is a comedy caper with Generation X overtones, yet it flies none of the usual pop-culture flags that such films usually wave. There is no sex or real violence and no star power in the lead roles. Its angst is coddled rather than hard-boiled a la Tarantino.

Mr. Wilson plays Dignan, the group's flamboyant leader, who fills a notebook with improbable schemes and plans for the next 50 years. Mr. Wilson's younger brother, Luke, co-stars as the more quietly introspective Anthony, who is first seen breaking out of a mental hospital. To keep things almost all in the family, the older Wilson brother, Andrew, also has a small part. And Bob, the third member of the criminal trio, is played by Robert Musgrave, a close friend of both the Wilsons and Mr. Anderson. (Lumi Cavazos, the star of "Like Water for Chocolate," is Anthony's unconventional love interest.)

Dignan, Anthony and Bob are not the kind of guys to sit in front of the tube inhaling life lessons from "Friends." "They would idolize the guys in 'Heat,' " Owen Wilson said, "except they hadn't seen the movie yet."

It was enthusiasm, energy and vitality, much of it naively misplaced, that turned "Bottle Rocket" into a short film in 1992. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Anderson, who had met in a playwriting class at the University of Texas at Dallas, were sharing an apartment when they decided to make a movie. Their original plan was to shoot a 16-millimeter black-and-white feature. Thirteen minutes of film and $10,000 later, they were broke. So they decided to call what they had of "Bottle Rocket" a short and submit it to the Sundance Film Festival, where it was shown in 1993.

"People seemed to like it and think it was funny," Mr. Wilson remembered. But nobody handed over cash to help them make a full-length movie. They returned to Dallas, wondering what was going to happen next.

Enter Hollywood in the person of Polly Platt and Mr. Brooks.

The screenwriter L. M. Kit Carson, a friend of the Wilson family, had sent the "Bottle Rocket" script and a video of the short to the producer Barbara Boyle, who in turn sent the material to Ms. Platt. Ms. Platt, a successful producer and production designer, was then the executive vice president of Gracie Films, Mr. Brooks's production company. Under an arrangement with Columbia Pictures, the studio had agreed to finance a low-budget feature of Mr. Brooks's choice. When Ms. Platt found "Bottle Rocket," she knew she had the movie.

"I had never read anything like it," she said. "It was filled with such wry, self-deprecating humor. I shoved it in Jim's face. Then he looked at the short. It was a miracle. He shared my enthusiasm."

Mr. Brooks said: "It had rhythms I had never seen before. It just broke me up. It had such a sense of the ridiculous. And it had such a great selling point: You never saw any of these guys before."

So Mr. Brooks and Ms. Platt flew to Dallas to meet the two young men behind it.

"He came by our apartment, and I think he was shocked by our living conditions," Owen Wilson said of Mr. Brooks. "I think that actually helped us. I think he thought: 'If I don't make this movie, what's going to happen to these guys? They're hanging by a thread.' "

To transform their short into a full-fledged feature, Owen Wilson and Mr. Anderson moved to Los Angeles and spent 18 months cutting and rewriting their script. "There were some hard times," Mr. Brooks admitted. "Wes is very opinionated and very stubborn. And Owen, who does not think the same way as Wes, is also stubborn. All I could do was point to what I saw were problems and press for solutions. The process could get very emotional."

When the script was ready (having lost, according to Mr. Brooks, "everything that was similar to any other generational film"), there was never any question that the Wilson brothers would reprise the roles they had played in the short and that Mr. Anderson would direct. But Columbia wanted a recognizable name in one small role: the mentor in crime, Mr. Henry.

"At first," said Ms. Platt, "the boys wanted a director -- Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone or Peter Bogdanovich -- for the part, which is kind of perfect, because Mr. Henry is a hero to the characters and directors are heroes to the boys." (Mr. Bogdanovich is also Ms. Platt's former husband.) Instead, James Caan was cast in the role.

At this point Columbia made its commitment to the project. "Sometimes, you take a shot on a little movie like this," said Mark Canton, the chairman of Columbia. "You always like to see if you can, in effect, catch lightning in a bottle." Or even in a "Bottle Rocket."

Mr. Anderson said: "All of a sudden we had $5 million to make our movie. It seemed insane."

Did he know how to spend $5 million?

"Fortunately," he said, "they provided a number of people to assist us in that task. They find ways to spend it. Like $1.5 million goes into overhead. For movies this small, it's a lot more economical to make them independently."

After a 45-day shoot and an extended post-production period (and going, in fact, somewhat over budget), the completed film was ready to be shown. But the initial reaction at test screenings was mixed.

"It was unbelievable," said Ms. Platt. "People didn't like it. But Wes would pull out all the good cards, and we could tell by the handwriting that the people who wrote those were the smart ones."

After further adjustments, the film was submitted to the 1996 Sundance festival, which ended last weekend.

"We wanted them to have it," said Mr. Brooks. "It started there. What a nice end to the story it would have been."

Instead, it was rejected.

"We were crushed," said Mr. Wilson.

"It's a strange world," Mr. Brooks said, noting that the Sundance festival acted like a Hollywood studio in turning down what he considered a small, quirky film.

STILL, "BOTTLE ROCKET" had a release date, and it got some good early reviews. Despite the snub at Sundance, it had friends in high places.

With their first movie about to be released and their expectations high, Mr. Anderson and Owen Wilson hope to keep the entire group behind "Bottle Rocket" together as a Texas-bred movie-making company.

"We'd like to call ourselves something like Venture Global Productions," Mr. Anderson said. "Or the Rockefeller Brothers. Or maybe just U.S. Steel."