WWD: Why did you choose to leave A Bathing Ape, the very brand you started? When did you make the decision?

Nigo: It was about six months ago that I started to think about what I wanted to do next. I guess it’s just me being selfish. It has been 20 years since I founded the brand, and in another 20 years from now I will be 60. I started fumbling around for some new possibilities. What I really want to make clear is that I didn’t fall out with [I.T chief executive officer] Sham Kar Wai. Sham and I get on as more than business associates and we came to a mutual decision. It was simply that I came to the realization that Bape was no longer just my creation and I didn’t renew the contract that I signed two years ago when I sold the company.

WWD: Since I.T bought the company, the brand has changed significantly. I.T has launched a diffusion line called Aape by A Bathing Ape and there are many more products with prominent logos. Isn’t that a departure for the brand?

Nigo: I think it is pretty obvious that from the perspective of I.T, they weren’t just buying a brand, they were looking to turn a profit. But I am very grateful to them, not only for buying the company, but for listening to my input. Two years ago when I sold it, times were really tough. We were really feeling the effects of the Lehman Bros. collapse and the banks just weren’t lending. The decision to sell was to protect us, our employees and even the banks. It was the best decision for us all to make it out alive. Actually, we were having talks with a number of people at the time, not just I.T, but those all faltered leaving I.T as the only buyer. Thanks to I.T, it was like I had stepped on a land mine but, thankfully, it hadn’t gone off. After the sale, I learnt a lot from I.T, especially about how to keep costs down, which looking back on my time as manager, was the thing I needed to reevaluate the most.

WWD: Do you think that without you Bape is going to change even more significantly from now on?

Nigo: There is a hangover caused by my own time managing Bape. That without me the brand wouldn’t exist is something the people who follow in my footsteps will have to overcome. But I think that I.T is confident that it is going to continue to sell without me. Especially in Asia, Bape is Bape. There are people who are fanatical about the logo alone. Maybe it will have an effect in places in the West like New York where I have an identity as Nigo. As for Japan, I wonder? I have a feeling they will just have to push on. If something goes wrong, maybe they will call me back!

@jordanmoore: A couple of weeks ago you discussed simulation technology and how we use it to simulate “all we have left: the past”. Do you think designers are harking back to an easier time, when their works were less transient – and that digital is a format where it is difficult to leave behind relics of our work, and provides no assuring sense of longevity?

This is an extremely complex matter that I have been thinking about for the last few months. I am not seeing clear enough to give you a short answer and this is not the place to answer in full, but I’ll give it a shot.

What I know is that this nostalgic trend a lot of people are talking and writing about these days has something to do with that the socio-economic change driven by the analog-to-digital transformation. The main progress that we have made in the last 30 years is not aesthetic or mechanical. What we have seen since the mid-90s is a progress in simulation technologies. Cars look more or less the same, music and fashion is also moving into a state of simulation of what is supposed to be authentic. And often the simulation outperforms the original.

A simulation or a copy that outperforms the original is the basic principle of evolution in design. Progress in design is never a big jump. It is always a processes of copy and improve. Big jumps, as in the advent of the iPhone, are only possible if a lot of that process of copy and improve is kept in the dark. Then it looks like a genius was at work, creating something completely new. But I have never seen any genius innovation out of the blue in technology. The more we learn about Apple’s design process through the Samsung court case, the more we see that in that regard Apple is no different from anybody else.

The absolute masters at copy and improve are the Japanese. And I’m not just talking about Japanese cameras, watches and electronics. A lot of French and Italian restaurants there out-cook authentic restaurants in France and Italy. Not only do they make better food – a good French restaurant in Tokyo tastes, looks and feels more French than most French restaurants in Paris. It is a funny experience. They simulate Frenchness so well, that you feel angry and insulted at first, then you feel sorry for the original. This is not just my romantic impression, Japanese pizza bakers often win pizza world championships. Tokyo has more Michelin stars than Paris. French and Italian tourists get confused when you show them some of these places. While you don’t fully trust this better copy to be really better (especially as a European), after a while you don’t care about original or simulation anymore.

Or take those incredible new old coffee shops in San Francisco. They are evoking an originality and a quality that has never existed before. Coffee in the 70s mostly tasted like shit. And I don’t think that coffee in the 20s was much better than in the 70s. Logistics simply didn’t allow that quality. We actually have much better product quality now than we used to have, but like our grandparents we imagine that once upon a time everything was more solid. We imagine this by looking at the really solid stuff that has survived.

To get back to the question: I believe that the traditionalist trends in music, fashion, and TV, as well as Apple’s use of old metaphors and Microsoft’s return to Swiss graphic design in Windows 8, is a sign of a creative process at its beginning. We are about to experience a back and forth from the digital to analogue that will eventually lead to a different understanding of reality. As different as this future reality is, it won’t necessarily look that ‘new’. It might look like the spoof of that Mad Men episode called The Carousel. When you first look at this, especially after watching the original, it feels ridiculous. You think “something is lost” or “there is no emotion”, but the more you watch the satire the less you will see a difference and realise that the old, analogue reality was as constructed as the digital one. There is no authentic reality and there never was.

As we can learn from that episode ‘new’ always was and always will be a good sales argument.

“The most important idea in advertising is ‘new’. It creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of calamine lotion.”

Advertising is not what it used to be. Classic advertising has become that weird thing from the past. It still kind of works, but it’s becoming more and more obvious how surreal advertisement is. What used to be advertising now is ‘The Web’. The web is how we now make buying choice; the web is where we get our product information. So the promise of ‘new’ doesn’t work that well any more, because:

1. Online, things just get old really fast. After the 50th retweet, new is old. And with the right account it takes less than a second to get that 50th retweet.
2. ‘New’ is very easy to say, but innovation is very hard to do. A lot of things that used to be sold as new, actually were just old things with a new package. If you promise ‘new’ and don’t deliver, your product will not be seen as “a kind of calamine lotion” but as snake oil.
3. The appeal of ‘new’ is part of a modernist bias. That bias is about to become conscious.

I believe that culturally, we are about to witness a capitulation in front of the modern ideology that ‘new’ or technological ‘progress’ is generally better. The above cited same Mad Men clip goes on explaining nostalgia as a “deeper bond with the product”, calling it “delicate but potent”.

The nostalgic trend is not the next ad strategy. And I don’t think that it’s just an escape back to the past. It is as a sign of distrust against the supremacy of ‘new’, that technological progress does not necessarily equal improvement. Progress can mean ‘improvement’, but it can also mean ‘even more trouble’. Whether you ‘believe in’ or ‘accept’ global warming or not – you have probably learned that we cannot escape environmental entropy with more technology. Less, more intelligent technology is a smarter way, but we might fool ourselves there. We do not fool ourselves when we accept that less consumption will lead to less chaos, but that’s much harder to accept than the idea of a deus ex machina that will save us all from the mess we are heading into.

The entropy of the ‘new’ is not a mere technological problem; we witness the same entropy affecting information. The incredible access to information we have does not lead to an overflow of information. But it doesn’t lead lead to more clarity. It leads away from the ‘either or’ ideologies that claim to know for certain which principles human knowledge must follow. The nostalgic trend is in essence postmodern. That everything you say describes a human perspective, not a divine cosm. I used to make fun of the word postmodern; I still dislike it, because the essence of postmodernism is exactly that it is not an -ism, that it has no global belief. But I am quite certain that the nostalgic trend marks the end of modernity. Especially since it treats modernity as something of the past, something that in some ways is desirable, in others not. There is a lot to say here (for instance how hard it is to fool ourselves into our grandparents’ nostalgia of our past that the internet documents in detail), but let’s move on …

BY SUZANNE YEAGLEY for McSweeney’s

Q: Do you see a lot of people cheating?
A: It goes in waves. There are periods of calm and then the shit hits the fan and lots of things start to happen.

There are organized cheat teams from overseas. Like Hungarian or Ukranian. They’ll play Caribbean Stud, where there is a $100,000 payoff if you get a royal flush.

Q: How do they cheat?
A: They’ll put little thumbtacks under their thumbnail to mark the cards. Or they’ll do card-switching.

Q: Card-switching?
A: Yeah. Imagine you’re sitting to my left. Then I put a card in my right hand and tuck it under my left arm. You do the same—tuck a card in your left hand and pass it to me under your right arm. It happens so fast it can be hard to catch. These guys do it for a living—they’re polished.

Q: How do you confirm that they cheated?
A: Before we pay out there is a process. We’ll watch the past six hands and the dealer will fan the cards out to make sure they’re all there. And we take facial photos of all the patrons at the table. Then they’ll send the cards to the surveillance room for us to look at.

Organized cheat teams are falling by the wayside though.

I’ve caught people on a small scale too. Just the other day someone showed me a guy who had a winning hand and capped his bet.

Q: Capped his bet?
A: Yeah, he put extra chips on top of his stack. We reviewed the footage and he’d done it three or four other times. The police arrested him and charged him with cheating at play.

Q: What’s the penalty for that?
A: I think it’s a fine.

Q: What is the fundamental purpose of architecture?

[Martha Thorne] That’s a very simple yet complicated question. Architecture exists to create the physical environment in which people live. Obviously that’s a very simple answer, but if we deep digger we see the complexities. What is the built environment? what constitutes quality of life? how do architects determine whether something is positive, helpful or relevant for individuals and collectives? 

[Richard Rogers] It serves society and improves quality of life. It’s a physical manifestation of the society’s wishes to be civilised! …public domain being the obvious place which encapsulates this as buildings, alongside being art and science, are part of the public domain. 

[Prof. Mohsen Mostafavi] Architecture should fulfil multiple criteria. One of its purposes is to itself. A lot of people believe to some degree, in the autonomy of architecture as a discipline which means that part of the purpose of architecture is to construct new forms of knowledge that relate to the enhancement and advancement of the discipline itself. In a way, this is inseparable from the performance or performativity of architecture in terms of its responsibilities to engage with the society at large. There is, in a sense, a purposive dimension to architecture which really provides the symbolic ideas of habitation and- broadly- serving the humankind. 

It’s both this version of architecture that removes purpose, and one that really engages it fully in a purposive dimension. I think the simultaneity of these two conditions that’s key.

Q: To what extent is architecture art or science?

[Martha Thorne] Architecture is both an art and a science. I might even take it a step further and say that it’s a multifaceted gemstone as it is not just art, or just science… it is more than that. This is a discipline which draws on psychology, sociology, economics, politics and so many more areas. 

I am reminded of my time working at the Art Institute of Chicago. Architecture in that sense was a curatorial department in a major art museum. Within the museum itself, there is a hierarchy and with my colleagues we sometimes joked that the more useful art is- the more you can walk on it or sit in it- the less it was considered an art and the lower down the totem pole it was! 

Architecture on one hand is considered and art and is studied as such. It is strange in the sense that architecture is not truly the creation of an individual or collective for the purpose of research, contemplation or beauty but has the purpose of responding to functional needs. That takes it beyond the realms of art into other fields of human existence

[Richard Rogers] It has to be both! The architects nightmare is to have a blank piece of paper… we’re not writers or abstract artists… we’re a strange mixture of the two. It’s about using imagination in form, giving scale, giving order, giving rhythm… to space. 

Q: How does architecture relate to wider culture?

[Martha Thorne] Without a doubt, architecture is a part of culture- it has been called the mother of all arts! It is certainly part of how we see ourselves, and part of how we see the world. The unique aspect of architecture is that in its physical incarnation of buildings, it may last for hundreds and hundreds of years. 

Architecture is created by people! the most successful architecture goes beyond just being a shed or a box for living… the most important architecture as we look back over history are buildings or environments that have done so much more in a variety of ways- be that innovation in building and construction, or buildings that have pushed the discipline to get us to think about our environment in different ways, or just incredibly beautiful buildings that have lifted the human spirit in addition to housing our activities and our lives.

[Prof. Mohsen Mostafavi] Many of the practices of architecture are about the discipline’s entanglement in contemporary issues. The concept of contemporary is one that is fully implicated in contemporary tradition, practices and ideas. There is therefore a symbolic dimension to architecture which leads it to become a manifestation of those themes. Therefore, as a form of art practice… as a cultural production… it is obviously the manifestation of the spaces within which we see practices and lives taking place…. exemplars of contemporary life.

If architecture wasn’t implicated in that project, one would simply have to conclude that it was not keeping up with the times. Does every piece of architecture accept these responsibilities? well… that remains to be debated. For me however, that responsibility is not in question.

Whenever you collaborate on a project which involves multiple agencies and participants- like people playing jazz together- each player contributes to the tonality, sound and experience of the overall. In that sense, architecture as a cultural production has the responsibility to be of them time, but represent the time…. to be the vehicle through which transformations are made…. 

We have to be aware of the responsibilities we have for architecture as a framework for social action. In that way, there is a reciprocity… a connection.. between how you’re affected by a circumstance and how you affect the circumstance itself

Q: What do you feel makes great architecture?

[Martha Thorne] I’m immediately reminded of the words of Renzo Piano. It’s very interesting to debate and discuss architecture and buildings with him, he’s an extremely eloquent and thoughtful person. We’ve debated that buildings must be functional, manifestations of their time and not just seeking to replicate the past or manifest nostalgia… We’ve discussed the fact that buildings must be well constructed- one building must serve a multiplicity of functions and people in very defined ways. Renzo Piano always said, “…in addition to that, there’s a quality of magic….”

That’s what differentiates good architecture from just being any old building. Good architecture is intentioned. It somehow touches the people who use it and live in it… it somehow touches the human soul. I realise these phrases sound somewhat utopian, but truly good architecture has the ability to relate to individuals in a very profound way. That is a quality which cannot be deciphered into scientific terms or quantified- but is something we all know when we experience a quality building or a space that somehow goes beyond being functional and is- somehow- very special. 

To give you an example… when I entered the Ningbo Museum by the recent Pritzker winner Wang Shu, it’s a building which is truly huge. It is- in some ways- monumental. When you enter that building however, you know that it was made for the people that visit it and work there. You never feel insignificant… you feel that you’re cared for as you go in the building. It’s a magical quality that’s hard to put into words, but undoubtedly is there within the building.

[Richard Rogers] This is a very difficult question and the answer would have to consider all the various aspects of architecture including rhythm, function, aesthetics and more. At one level, this could be something very simple… even a wooden hut in your garden. 

[Prof. Mohsen Mostafavi] What’s important is that we acknowledge architecture as an artistic practice not as pure science. It is an artistic practice to the extent that it involves new forms of creativity and creative thinking. At the same time, we are deeply conditioned by our knowledge of science. 

Science is not purely seen in a rationalistic sense, but also in the context of natural sciences. We cannot then see the worlds of art and science as so inseparable but rather as fields of available knowledge and practices that are open to us. I think the relationship of art to practice is very important. 

If we look at the act of drawing as a way of imaging as opposed to assuming you have a scientific knowledge of a field that you are replicating. The artistic dimension of creativity is critical and it’s imperative that we do not separate the worlds of art and science in architecture.

Read on.

In 1994, partners Michaela Sachenbacher and Errolson Hugh birthed an independent design and consulting agency dubbed ACRONYM. With a focus on the unification of style and technology, the inventive duo began creating functional outerwear for Burton Snowboards in 1995 leading to an emergence of a new generation of technical apparel and conscious users. Over the years ACRONYM has worked with the likes of W.L. Gore and Associates, United Arrows, iDiom, Stone Island Shadow, advancing not only style but functionality. Launching its own in-house brand back in 2002, the Berlin-based creative agency currently operates in New York, Czech Republic and Tokyo. In our latest conversational piece, Canadian-bred Errolson Hugh sits down to discuss his position on material selection, inspiring childhood, exceptional grind, collaborative projects and much more.

My interest in materials… is like my interest in tools. What can be made with this? What can this do that other materials cannot? Materials with special properties are cool because they can open new possibilities in manufacturing, design, or even behavior. Additionally, they’re such an amazing cultural artifact. Where and how something gets made says so much about us as people, as a species, even. In a beautiful fabric, the simplest thing can be magic.

Technical performance… is what, exactly? I’m trying to figure this out all the time. Overbuild for unknowns? Optimize for specific end use? Where is the perfect balance? These are questions I’ll probably never answer to my complete satisfaction.

I look for… the asymmetric solution. Even when I try to do things the way everyone else does, it never really works out. So, over the years, I’ve come to accept that I’m not supposed to follow the path that’s marked on the map. This turns out to be great for coming up with new and effective things. But for leaving the studio early for home…? Not so much.

I grew up… in Canada. Born to incredibly open minded Chinese-Jamaican architect parents (thanks Mom and Dad). Moved to Germany after university with my then girlfriend, now Acronym co-founder/partner, who later moved to Brooklyn (‘sup Michaela). Now living in Berlin where my studio is, and where my fantastic team (Johanna, Ken-Tonio, Lily, Sarnai, Osman, Lotta) tolerate my frequent absences/visits and the trail of utter chaos that I leave in my wake.

Ideas for Acronym… outnumber executed products a thousand to one.

Technical performance and fashion… will keep moving towards each other. It’s mutual attraction. Some will hook up and make beautiful babies while others will turn into ugly mutant bastards. For me, technology is ultimately about quality. How well can something be made? What are the best materials and techniques available? As with much of technology; things that are unique today will be ubiquitous tomorrow.

Each Acronym piece… that ships, is a small battle that’s been won. The massive degrees of unlikeliness that are overcome every time an Acronym item gets made don’t show in the final product. This is a good thing. Now that we have our own online shop we’ve got the entire process in our hands. It’s kind of amazing. Support the independents!

I love going to the atelier… in the middle of the night when no one else is there. Owning your own company can make you schizophrenic. As your own boss, there are no creative limits. As your own boss, there is no safety net and it’s down to you and your team to get the thing done in the end. Being in the studio after hours helps me step back from the daily grind and reconnect with the thrill of making things that are truly bananas.

Projects outside of Acronym such as Stone Island Shadow Project allow… us to meet amazing people and make amazing things with them. At Stone Island there are people who have been building fabrics every single day for decades – people who have been fitting or cutting clothes for their entire lives. You better believe it that we pay attention when they take the time to work with us on a jacket! One of the best things about this industry is that there is always something new to learn. Or, better yet, something OLD to learn. At design school, I missed the announcement that said “Attention: It will be impossible for you to learn everything there is to learn about making clothes, even if you spend your entire life doing it.” I missed it because no one ever said it! They should have though, because it’s astounding. Simultaneously humbling and inspiring.

by: Francis Lam and Eddie Huang for Gilt Taste, June 5, 2012

Last week, the New York Times published a piece by me entitled “Cuisines Mastered as Acquired Tastes.” In it, I tried to explore how American-raised chefs learn to cook the food of immigrant cultures, and why they so often become more successful than the immigrants themselves.

I admit the article started in my head because I felt that immigrant chefs often get dealt a tough hand, but I tried to report out an even story. In part, that was because I really respect the American-raised chefs I wrote about, but also because I think many of the factors that make for this phenomenon aren’t anyone’s “fault”—they’re tied up in a bigger picture of how restaurant people, media, and our society deal and don’t deal with all the weird stuff that happens when you mix all kinds of races and cultures together like we do in America.

But then my friend Eddie Huang emailed me. The son of a Taiwanese immigrant restaurant family and chef / owner of Baohaus, he wrote, “Look, for a lot of the article I was like, ‘FRANCIS, HAMMER THEM!’ I really didn’t like the thing about the chefs being more ‘objective’ because they’re distanced from the food and it’s not personal. I disagree entirely. Food is PERSONAL. Business is personal! The Godfather was wrong!”

And so we talked, immigrant son to immigrant son, food-lover to food-lover, Chinaman to Chinaman. (It isn’t the preferred nomenclature, but it works for us.) We had an honest debate over whether it’s right for chefs to “take” someone else’s culture and sell it, what responsibilities writers and chefs have to make sure people understand where cuisines come from, and, in the end, what it means to be an immigrant in America. What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. It’s long and there is some tough talk in there, but we felt it was worth sharing. And please share your thoughts in the comments below, but you don’t want to see how Eddie deals with trolls. – Francis Lam

Eddie: So wassup, how’d you feel about the article? Did you say everything you wanted to?

Francis: Well, no… I mean, it’s a huge subject and I definitely didn’t do it justice. My hope was, really, just to get some of these questions out there, about who gets to represent cuisines in the public eye. I had to skip a lot. One thing I didn’t address at all, for instance, was the perspective of the costumer. One man I emailed with, Jim Leff, the founder of Chowhound, talked about how angry he gets when he goes to, say, a Chinese restaurant, specifically asking for some ill behind-the-red-curtain flavor, and they (intentionally, he believes) don’t give it to him as a white man.

Eddie: HAHA, yeah, mad people still believe in the “other menu.”

Francis: So there are lots of racial / cultural dynamics that go unspoken in restaurants. The story was inspired when I saw two things: One was a commenter on Eater saying that Andy Ricker opening up Pok Pok in NYC was an “automatic upgrade” to Thai food in the city. The other was a bunch of Yelp reviews of neighborhood Thai places that were all, “this sucks, this isn’t authentic.” And so I got to thinking—I love what Andy does, I have total respect for him, but it also seems that people ignore that his reality and the reality of the average Thai immigrant restaurant owner are very different.

Eddie: But look, you threw the gwai lo mad softballs in the article. As a Chinaman… what do you think, G?

Francis: Honestly, I don’t know how to think about it as a Chinaman. I mean, I started on this because I’m the son of immigrants, because I love food and respect the people who work in it. Even if the food isn’t great, I don’t get down with dumping on the people. You know who’s easy to dump on? Immigrants who don’t really speak your language, who don’t conform to your idea of “authentic.” But then, as a writer who’s interested in chefs at all levels and what they do, I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff to be said about people like Alex Stupak from Empellon, who’s going from modern fine dining to trying to learn about traditional Mexican food, something he didn’t grow up with.

Eddie: Well, the crux of the issue for me is this… Immigrants, my parents and myself included, are exposed to years of ridicule. I was made fun of for my stinky lunch upwards of 10 years. Immigrants of our parents’ generation have largely given up any hope that Americans will like their food.

Francis: Word.

Eddie: Then, to have these CIA grads come through, repackage the food, and sell it back to me at a premium is just ludicrous. You made fun of us until we were embarrassed about our food and changed our menus to appease your HORRIBLE taste in shrimp with lobster sauce, now your kid grows up and wants to tell ME what Chinese food is because Bear Stearns sent him to Shanghai for six months? Cue Jim Mora: “We talkin’ bout expats?!?!” F*** OUTTA HERE!

“The Man” may not outright turn countries into colonies anymore, but it’s only because it’s easier to commodify the goods. It relegates foreign people and countries to the role of factories whose sole purpose is to create culture that gets bought and amplified by someone else and they get left hanging. For people like me who have watched Americans cycle through Kung-Fu, The Art of War, Feng Shui, and Kung Pao Chicken (which done right is still a classic) like culture fit for a scenester’s email blasts… you’ll have to excuse my paranoia when an American chef tries to express sincerity about understanding our culture and cuisine. These cultural artifacts may be the butt of ironic jokes today, but they meant something to us.

Read on.

By: Scott Raab
Esquire, Published in the June/July 2012 issue 

SCOTT RAAB: Your name came up once in an interview with Robert Downey Jr. and a hush descended upon him.

BILL MURRAY: Well, people get pretty quiet when they hear his name, too.

SR: Downey told me: “We wanted Bill to consider a role in Iron Man, but nobody could find him.” Show people are awestruck by your inaccessibility.

BM: I’m not trying to be coy. It’s just practical for me. When the phone started ringing too many times, I had to take it back to what I can handle. I take my chances on a job or a person as opposed to a situation. I don’t like to have a situation placed over my head.

SR: You want control?

BM: To the degree that I can get the things that want to control me out of the way, then there’s less stuff in my field of vision. Then I can work.

SR: A lot of folks worry that if they aren’t available or don’t say yes, they’ll stop getting asked.

BM: If you keep saying yes, they’ll stop asking you, too. That’s a much more likely event. I think we’re all sort of imprisoned by — or at least bound to — the choices we make, and I think everyone in the acting business wants to make the right choices. You want to say no at the right time and you want to say yes more sparingly. I came out of the old Second City in Chicago. Chicago actors are more hard-nosed. They’re tough on themselves and their fellow actors. They’re self-demanding. Saying no was very important. Integrity is probably too grand a word, but if you’re not the voice of Mr. Kool-Aid, then you’re still free. You’re not roped in.

SR: Your Second City teacher/mentor Del Close is a guy I’ve never read enough about. What was it that made him so influential?

BM: Well, he was a guy who had great knowledge of the craft of improvisation. And he lived life in a very rich manner, to excess sometimes. He had a whole lot of brain stuck inside of his skull. Beyond being gifted, he really engaged in life. He earned a lot. He made more of himself than he was given. Came out of Manhattan, Kansas, and ended up hanging out with the Beats. He was incredibly gracious to your talent and always tried to further it. He got people to perform beyond their expectations. He really believed that anyone could do it if they were present and showed respect. There was a whole lot of respect.

SR: Sounds like a great teacher.

BM: He taught lots and lots of people very effectively. He taught people to commit. Like: “Don’t walk out there with one hand in your pocket unless there’s somethin’ in there you’re going to bring out.” You gotta commit. You’ve gotta go out there and improvise and you’ve gotta be completely unafraid to die. You’ve got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time. You’re goin’ out there with just a whisper of an idea. The fear will make you clench up. That’s the fear of dying. When you start and the first few lines don’t grab and people are going like, “What’s this? I’m not laughing and I’m not interested,” then you just put your arms out like this and open way up and that allows your stuff to go out. Otherwise it’s just stuck inside you.

[The nanny comes downstairs and asks where Murray wants to go for dinner with his sons and Raab.]

BM: I haven’t made any plan yet. But we’ll need to be more dressed up than we are now. You can get away with it ‘cause you’re a girl, but you’re not going to get away with that [points to his son]. And I’m not going to get away with this. He’s going to get away with that [points to Raab]. Lincoln [Murray’s ten-year-old], you’re going to have to get dressed nicely. And you need a shower. That’s an order.

LINCOLN: Yes, sir.

SR: Did you ever want to be a stand-up?

BM: No. I saw them work, and they seemed so unhappy. If an audience didn’t like them, they’d get so miserable about it. It looked too miserable. I did it once and it was fun. But I only had to do it once to realize I could do it, but I don’t want to do it. I’ve done it a little bit lately — I’ll emcee a concert, something like that.

SR: It’s no surprise you can do it. You’re Bill Murray.

BM: But you still have to be funny. If you’re not funny, then it’s “Guess who’s not funny?”

SR: Bill Murray.

BM: ”Hey, I’ll tell you who’s not funny. That guy.” I don’t wanna die at this point.

SR: Is your body of work a source of gratification?

BM: Am I gratified that I got it done? Is it gratifying to have this library, this stack of things that I’ve worked on? Well, yeah. I like ‘em all. Some of them are not as successful as others, but I like ‘em all. They’re like your kids

SR: You must like some more than others.

BM: The ones I like most are the ones where I connected with great people. The gratification part is: I worked with that son of a bitch. I worked with her. If you get that thing done, you’re professional friends for life. There are people who drove me crazy, but they got the job done. And when I see that person again, I nod my head. Respect.

SR: Respect. I think that’s also a Chicago thing: Friendship is no substitute for gettin’ the job done.

BM: When I work, my first relationship with people is professional. There are people who want to be your friend right away. I say, “We’re not gonna be friends until we get this done. If we don’t get this done, we’re never going to be friends, because if we don’t get the job done, then the one thing we did together that we had to do together we failed.” People confuse friendship and relaxation. It’s incredibly important to be relaxed — you don’t have a chance if you’re not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different. I read a great essay: Thoreau on friendship. I was staying over at my friend’s house and there it was on the bedside table, and I’m reading it and I’m thinking it’s an essay, so it’s gonna be like four pages. Well, it goes on and on and on and on — Thoreau was a guy who lived alone, so he just had to get it all out, you know? He just keeps saying, “You have to love what is best in that other person and only what’s best in that other person. That’s what you have to love” —

LINCOLN [from the top of the stairs]: Dad!

BM: What is it?

LINCOLN: The Cubs are beating the Cardinals 9-0.

BM: Nice.

SR: I hope it’s going to be a good season.

BM: They got off to a shaky start. And the columnists went, “Here we go again.” They write with vitriol. Game One, the papers were like the last days of Watergate. I think they’re trying to make Theo [Epstein, Chicago Cubs president] march to their tune. Isn’t gonna happen. [Lincoln comes downstairs.]

SR: Lookin’ good.

BM: Aw, man, doesn’t he look good? Except for the bruises on your leg. What are you, in some sort of a weird relationship? Did you wash your hair?

SR: I can smell it. A little Herbal Essence.

LINCOLN: Hey, Dad. Bryan LaHair [Chicago Cubs first baseman]hit a grand slam.

BM: You mean today against the Cardinals? He’s got a great swing. He was out with a bad back, but he’s got a great swing.

SR: How many kids do you have?

BM: Six. All sons.

SR: That’s a lot of emergency-room visits.

BM: There’s only a couple times when fame is ever helpful. Sometimes you can get into a restaurant where the kitchen is just closing. Sometimes you can avoid a traffic violation. But the only time it really matters is in the emergency room with your kids. That’s when you want to be noticed, because it’s very easy to get forgotten in an ER. It’s the only time when I would ever say, “Thank God. Thank God.” There’s no other time.

SR: Any fathering tips?

BM: If you bite on everything they throw at you, they will grind you down. You have to ignore a certain amount of stuff. The thing I keep saying to them lately is: “I have to love you, and I have the right to ignore you.” When my kids ask what I want for my birthday or Christmas or whatever, I use the same answer my father did: “Peace and quiet.” That was never a satisfactory answer to me as a kid — I wanted an answer like “A pipe.” But now I see the wisdom of it: All I want is you at your best — you making this an easier home to live in, you thinking of others.

SR: Are you a tough laugh with your kids?

BM: For many years I was a tough laugh, but lately I’ve been giving it up. I appreciate when they’re trying to be funny, you know? I think they feel like they have to be funny, that I’ve got some standard of humor that they have to come to. But funny is funny, and there’s no denying funny.

SR: Did you and Bruce Willis get along on the set of Moonrise Kingdom?

BM: I got along great with Bruce Willis. He’s different, though. He’s rolled as a movie star for a long time, so it’s a little different for him coming into Wes Anderson’s world, where no one gets movie-star treatment. Life really does change when you go on one of Wes’s films — you gotta sit back and relax. But Bruce absolutely delivered. He was really game. It was like, Let’s play. Sometimes you get people that don’t want to play — they just want to perform, to act. He’s a movie star, I’ve been a movie star — we don’t have to take this so seriously. So we’d play. We’d goof up a take just for the fuck of it. He delivers one of the biggest laughs of any movie I’ve ever been in. And it really took a movie star to do it. The casting of Bruce was perfect. This movie is really funny. This movie’s gonna be big. Big.

SR: Had you met Willis before?

BM: I met him at this Andy Garcia movie I did, The Lost City. Willis is there and he’d had a couple drinks. We’ve all had a few drinks. And he says, “I just want you to know …” I’m like, “Oh, fuck.” He says, “I used to work as a page at NBC, and my job was to refill the M&M bowls and the peanut bowls in the actors’ dressing room. And only you and Gilda ever treated me like a human being. You were nice to me.” And I thought, Whew, that’s good. I felt like, Shit, I did somethin’ right, you know?

SR: The last time we talked about Wes Anderson was after what sounded like a horrible experience in Italy for The Life Aquatic. You must have a great affinity for him.

BM: Wes is still a young man, but he was just a kid when I met him on Rushmore. And he’s grown as a person, as a man, as a movie director. His stuff just keeps getting better and better. And he’s managed to make the making of movies a real living experience. For Moonrise Kingdom, he rented a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and we lived in it. The editing rooms were in the mansion. And we had a great cook. You could be relaxed in your own skin, but it also meant that you could work endless, ungodly art-movie hours because there was gonna be a meal prepared for you when you’re done.

SR: A savvy move on his part.

BM: It wasn’t lost on me.

SR: It’s amazing what goes into making a movie.

BM: But nobody cares. It’s like talking about the difficulties of fame. Nobody gives a shit. No one could care less. But it’s an amazing triumph even to make a bad movie. Even a crap film is really an extraordinary achievement. You’re taking a two-dimensional object and making it three-dimensional. The number of people. The number of days. The number of cuts.

SR: How was it working with Mickey Rourke on Passion Play?

BM: It’s complicated to talk about Mickey Rourke. He had all these things he had to do to get himself into working. He had all kinds of props. However, when it came down to actually doing a scene with him, it was just like with Bruce: Let’s just do this. Okay, that was good. Let’s do another one. The thing about him is the foibles have been personal, not professional. Like he tried to be a boxer and got his face busted up. He was a beautiful actor.

SR: Gorgeous.

BM: He was a heartthrob. And now, like myself, he’s had a second life as an actor. He’s never embarrassed himself as an actor. All right, I’m going to go call a restaurant. I gotta call some place and get lucky.

SR: Just mention “Scott Raab.” They love me in Charleston.

BM: I’ll try.

Saturday morning, in the TV room. Raab has a plane to catch in a little bit.

BM: More coffee, sir?

SR: That would be great.

BM: Wanna go get some breakfast, Lincoln?

LINCOLN: Dad, look what happens in this one.

SR: This is a reality show, Swamp People?

BM: Gator hunters, right? They do a lot of huffin’ and puffin’ in it. Is this an Animal Planet show, Linky?

LINCOLN: History.

BM: Hist’ry. [To Raab] Want something to eat?

SR: You know what I had this morning? One of your tangelos. Spectacular. Those are from your place in California?

BM: Those are mine.

SR: You have them sent?

BM: Yeah. We have avocados, too. We don’t actually grow the avocados, but they’re next door. We all share out there. [Goes into the kitchen to get a couple of avocados.] Feel those. Those are all ready to go. People don’t know: You put a ripe avocado in the refrigerator and they stop where they are.

SR: These are nice.

BM: Carry some with you. Here’s a bag. Take a few. You got to have enough to make guacamole.

SR: Can I swipe a couple tangelos? That tangelo was extraordinary. It freshened me right up. It was waiting for me right at the stair post.

BM: Your hand will lead you to fruit.

SR: How do the tangelos grow?

BM: On a tree.

SR: What are they in relationship to oranges and tangerines?

BM: Part tangerine and part orange.

SR: They peel easy.

BM: And it makes the most amazing juice ever — I always thought Florida orange juice was the best. Tangelo juice is better than Florida orange juice.

SR: It’s 10:10.

BM: Yeah, we should go. You got enough of those avocados? You sure?

In the car. Murray’s driving Raab to the airport.

SR: Are you off for a while or do you have more work coming up?

BM: I’ve been sent a few things I didn’t really care about. But there’s one thing I’ve gotten phone calls about. The script hasn’t come yet. I said: “Don’t FedEx it. Send it regular mail. Don’t waste your money.” But now I’m really wanting it, and it’s not here.

Last summer was great. I had an ideal situation. The job was in Newport, so I was able to get up to Martha’s Vineyard, bring a couple of my boys up there. And then I was able to go to England and do a real job over there, this movie about Franklin Roosevelt, Hyde Park on the Hudson. [Murray plays FDR.] That was the first time I’ve actually had a full-on movie role in several years. I guess I did Get Low. But that was not a long job. And then I had Zombieland right on top of it. Zombieland came out of nowhere. It was like putting on an old coat and finding a couple hundred dollars in it.

SR: That was a wonderful movie.

BM: That was a real delight, that. It’s a real movie movie. And it’s funny. I love that Emma [Stone]. Just a doll. And Woody [Harrelson] is fantastic to be with. He has great ambition. He’s always pushing himself. Woody called me up and said, “Do you want to try this thing?” I’d just left Georgia, and I had really had enough of Georgia. It had been really cold, shooting that Get Low. Physical cold is really tiring. Of course, I’m with Duvall, who’s, like, seventy-nine or something and he’s just a horse. He didn’t particularly like the cold either, but he’s a tough bird, that boy.

SR: Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, those guys —

BM: They keep going. When you’re good at it, you can keep going.

SR: Is this hood hooked down? Because I keep looking at the hood and it’s shaking.

BM: I’ve had it looked at, but it does shake on that side. You’ve got me nervous again. I’m going to go back and tell them all over again. I like this car. I’d hate to give it up. I’ve been thinking about cars because my boys are always pushing cars in my face.

SR: You seem to have close relationships with your sons.

BM: As much as the divorce was very hard, the fallout of it has been really great. I ended up much closer to my guys than I ever would have been.

SR: I’m not inclined to put a sunny face on everything, but I think that tough times really do wind up making people closer.

BM: I never went much for “It’s an ill wind that blows no good” kind of thing.

SR: ”Everything happens for a reason.”

BM: That drives me nuts. I want to give them five on rye when I hear that. “Everything happens for a reason.”

SR: Five on rye?

BM: Five on rye.

SR: A knuckle sandwich.

BM: ”Everything happens for a reason” is a kind of self-hypnosis.

SR: ”It’s God’s plan.”

BM: Well, it’s not God’s ideal. It’s part of the plan, but if no one acts in the moment of possibility, then it devolves into “Well, then I got hit by a car. Because I was standing in the middle of the road. Well, everything happens for a reason.” Someone should make a sketch about it. It’s probably a good Saturday Night Live sketch.

SR: It makes me think of the Coen brothers’ movie A Serious Man. The harder you try to look for the plan, the more inexplicable things become.

BM: I really do enjoy the Coen brothers’ stuff. You know, I worked with Frances McDormand [frequent actress in the Coen brothers’ movies and wife of Joel Coen] in Moonrise Kingdom. Talk about a no-bullshit actress. No frills. She’s just so effortless.

SR: It’s hard work to make something appear effortless.

BM: It’s easier to watch because you don’t get worried. There’s the Dreamlifter [Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter]. Look at that.

SR: I’m amazed that can fly.

BM: It’s the biggest plane in the world. Look at that fucker. [Pulling up to the terminal.] Here’s my boys over here — the Delta boys.

SR: No NetJets?

BM: I really only need to use it when I’m traveling with the boys. For a two-stopper it saves you, like, eight hours and eight plane tickets. What do you think eight plane tickets would cost?

SR: And that’s only the dollars and cents of it. All the stress …

BM [to curbside baggage handler]: How you doin’?

BAGGAGE HANDLER: Heeeeey!