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It's funny about Owen Wilson


More ad-lib comic than thespian, the Frat Pack's golden boy says he just got `lucky.' (Don't believe it.)

July 09, 2006|Rachel Abramowitz | Times Staff Writer


"If I got one at this point, I'm very susceptible to getting super into it," he drawls over turkey burgers in a joint in Venice. "I'll look at these ads for these war games they have, and they look so cool." He elongates the word for effect. "I feel I could really lose myself."

It's hard to reconcile the various faces of Owen Wilson: the wildly competitive devotee of ping-pong, foosball, bocce and a game called head soccer (soccer played on a tennis court), the girl-chasing figure labeled "The Butterscotch Stallion" in the tabloids, with the guy who cries at "The End of the Affair" and reads the Graham Greene novel afterward, who can quote chunks of dialogue from films such as Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven." With director Wes Anderson, Wilson co-wrote two of the most amusing but poignant distillations of precocity of the last dozen years: "Rushmore," with Bill Murray, and "The Royal Tenenbaums," which was nominated for an Oscar.


At first, it appeared as if the latter incarnation came to lunch as Wilson ambled up in a rumpled T-shirt, loose pants and no wallet. His freakishly blue eyes peer out from under a mop of longish blond surfer hair, and the famed, twice-broken beak looks more Roman in profile than the mashed-up boxer's schnoz that defines his face from the head-on perspective. And then there's the grin, which alternates from shy, polite Texan to \o7louche \f7ladies' man. Still, while some major movie stars seem shellacked in narcissism, Wilson emits a wry curiosity. He actually asks questions and listens for the answers.


The latest film is a comic paean to the underachiever. Wilson's Dupree is a wide-eyed naif who at 35, 36, 37 can't manage to get a life, a career, a girl, a sense of direction, some hard elbows useful for clawing one's way through the grown-up world. In the film, Dupree, beanbag chair in tow, moves in with his newly married best friend, the uptight Carl (played by Matt Dillon), and his wife (Kate Hudson), and wreaks havoc, ultimately imparting some addled life lessons. Perhaps the most important involves being true to oneself -- a theme that echoes from both "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums" -- although here the message is delivered with goofy glee rather than drenched in loss.


"He's got an amazing ability to improv, because he has such a mind for storytelling," says Anthony Russo, one of the forces on the cult TV show "Arrested Development," who directed the film with his brother, Joe. "Owen keeps his improv right on target. Normally you can use about 10% of what somebody does, but with Owen, you can use 90%."


"Owen is great because you get all the imaginative, addictive stuff that the great comics bring, but without the angst," says director Shawn Levy, who just employed Wilson as a 3-inch-tall cowboy in the upcoming holiday release "Night at the Museum." "Maybe there's angst, but if so, he's disguised it well. I had all the pleasure and none of the pain. For a comic, that's unique."



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