The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a 2004 American comedy-drama film directed, co-written, and co-produced by Wes Anderson. It is Anderson's fourth feature-length film and was released in the United States on December 25, 2004. It was written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach and was filmed in and around Naples, Ponza, and the Italian Riviera. The film stars Bill Murray as the eponymous Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer who sets out to exact revenge on the "jaguar shark" that ate his partner Esteban. Zissou is both a parody of and homage to French
Robert Yeoman films including Gus Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy" — for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography — Noah Baumbach's "The Squid and the Whale", and Roman Coppola's "CQ". He has worked on every live action film by Wes Anderson, including "Bottle Rocket" (1996), "Rushmore" (1998), and "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001) as cinematographer, as well as "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), "The Darjeeling Limited" (2007), "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012) and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014), credited as director of photography. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for his work on "The Grand Budapest