Schwartzman knows no 'limits'

Media Credit: FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES BAND OF BROTHERS - Jason Schwartzman, star of Wes Anderson's "The Darjeeling Limited," spent two years working on the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola. The end result is a heartfelt tale of brothers coping with loss and simultaneously finding themselves. Amara Karan co-stars as Schwartzman's love interest aboard the eponymous train.

Jason Schwartzman had no idea how he was going to play his character in Wes Anderson's newest film, "The Darjeeling Limited." He was so unsure, in fact, that he flew to India, where Anderson was in the process of preproduction, nearly two months before the shoot was to take place.

"I've never felt more unsure about how to do a performance ... in my life," Schwartzman said in an interview at the Park Hyatt hotel in Georgetown. "[Anderson] said, 'But we've been writing this character for two years.'"

It's true. Completing the script for "Darjeeling Limited" was a long and complex endeavor. It began when Anderson pitched the story to Schwartzman. The director said he wanted to write a story about three brothers and that he wanted Schwartzman and Roman Coppola to be a part of the writing process. They would gather inspiration for the script's sequences from their own previous experiences.

"[Anderson, Coppola and I] were shooting to write something very much - I hate the word 'raw' - but that type of word," Schwartzman said. "Something that was not invented or built. Something that was only culled from our experiences - kind of like the character in the movie I play, who writes short stories based on things that have happened to him."

What came from their creative minds was a tale of lost brotherly love. Schwartzman's character, along with those characters portrayed by Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody, copes with the recent death of his father. Wilson's character decides that the best thing for the three estranged brothers is a spiritual journey through India. Needless to say, the change of atmosphere doesn't exactly solve their problems.

Continued...

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