One of my great Hollywood what-ifs is the career of Owen Wilson. He made his film debut co-writing and starring in Wes Anderson’s first movie, Bottle Rocket, and also co-wrote Anderson’s acclaimed follow-ups, Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums (in my mind, the trio is Anderson’s best).
Then, he never wrote again — at least nothing that has been produced. But if he had kept going as a screenwriter, Wilson could have been one of the great writers of Hollywood history.
“The way he thinks about character is so smart, and he is sort of oblique in the way he comes at problems and ideas,” Stick creator Jason Keller told me about Wilson this week on Rushfield Lunch. “I, too, like you, love those early Wes movies, and he had a lot to do with those early movies. So I wanted him to be part of the process very early on, and I invited him to join.”
Wilson isn’t a credited writer on the Apple TV comedy series Stick, where he stars as Pryce Cahill, a washed-up former pro golfer given a chance at redemption. But Keller told me he constantly tapped Wilson’s “writer’s brain” to shape the star’s character. “He just infused every scene he was in with himself and that unique quality.”
Keller’s writing career dates back to the ’90s, and he was a co-writer on the best picture nominee Ford v. Ferrari. As he told me this week, he didn’t have Wilson in mind when he was writing Stick, but the pair shared a mutual friend and met to discuss the project. Wilson couldn’t do it, though, leaving Keller frozen.
“I couldn’t work on the show,” he told me. “I could not write a word of dialogue and not have Owen’s voice ringing in my head.”
Their friendship kept up over text until Hollywood brought them back together.
“I was moving forward, and then one day I got the call from him, and he said, ‘You know, two of my projects got postponed, and I’ve got a window here. What’s going on with that TV show?’ We started working together sort of daily from that moment on.”
Watch my conversation with Keller above, and check out Stick on Apple TV. I know there are a lot of Emmy contenders out there right now, but this one is worth making time for.
