Luke Wilson recalls seeing ‘The Doors’ with Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson
The younger brother of Owen Wilson, actor Luke Wilson, has enjoyed a career in the industry that began in the late-1990s when he played the leading role in the 1994 short film Bottle Rocket, co-written by his brother alongside Wes Anderson. The film was remade as a feature-length project two years later, with Wilson starring as Anthony, who is rescued from a psychiatric ward by his friend Dignan.
The film was an important factor in welcoming Wes Anderson to the mainstream, with Martin Scorsese later calling Bottle Rocket one of his favourite films of the decade, praising Anderson’s ability to “convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness.”
Wilson went on to star in Telling Lies in America after moving to Hollywood, as well as cameoing in Scream 2, before starring alongside Drew Barrymore in two romantic comedies. After another appearance in an Anderson-Wilson project, Rushmore, he starred in Legally Blonde.
However, one of Wilson’s most memorable roles is Richie from Anderson’s stylish The Royal Tenenbaums. Released in 2001, it remains one of Anderson’s greatest efforts, following a dysfunctional and eccentric family as their patriarch, Royal Tenenbaum, returns after years of absence, falsely claiming to be terminally ill.
Wilson’s role as Richie, a tennis lover who is secretly in love with his adopted sister Margot, remains one of the stand-outs of his career. One of his most memorable scenes from the movie is his attempted suicide. Whilst shaving his face, Richie utters: “I’m going to kill myself tomorrow,” before slicing up his arms. This is soundtracked by Elliott Smith’s beautiful song ‘Needle in the Hay,’ which makes the scene even more unforgettable.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Wilson discussed his time playing Richie and recalled going to see Oliver Stone’s The Doors with Owen and Anderson when it was released in 1991. He says: “I can remember going to see The Doors with Owen and Wes in Austin, when it had first come out, and there was kind of the cool sequence where the Velvet Underground song ‘Heroin’ was playing through this sequence of Jim Morrison being out of control. Those guys both kind of clenched up because they’d wanted to use the song “Heroin” in something. I’m just sitting there thinking, ‘God this is an incredible movie, what a scene, what a song,’ and they were both like, ‘Dammit, now we can’t use this song.’ These guys haven’t made a movie yet, but you get the feeling they’re in competition with Oliver Stone.”
Viewing The Doors ten years prior evidently helped inspire Anderson to pick a powerful and impactful song for a similar moment in his own film. Whilst he couldn’t use the hypnotising ‘Heroin’, ‘Needle in the Hay’ seems to work perfectly.
Anderson still gets his Velvet Underground fix in The Royal Tenenbaums, though, as ‘Stephanie Says’ can be heard at one point, as well as ‘These Days’ by frequent Velvet Underground collaborator Nico.
