THE LIFE AQUATIC

ON THE SET

Every director has his muse: D. W. Griffith had Lillian Gish, Josef von Sternberg had Marlene Dietrich, and Wes Anderson has, well, Bill Murray. In this fall's The Life Aquatic, the latest comedy from the director of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, Murray plays Steve Zissou, a down-on-his-luck oceanographer searching for an extremely rare, and possibly nonexistent, shark. Joining him are Owen Wilson as an admiring pilot who may be his son, Cate ' Blanchett as a reporter covering the hunt, Anjelica Huston as his wife, and assorted friends, enemies, and colleagues. "We've been shooting all over Italy," Anderson says, "and on a military base called Torre Astura, where filming is sometimes interrupted by practice maneuvers of cannons firing into the sea." Luckily, the cast of Anderson veterans have Murray to amuse them while they wait.

LAUREN TABACH-BANK