Willem Dafoe hallucination. The cameo was suggested by Dafoe, comparing it to the ghost of Hamlet's father visiting his son to ask him to avenge his death. Dafoe was next seen in the comedy-drama "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), his first of three films with director Wes Anderson. He played the "hilariously doltish" German first mate of a research vessel owned by the eponymous lead character, who is played by Bill Murray. Dafoe then had a small role as a tabloid magazine editor in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004), a biographical film about Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Also in
Henry Selick the Giant Peach", his live-action/stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic children's book. The innovative film received widespread critical acclaim ("Time" Magazine's Richard Schickel said it was even better than the book), and it won the top prize for an animated feature at the Annecy Film Festival in 1997, despite low box-office receipts. Selick's third feature was "Monkeybone", a live action/stop-motion adaptation of an underground comic. The film was a flop both commercially and critically. After developing stop-motion animation on Wes Anderson's feature "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", Selick joined the Portland, Oregon-based animation studio LAIKA in mid-2004 as supervising