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GROSS: Wes Anderson, welcome back to FRESH AIR. Now, I've read that the first germ of the idea for "Moonrise Kingdom" was in the recording of Benjamin Britten's "Noye's Fludde," which translates to "Noah's Flood." What's the connection between this music and the concept of "Moonrise Kingdom"?

WES ANDERSON: Well, I don't know Benjamin Britten's work that well, but I have always had a particular affection for it, because this play, "Noye's Fludde," or however you say it, he wrote to be performed by mostly amateur church groups, with a couple of professionals thrown into the mix. And it's meant to be performed in churches, rather than auditoriums or opera houses or anything else. So anyway, I was in a production of it, along with my older brother, when I was 10 or 11 years old.

So many of the - I've been sort of humming these, you know, these hymns and things from that play/opera all my life, and I had a thought that I wanted to incorporate somehow into this, which I didn't know how I was going to do for quite a long time. But somewhere early on I sort of thought the movie should be set to Britten, and we use not only the "Noah's Flood" pieces, but also we kind of tapped into his - into the whole body of work.

Wes Anderson, Creating A Singular 'Kingdom', NPR's Fresh Air

Update 6 June 2012 11:45 a.m. via Twitter:

@sinden And those scenes, plus many others, were filmed at Trinity Church, Newport! Wes and the whole crew were fantastic to work with.

— Anne Marie (@girlierev) June 6, 2012

@sinden Yep! Filmed for 2 weeks in June 2011. Built the ark around our center aisle pulpit. Additional scenes in parish house basement. Fun!

— Anne Marie (@girlierev) June 6, 2012

Labels: Britten, film, Wes Anderson