Owen Wilson’s new film Bliss made him wonder about life in a simulation

Unlike the people profiled in the new documentary A Glitch in the Matrix, actor Owen Wilson does not believe he lives in a simulated reality. Probably. But his character Greg in Amazon Studios’ Bliss – Wilson’s first film project since 2017 – is a different story. Greg realizes at the beginning of the film that the world around him is not real. The revelation sends him on an adventure with a woman played by Salma Hayek, leading him to the situation and leading him on an increasingly broken and tortuous adventure.

It was an unusual challenge for Wilson, who is more accustomed to interpreting a relative character. His extensive work with his old roommate Wes Anderson has placed him in a number of films where wild and extraordinary events take place around him – Bottle rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, en The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissouamong others – but he is usually the most grounded character in the mix. He often gave a little certainty to the cool guy and pampered his roles, whether he was playing an unintentional time traveler in Midnight in Paris or outspoken racer Lightning McQueen in Pixar’s Cars movies.

But writer-director Mike Cahill (Another earth, I Origin) moves Wilson’s limits with Bliss, who portrays him as a disconnected and broken character, trying to get a collapse into reality. Veelhoek recently contacted Owen Wilson via Zoom to talk about simulation theory and to find the consistency in a character living in unfounded realities.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Do you have any good tips to prove that you are not living in a simulation?

Owen Wilson: I do not! I wonder what would be a good tip? It’s hard to prove. I never even heard the idea that we live in a simulation, until a few years ago. The Matrix do it of course. But the idea that we would be in a simulation first landed on my radar, I think, Elon Musk said something about it. And then there was something in the New York Times about it.

Since the idea was presented to me, I could find a lot of evidence that we have a simulation, especially in the past year. Yes, you can make a very good case. Who knows, maybe we are? But every day we have choices we make and things we decide to believe in. Your whole life can change in these small moments.

Have you and Mike talked about this before, whether about people who believe in simulation theory, or movies like in the past The Matrix or Vanilla Sky what have they recorded before?

We did talk about it. Mike has a background in physics and science that I do not have. Sometimes I could barely keep up with some of his ideas while talking about Plato’s Cave. But what I could keep up with was the feeling, the emotion. The idea of ​​someone like this character dealing with drug abuse and a mental health crisis. No one would choose it for themselves, but the reality he experiences is very different from what most people around him experience.

You can play him in many different mental states and reality states. What was the backbone of the character for you? What kept him steady?

For me, that was the challenge of the movie! Just the uncertainty I had about how to play it. Because so many of the situations were unbelievable or unusual, I could not ground it with any reality from my own life. That’s why I trust the director and the other actors to tell me that I am credible.

The film leaves some ambiguity about some of the fundamental truths of the story. Did Mike ever talk about a specific truth he wanted you to play? Or was it more about the truth for Greg in a given scene?

It was sometimes hard to pull it off Mike because he is so reluctant to say anything critical. I think the way he approaches things is more: ‘Oh! The way you play it is not as I might have imagined it to be, but now that it’s here, it has its own validity. I think this kind of mind was probably the opportunity to create this story and deal with these kinds of ideas. He has a real humility in his opinions.

How do you prepare to play a character that is this variable and in a great deal of flood?

I just practice with Mike. I’m trying to think of something that would be interesting to say about the way we prepared for it. It was actually just me and Salma talking. I find that acting is rather an attempt to find the parts of your own personality or your own life where you can create links with the story and the characters, identify it and then rely on those to create an emotional truth .

Where could you identify with this character?

I think my relationship with time has become more and more surreal as I get older. You can start looking back on your life and think, ‘It looks like another lifetime ago, when I did it, or when I lived there.’ The uncertainty, sometimes that I can deal with now, may sound funny to say ‘What is real?’ But the past can have a dreamlike quality. Sometimes I feel it in life, in good and bad ways.

Fundamentally, it’s a movie about a man who changed all his ways of thinking. Are there any projects you have worked on that identify you as thought-provoking or world-changing in this way? Roles that helped change your thinking?

Yes, this movie did, of course, just for the reasons we talked about – there is so much uncertainty and not quite knowing what is real, the Bliss world or this ugly world we live in. Where should he stay? This, and Midnight in Paris, which had my character in a Paris in his mind that felt more real than the life in which he finds himself. Sometimes when I see a great movie or TV show or a great book, I can feel that character – you know, Tony Soprano, he looks to me as real as people I’ve known in my real life, you know? He exists. This is what makes the show so gripping and so influential. Fiction can sometimes be a hall of mirrors.

What about individual people with whom you have collaborated and who have given you new ways of thinking? Anyone particularly notable?

Well, there are people who live their lives in a way that you may admire or find interesting. I remember working with Jeff Goldblum. He’s currently doing a show on National Geographic. He is just this very positive person. Even ‘positive’ is not a strong enough word. You see it as a child at school: you are sometimes associated with shared dislikes. Like: “I do not like the cafeteria food! Yes, neither do I! And I do not like homework! “And then sometimes you keep it up as an adult. But sometimes you meet people who are not interested in bonding because of shared dislikes. They only want to make contact about things they are excited about and not give any negative things. I remember it from Jeff, even though we did not work together that much – I just appreciate how he was.

And then my good friend Woody Harrelson. I think he lives his life and does not worry too much about what people think. And I think it’s a liberating idea for a lot of people not to worry so much about judging others.

Bliss launches on Amazon Prime Video on February 5th.