It’s hard to believe how few feature films writer/director Wes Anderson has made. His impact on the world of filmmaking and the minds of moviegoers has been profound since he burst on the scene with Bottle Rocket in 1996. Each of his subsequent films, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom have created a narratively rich and visually unique world that have delighted moviegoers everywhere. Anderson’s new film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is perhaps his most sumptuous and expansive offering to date. Set in the mythical Eastern European Republic of Zubrowka, the film recounts the adventures of Gustave H, a legendary concierge at a famous hotel between the wars. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting; a raging battle for an enormous family fortune; a desperate chase on motorcyles, trains, sleds and skis; and a sweet love affair between a young lobby boy named Zero Moustafa and the local baker girl — all against the backdrop of a suddenly and dramatically changing Continent.

The-Grand-Budapest-Hotel-posterThe Grand Budapest Hotel stars Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray, Tony Revolori, F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Wilkinson, Léa Seydoux, and, in the role of family lawyer Deputy Kovacs, the talented Jeff Goldblum. I have been enjoying Goldblum’s performances since he burst on the scene in the 1970s in films such as Nashville, California Split and Next Stop, Greenwich Village. He continued to make his mark in movies such as The Big Chill, The Fly, Earth Girls Are Easy, The Tall Guy and Jurassic Park. Also an accomplished stage actor, he appeared in the more recent Adam Resurrected, Anderson’s Life Aquatic, and another film opening this week, Le Week-End opposite Jim Broadbent  and Lindsay Duncan. I so enjoyed sitting down with Jeff Goldblum in Los Angeles to discuss his experience making The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Danny Miller: You’ve played such a range of interesting characters over the years, many with a common thread of a certain kind of fastidiousness. Do you ever get neurotic about the roles you’re offered and think, “Oh my God, is that how people see me?”

Jeff Goldblum: Ha, that’s an interesting question! My public answer is that I’m always happy to be offered any role that comes my way, but the truth is, from time to time I do stop and think, “Really? I guess I can see why they want me for this but I don’t really want to always be identified as this kind of person!” I’m always looking for education and growth out of this whole damned endeavor and I do want to try stuff that I haven’t done before but it’s interesting to think of what people have in their minds when they want “a Jeff Goldblum type!”

What attracted you to this particular role?

Well, I’ve never played a lawyer like this before in a period film. While we see the arc of this character happen in just a few scenes, I think his real essence is revealed in what he chooses to do in that last scene. How does my character deal with the gathering storm and all these bad human elements? We see this crazy family led by Tilda Swinton for whom I’ve worked for many years. Then, when she dies, we see a devolution in the family, just like what’s happening in the outside world, with the bad elements rising in power. In the end, I’m forced to come to what I think is a very brave decision.

Yes, in a way your character represents the people who tried to fight the rising tides during those years.

Exactly. It’s a very touching moment to me what my character does at the end of the film. A small stand but a courageous and interesting one since we all know what’s coming in this part of the world. It makes me think of that movie, Max, with John Cusack, did you see that? Noah Taylor plays a young Adolf Hitler shortly after World War I as a kind of scraggly, hopeful art student. John Cusack plays a progressive Jewish art dealer in Berlin. The nudnik Hitler gloms onto him but, of course, we know what’s ultimately going to happen.

So interesting to think about destiny when we know what the future holds.

Yes. The Grand Budapest Hotel also reminds me of Glory in some ways, now that we’re talking about movies that are definitely not on the list of talking points! It’s like a Chinese box within a Chinese box within a Chinese box. In our film we have the accident of this guy in the first scenes who shows up at the hotel in the 1960s and meets this other guy who says, “Hey, do you want to hear this story?” And then that story reveals the losing effort in the 1930s of people like my character and others who try to change what is happening. And then the retelling of the story becomes the inspiring pillar of a very powerful and impactful story to people years later! That’s what reminds me of Glory. Remember the part where they’ve volunteered for this suicidal mission and before they leave Matthew Broderick says to a reporter, “No matter what, let people know what happened!” And then in the final crawl we learn that they lost a lot of people but that the telling of the story got around and that’s what started to change the tide.

Wes Anderson seems particularly gifted at developing these layers in a story that we can contemplate later.

Did you see that new coffee table book about Wes that just came out? Michael Chabon writes an introduction in that book, a kind of Wes Anderson appreciation, that’s very touching. He compares him to Nabokov  and Joseph Cornell’s boxes and talks about how the self-exposed meta so-called “artificiality” of the worlds that Wes creates actually allow the issues involved in the stories to be told in a more substantial and deep way — in contrast to the critics who misguidedly say that his movies are just sugar. Like Stephen Colbert said the other day, “It’s a meat cake! There’s lots of pretty frosting on the outside, but plenty of meat underneath.”

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When you’re actually shooting the film, can you get a good idea for the amazing visual world that Wes Anderson is creating or does that hit home much more when you see the finished product?

He’s so meticulous in writing the script, it was all there, every bit of text and these incredible descriptions and drawings of how every character was going to look. And then he did an animatic version of the whole movie which I was very happy to see. He voiced all the characters himself and you can see the musicality of the whole thing which helps me a lot — then I can make it my own. Working with him is a very “actorly” experience in contrast to what some people may suspect. He has very strong convictions which, I think, is always good for an actor. You get to skip a few steps, but only in the most creative way because his taste is so remarkable, and then he becomes kind of Altman-esque with the freedom he gives you within that structure and his trust and love of the actor. I find working with him a very creative experience.

So it becomes easier than it might be with other directors to understand his overall vision from the get-go, both narratively and visually?

Yes, that’s what I was going to say before I went off on that tangent! And yet even though all of these things prepare you in the most complete way, when I first walked onto that set, I was completely knocked out by the onslaught of such beautiful imagery — it just kind of grabs you. And then seeing this amazing story come to life with Ralph and Tony and the storytelling element with all of the characters — it just got to me in a way that was very different from my imagining of it.

The Grand Budapest Hotel - 64th Berlin Film Festival

I loved how there was so much going on visually, including with the different eras, that I couldn’t even take it all in. It’s the kind of film you almost need to see again!

That’s exactly how I felt. I wanted to see it again immediately or get a DVD and pause it because there are so many details to take in. We had the brilliant production designer Adam Stockhuasen and we were in this old department store in Germany that was turned into the hotel. Everything was transformed into this magnificent Wes Anderson installation! It felt like being in a wonderful museum.

They should turn it into one!

I actually talked to Wes about that the other day and he said that he keeps many of the objets d’Anderson from his movies in a storage facility somewhere so who knows what might happen to that stuff some day. I just felt so lucky to be on that set.

jeff-goldblum-grand-budapest-hotelYour character seems like he could have walked straight out of many classic movies of the 30s and 40s. Did you watch any old films to prepare?

I’m always eager for education, per the instructions of my former acting teacher Sandy Meisner! Wes Anderson is not only the master artist that he is, he’s also a true archivist. I love movies but there are big holes in my education so for this movie Wes had stacks of research materials including books and photographs but also many movies. He is a real professor of that! There were Lubitsch films I’ve never seen, I’d never seen To Be or Not To Be, Grand Hotel, The Shop Around the Corner, The Mortal Storm, he showed us all of those and I ate them up. The guy Jack Benny impersonates in To Be or Not To Be, “They call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt,” he was a kind of goateed, bespectacled guy like my character.

Did you have a hand in creating that look?

Well, Wes completely envisioned it — you go in there and there are all of these great drawings with your face on them! I worked with Milena Canonero, our Oscar-winning costume person. She had me try on many things. I remember that when it came to the glasses, they had huge trays of them but I myself am very interested in vintage eyewear and I have connections here so when I came back to L.A. I visited my guy and found the glasses for my character. I sent Milena a picture and she said, “That’s it! Bring those!” I still have them in my closet!

You mentioned Altman and I have to say that Nashville is one of my favorite films of all time. Can you draw other parallels between the two filmmakers?

Yes. Altman was also a kind of zen pied piper who really enjoyed the shooting experience itself. Being the enlightened existentialist that he was, he wanted to make the experience of making a movie like an art piece unto itself. He’d say, yeah, we want the movie to be good, but we really just do it for the pleasure of being with each other! You build the moat, you build the raft, and then the water will come in and one way or another we’ll be taken out to sea. But it’s really the experience itself that is the jewel of what we’re doing here. I think Wes Anderson is very much like that. For Nashville, we took over a whole motel — here we took over  this wonderful little fairy tale hotel in Görlitz. Wes had a chef come in every night, he made it a very special experience. And then to get to watch him shooting in this beautiful place after all his preparing — it’s like he’s in some kind of gorgeous state of Sufi bliss! I asked him about that and he was as modest as always, saying, “Oh no, I’m just trying not to make any big mistakes!” but you could see him in this state of total enjoyment. It was such a fun thing to be around and so great to watch this gang of actors, just like in Nashville.

The Grand Budapest Hotel opens in New York and Los Angeles on March 7, 2014, and in many other cities in the coming weeks.