Let’s get the most important thing out of the way first: I absolutely loved Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. As a huge fan of his first stop-motion movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, I wasn’t sure he could top such a special film, but I’m pleased to report he did. And while I loved everything about Isle of Dogs, I have to give a special shout out to the production design and level of detail in every shot. It’s like Anderson took what he did in Fantastic Mr. Fox and said, “Okay, this was good, but now let’s put ten times as many things in every shot and amplify the level of detail by a factor of ten.”

As I watched Isle of Dogs, I had to pick my jaw up off the ground a number of times because I couldn’t believe the level of detail and depth in every shot. Even though I always prefer the theatrical experience, this is one of those rare films I can’t wait to watch at home when I can pause each frame and study the smallest detail. Trust me, Isle of Dogs is one of the best stop-motion films I’ve ever seen and I strongly recommend checking it out.

With the film now playing in limited release and expanding nationwide in the coming weeks, I recently got to participate in a roundtable interview with Bill Murray and Bob Balaban at the Berlin Film Festival. During the wide-ranging conversation they talked about getting to work with Wes Anderson, what it was like recording their lines, their reactions to the finished film, their thoughts on why Anderson always put an eleven or twelve year old boy in his movies, and so much more. In addition, since we had so much time with them, the conversation veered in a number of other directions and it’s one of those really fun interviews that I’m confident you’ll enjoy.

If you’re not aware of the Isle of Dogs story, the film takes place in a near-future Japan where, after an outbreak of dog attacks, all dogs have been banished to live on a garbage-filled island—the Isle of Dogs. A young boy ventures to the island in search of his own dog, and with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of the entire region. The film also features the voices of Bryan Cranston, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, F. Murray Abraham, Tilda Swinton, Kunichi Nomura, Harvey Keitel, Akira Ito, Akira Takayama, Koyu Rankin, Yoko Ono, Courtney B. Vance, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, and Liev Schrieber.

Check out what Bill Murray and Bob Balaban had to say below.

So you guys are like the Wes vets.

Bob Balaban: He is. I'm a minor vet.

It counts, it counts. So is there a lot of shorthand there? Did you guys kind of....

Bob Balaban: I don't think there's short-hand. I think there's comfort. There's comfort, is what I would say.

Bill Murray: Yeah, there's comfort, and he's very direct. He kind of gives you a little bit to do... and we were lucky to have the other actors being dogs at the same time.

So you were the only group that was together, right?

Bill Murray: Right.

Bob Balaban: I don't know. We don't know anything about the other people.

Bill Murray: We don't know much to begin with... but we were together. So you got to see this sort of spiral of canine performing. Everyone got a little more doggy as we were going along. It took a little while, and it was fun to watch, and silly to watch, and I think Wes enjoyed watching us dog up like that. The sound was just rolling the whole time.

Bob Balaban: I think we were early in Wes' process. Do we think that?

Bill Murray: I think so, yeah. We were early.

Bob Balaban: We were the test dogs.

Bill Murray: We were the test dogs.

How so? You mean just when he was just initiating...

Bill Murray: The plot starts with us, I guess, and it gets more complicated once you get into the politics of the movie, and the political structure with that group, the Kobiashis. But our dog thing was, you know, sort of the center of it, you know, the foundational.

Did you do multiple sessions? Did you have to come in as things changed?

Bob Balaban: No. I don't think so. I don't even remember. Was it two days or one day?

Bill Murray: It may have been two days, but it wasn't multiple sessions. It wasn't like a thing. It may have been one day.

Bob Balaban: It included lunch.

Bill Murray: You're actually right, because it was brought in. We didn't go anywhere. That means we're going to keep going. We're not going to take a long lunch. We're going to keep going.

It's so fascinating, because every animated movie that I've covered has the actors reporting for like a year or two doing multiple versions. And all I'm hearing about this is you guys went in once or twice, did the lines, and that was it, done.

Bob Balaban: But it's different. I was just thinking about other animated movie things. You've done...

Bill Murray: I've done a couple.

Bob Balaban: And I did one, one time, and I was amazed at how much the director had to keep pumping you up, like everything got bigger and bigger. "No, you're really afraid, you have to be screaming now!" It was energetic, it was really nice. And I thought that's the opposite of what we were all doing. And maybe it was good that we didn't go in and put steroids on it.

But with the dialogue changing. Because sometimes they'll look at the movie, and then it's a whole different version that ended up making.

Bob Balaban: But Wes didn't direct those movies!

Bill Murray: He didnt direct those movies, and he didn't write those movies. There's not a lot of messing around with his dialogue. Obviously Jason and Roman, and... I can't say his name, but it was Jason and Roman at that point that had written it.

Bob Balaban: Were they there that day? I don't think so.

Bill Murray: No. But at that point that those lines were written in stone, or pretty much. The stuff was pretty stone. There's not a whole lot of improvising in Wes' movies. He knows what he wants. He knows exactly what he wants.

Did you guys get a complete script before you actually started?

Bill Murray: No.

Did he tell you the story line?

Bill Murray: Yeah, he whispered something. I mean I had some idea about what was going to happen. No idea of the complexity of what we saw.

I have a question about Wes Anderson's movies at large. This is my question that I don't have the answer to, and you guys have been in these movies. The use of the 12 year-old-boy, and Moonrise Kingdom is led by this 12-year-old boy. Women are obviously there, but why does that 12-year-old boy resonate? Do you have an answer?

Bob Balaban: Well, I kind of assumed he was Wes, is what I think. But I don't even know that Wes... I don't know that he would consciously think about it. I guess he, he knows what he's...

Bill Murray: There's also the 11-year-old boy in The Life Aquatic.

And there's a young boy in Budapest.

Bill Murray: And when Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic says, "How old was he? "He's 11. That was my favorite age." You have a lot of clues.

You guys can put it together for me! Because I forgot about The Life Aquatic.

Bob Balaban: But Wes is currently 11 as well. He's many ages, and he contains them all pretty strongly, I think.

So when you get the call to be in a new Wes Anderson film, are you sort of, is your relationship sort of locked in a groove at this point where you kind of know what to expect? Or is every film like a different, complete different experience? I mean obviously this one animated, and it was a shorter lead times, but how does it actually work?

Bill Murray: Well, this is an animated, so it's not as exciting because we just get to do the voices. But on the job, like when we worked in Newport, Rhode Island, that was that! Living in Newport, Rhode Island.

Bob Balaban: But it was dangerous. The tick situation.

The tick situation? Care to elaborate?

Bill Murray: There were ticks out there, and you had to wear long socks. But we went to a beautiful location every single day. That coastline in Rhode Island is crazy beautiful with islands, small islands, and peninsulas, and we went to a beautiful place every day. And then we would eat a great meal.

Bob Balaban: And you lived in Wes' house.

Bill Murray: I lived in the house with Wes, and he did this thing there where he said, "OK, I've got us a private chef," which sounds like a great deal. But it also means you can work until 9:30 at night. Private chef will be cooking a meal that serves at 11:30. So I actually could work til 10:00 at night, and then it would be 11:30. And you get there, and you go, "Oh great. We've got a great meal coming." So we would have a glass of wine or whatever, and then the food would come, and the food would be really good. And then you'd go, "That was great. That was really good. Good days. That was a long day's work, wasn't it?" And then bam, and you're out. And then the next day the personal chef has gotten Wes his granola, and all that kind of stuff. You got a great start, and then you do it all over.

Bob Balaban: I don't think they were dressing rooms. I definitely remember, because my character had to wear a giant red coat, and a funny hat, and like the Elf shoes or something. And I used to leave my hotel every morning. And I had dinner with some friends one night, and I didn't have time to go back and change at the hotel, so I ate dinner in a really nice little diner.

Bill Murray: It's a little like Elmer Fudd.

It's kind of adorable. Just say it's method.

Bill Murray: That's funny. That's really funny.

Is it more difficult to be a voice in an animated film, or to be a full seen actor in a film? Which one makes you more vulnerable.

Bob Balaban: I think in a way it's different, but it's also the sam. You're working at the same goal, basically, maybe with different tools, you know. But I think it's strangely the same. In a way it's a little more difficult, maybe, because we draw on circumstance all the time, and the circumstances when you're standing in front of something without objects... But Bill, you were talking about when you did Mr. Fox, and about how they went on location to record voices that were similar to the locations in the movie. We couldn't have done it anyway, but I think that's a brilliant thing to do, and nobody, nobody does that.

Bill Murray: And it was fun to do!

You would have had trash in this one.

Bob Balaban: I wouldn't have wanted to go  there.

You would have had ticks again.

Bob Balaban: They don't have that many ticks with trash.

Bill Murray: I told you we went to the trash heap for the first scene of Life Aquatic. He wanted to have a scene of seagulls that were going to be following the boat at the end of the movie. And he was told that the most seagulls were at the dump in Rome. So we went to the dump in Rome with a couple of pickup trucks and drove around, and I was supposed to wave at the birds. Well, have you ever been in a real dump? They have these breather pipes that just breathe methane, and it just pops out as a semi-liquid, semi-gas. And you're driving around in this stuff, and your eyes start to get a little weird. And the gulls would not follow us. We were chasing the gulls out and around the garbage dump, the garbage dump of Rome, for a few hours. And it's like, "Okay, cut. Hmmmm." And at the end of the movie, when you take a fishing boat back to port and you will get gulls. I don't know why they didn't think that was gonna happen.

Kind of bridging off of that question. I'm curious, just working with Wes since Rushmore, how much do you see him evolve as a filmmaker? What, what'd you say is the biggest change between him now and then?

Bill Murray: It sounded like you said evolved as a woman. What did you say?

As a filmmaker.

Bob Balaban: I heard that too.

Bill Murray: Well, back then they were kind of pushing it around a little bit, you know. It was Disney, and they weren't giving him what he wanted to do. I didn't think they were particularly kind to him. I don't think they've got him, like they understood what they had. And he made two movies in a row with them, and I still didn't think they knew what they had. And finally he ended his relationship with them, and they don't think they ever delivered the goods. I don't think they worked as hard as he did. So just to sort of ignore that, bang your way through that, continuing to make his individual movies, not ever doing what they wanted him to. Like he would look at their notes and go, "That's great." They would try to give him notes and to his credit, any artist's credit, he's like, "Ehh, that's not going to happen." So that doesn't happen anymore. He's lucky enough to find Steve Rales, who is the perfect guy.

Bob Balaban: And Scott Rudin is very helpful too I think.

Bill Murray: They make these movies happen, and they're really artists. Steve really appreciates art. He's a great art collector, and he really appreciates art. He likes to see art made. He likes to see art made, one way or another,  to have some sort of piece of it. So his development is not just that he found a guy with money that wants to do his movies - his development is that his reach is so great. I mean the reach of this thing is huge! The amount of work and the reach and the effort, the research, the respect, and acknowledgement of all the other artists that touch these kinds of stories. That's crazy.

Bob Balaban: This movie does that almost does that more than any of this other movies. Don't you think?

Bill Murray: I mean,  a film nerd, I don't know who here is. I think we're all film nerds. The worst film nerd would never leave his house with this movie. That would be it. You know, we, we wouldn't see him anymore. You'd never see them again. You could get buried in all of what's contained in it.

Bob Balaban: I think you have to see the movie multiple times. The musical references... there are references on every level.

You mentioned you hadn't read the whole script. What your initial reactions when you saw the finished film for the first time?

Bob Balaban: Mine was, oh my God. And it was last night. Some people.

Bill Murray: We never saw it until last night. Were you there last night? You weren't there.

We saw it earlier in the day.

Bob Balaban: Overwhelming?

Bill Murray: No, I'm, I'm still reacting to the show that we had to sit through. They're brought us there two full hours before the movie began. Two hours. Two and a half hours, because we had a half an hour outside. There was another half an hour or so in an airless room. We had to wait for that to happen. Then we had to be seated. And then we had an hour and twenty minutes of that. And the girl was funny. She was making them laugh in German. And if you're making them laugh in German... Germans are not easy. So she made them laugh in German. And then all the people gave speeches, and my German friend said he was revolted by it. He was disgusted by it. "These fucking Germans." I can't say that! They all gave the same fucking spiel. Every one of them gave the same speech of different lengths.

And they do that every year.

Bill Murray: Well, I was here a couple of years ago for this thing, and it didn't go on like this. I don't remember it being a whole hour last time, this was an hour and 20 minutes. That's a long time to make people sit before you show them a movie. And not the ideal conditions! And we were brought there another hour and a half before that. So I was like, "I'm gonna fall asleep, Wes."

So after all that, what did you think?

Bill Murray: Oh yeah. I was just trying to avoid the answer.

When you get that kind of experience, and you're getting that foul mood... the movie is, I mean magical. When did your mood flip?

Bill Murray: It wasn't a foul mood. It was just, "Oh my God, I'm so tired." I mean we just came home from San Francisco, which is the exact opposite of the Earth. So you're nine hours from the opposite side of the Earth, and you have been sleeping like someone being tortured. You hit two hours, and then let's beat you some more. So it's been like that. But the first frame of the movie, it's so beautiful. You know, the first thing. And that's one. That's one. The first frame that the movie is so beautiful. The first prologue is just sweet. Here we go. But the movie felt longer to me because I was so tired and because we'd been sitting there for so long. I said, "How long is the movie?" He said, "Ninety minutes." I said, "Are you kidding?!" Our movie was like three hours, because they made us sit in the garage for 15 minutes in a car.

Bob Balaban: You did drum before the movie.

Bill Murray: I did drum before the movie, and that was fun. The outdoors was really fun. That energy was cool. And it was kind of nice because, I'm not like autographs and all that stuff... people think of signing autographs for a small child, or Make A Wish or something like that. But most of those guys are like pros. They're all like sellers. So the good thing last night was it was so cold out, and they'd been out there so long that you could just shake hands with someone, and their hands were so cold, they were like, "Oh, that's great." So when I did the first round I was like, "That's all I'm going to do." All the way up, all the way back. Shook everyone's hand that had a hand out, anyone that had a pen I was like "Eh." Anyone that had their hand out, I'd have a warm hand. And then they had the drummers out there, and it was Wes, I give him credit. I said, "Did you see the drummers? He said, "What?" I said, "The drummers are out there." And he went out there, and then he's like, "I would like to play them. Would you like to play them?" He knew I'd say yes, so I'm like, "Yes, I'd like to play them." I'm sort of looking like, "Are we really going to do this?" And of course he's already gone all the way around the thing like a hunting dog, and he's already up on stage. And it was fun. It was crazy. My heart was beating hard. I was working hard with those guys. That's crazy work to really go with them and they were going? It's fun. Got you really pumped up. Got really excited going into this premiere. And then we stood a staircase with a hundred people where we waited about 15 minutes to get to the top of the stairs, and then we went into this room, and it was just like that.

Were you happy that your dog was a baseball mascot?

Bill Murray: Well, I knew that he was that, I'd seen pictures of them. I knew that he was the baseball mascot.

Have you seen any Japanese baseball?

Bill Murray: No, but I have some Japanese baseball memorabilia. I've got a baseball hat from the Fukuoka team - a batting helmet. But I've seen it on TV when I was over there. We were always working so I never got to go to the games, you could see it on TV. And they have every player has his own song, and not like walk up music like they have in the States where they'll play a little recording as a guy walks up. But like the people in the stadium will sing the Bob Balaban song.

You've both worked with Wes Anderson before, and presumably you've seen other movies that he's made. Have you seen a lot of influence in cinema it at large since he's become a major filmmaker?

Bob Balaban: You mean other people doing echoes of Wes?

Yeah.

Bob Balaban: I don't notice it too much because I think it's really hard to do, and his visual style doesn't apply to anybody. I think, I don't know.

Bill Murray: Well, the only thing that really a constant is Bob Yeoman, his camera man - he's now like everyone wants to have Bob Yeoman. "Do. a do, do, do, do the thing you do." Bob is the guy from Ruma, Illinois. And I think that he and Wes have a relationship that doesn't go anywhere else, the way they do things. And Wes' film history is dictating a lot of the way the shooting is going. "OK, this is that shot from Barry Lyndon."

Bob Balaban: He only didn't do one of Wes' -  but he doesn't do the animated movies.

Wes is famous for his attention to detail and precision and it seems like in a way that can be more easily achieved in animation than in live action.

Bob Balaban: But not really, though.

I guess in terms of not maybe having to deal with the human performances. You think puppets you think maybe there's a greater degree of control or ability.

Bob Balaban: When we did Moonrise Kingdom, which I know more than the other two, you could go to the shop and see the opening... the title sequence where the camera is doing this and doing that and everything was designed like a year and a half when the set was built in 25 different parts and each element of the set you would like to take home and put into a museum. I mean it's shocking and so beautiful. Where does it go to? Do they save that?

Bill Murray: That's a good question

Bob Balaban: When my daughters knew that I was maybe going to be in a Wes Anderson movie, they were like, "OK, we want to be there. We just want to sit quietly; we want to go see the scenery." They spent as much time going into the shop and looking at everything as they did watching the movie.

Bill Murray: I ended up with some tables and a canoe

Bob Balaban: Seriously?

Bill Murray: The set decorator is my friend. The canoes are wildly unstable - don't ever... They're beautiful and they float, but if you got in you'd die. I've got a boat, like an insane sort of, you know, wooden table from here to that table - a really long table.

Bob Balaban: From the house?

Bill Murray: From the house, or someplace. No -  you know it was the outdoor picnic scenes where they had had the scouts and the camp.

Were you ever tempted to bring home or  to incorporate into your own wardrobe some of the clothing that you wore?

Bill Murray: In his movies? Well, I'm not really a fan of the speedo swimming suit, but there is a square version which doesn't look exactly like a speedo which I had to wear in the movie. That was really comfortable ,and it wasn't like what we call European, wherever the hell we call it the America. It wasn't a Speedo, but it was the same material and it was designed by the costumer. So it was beautiful! So I still have it.

How about the red caps from Steve Zissou?

Bill Murray: Those are all over the place. I've got mine somewhere. I've got one or two of those somewhere  in the museum.

Bob Balaban: My disposable clothing, that I think they got it from thrift stores, was so rare they kept it. I mean even my undershirt that I wore was something from the 1973. By the way, wearing underwear, authentic period underwear, is impossible. I disposed of a friend's estate who was 88 years old, and she had this huge collection of all her old underwear that was there. And a costumes came and said, "We want to take all the old underwear please, because we can't find..." Because people throw away their old dirty underwear.

Did you discuss doing less? One of the things that that was really interesting was it wasn't a very Bill Murray-y performance. It wasn't a very Bob Balaban. It felt like all the dogs were much lower key than you might have expected in this moment.

Bob Balaban: I think we did what it seemed like we were doing.

Bill Murray: It was very much more conversational, and not performance driven. It was very much like if we were talking to each other in an elevator about what happened this afternoon or something.

Bob Balaban: Which is how dogs really talk.

Bill Murray: His dialogue is sorta like it's overheard. His dialogue is performed... it's like it's overheard, and that sort of the way this movie really feels when you hear the dogs talking together. You just sort of feel like your dog is sitting on the outside. It's not presentation at all.

And you eased right into that? That was the natural...

Bill Murray: Well, we're trying to be dogs, you know. You were trying to feel like you're a dog pack, so you had to be really sort of familiar and not aggressively personality driven.

Thinking back to Lost In Translation, in building this with Japan... loneliness, separation. Did you think back on that experience at all making this or watching it?

Bill Murray: It was pretty much thinking about being a dog. First things first. I had to grow fur, and these teeth had to get bigger. I thought about what it was going to mean. It was exciting to watch it last night and go, "Oh my gosh, I can't wait until they see that in Japan." They're going to love it for sure.