8989
“Huh. O.K., I’ll probably not do that
part. This is the movies, guys.” Then
Paul said, “No, you’re going to drive
the truck.” I named her Gertrude.
Me and Gertie, we got through it to-
gether. It really was a huge part of me
becoming Alana Kane, because she
is fearless.
Anderson: But beyond that, it was:
“You’re also going to be running
through the streets in a bikini, also on
the back of a motorcycle with Sean
Penn, you’re going to wipe out, you’re
also going to get into ferocious fights.”
Alana, did you have any apprehen-
sions about what you had to do?
Haim: That was the adventure of
making this movie. Every day I was
doing something completely different
that I had never done before.
Anderson: It’s very rare to have an
actor be able to shed their vanity.
That’s hard for anyone, but try it with a
movie camera on. Try being a woman.
You want to be attractive, you want
to be likable. But Alana does have a
switch that, if it’s needed, will drop her
vanity, be unfearful of looking out of
we see in the film: water beds, the
legalization of pinball, the oil crisis,
Joel Wachs, Jon Peters, Lucille Ball?
Anderson: In some ways, oddly, you
try to write away from them. This story
comes from real-life episodes that hap-
pened to my friend Gary Goetzman. He
was a child actor—check, that’s a ter-
rific story. He needed to get to The Ed
Sullivan Show and didn’t have a chap-
erone, so he got a burlesque dancer to
take him there—that’s fantastic. He
started a water bed company—that’s
fantastic. He started a pinball store—
that’s fantastic. [But] if a film becomes
too preoccupied with bizarro culture
details specific to a time, it can tip the
weight too far in a direction it can’t
hold. A water bed is funny for a minute,
but what’s important are the kids sell-
ing the water beds and how the water-
bed business goes bust because of a
gas crisis, which puts them in a larger
scope of the world. They’re at the
mercy of an Arab-Israeli war that has
nothing to do with them but has found
its way to the Valley.Were any of those elements particu-
larly intriguing to you, Alana?
Haim: I had never been on a water-
bed before, let me tell you that. We had
water bed school.Meaning?
Haim: Meaning we were starting a
water bed company and you can’t start
a water bed company without knowing
how to put together a water bed, with a
headboard and the vinyl. You have to
know what kind of seam works for the
Arabian vinyl.
Anderson: Years of working with
Daniel Day-Lewis has taught me a few
things. I said to them, essentially, “If
you guys don’t figure out how to make
a water bed, then you’re going to be
pretending, so figure out how to put
these water beds together.”Daniel’s Method ways have
infiltrated you.
Haim: We got it together in eight
minutes flat. ◁ Hoffman and Haim steal
Anderson’s latest film from
their A-list co-starscontrol, vulnerable. That’s an incred-
ibly attractive quality in an actor.Your previous movies have been
star-driven: Daniel Day-Lewis, Joa-
quin Phoenix, Adam Sandler. What
can you accomplish by casting two
novices that you can’t with A-listers?
Anderson: You can accomplish a ver-
sion of time travel, because an au-
dience isn’t bringing any baggage.
They’re looking at two human beings
saying words that look like they just
came out of their head. I think there’s
joy in discovery for an audience. I won-
der what it was like to walk into a club
of 50 people and see U2 when they
were 19 years old. I hope audiences
can feel that way looking at the two of
them. They also look like real people.
Alana’s face is the greatest thing you
could hope for in a movie star. From
one angle, she’s stunningly gorgeous;
turn it an inch to the right, you’re
like, “What’s going on with her face?”
That’s a magic recipe.The movie is sprinkled with refer-
ences. How did you select the ones