Wes Anderson

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Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas) is an American writer, producer, and director of films and commercials. He attended St. John's School, a private school in Houston, later used as a filming location for his second film, Rushmore. Anderson then studied philosophy at the University of Texas, where he met future collaborator Owen Wilson.

1 Films
2 Trademarks
3 Trivia
4 Personnel
5 Recent work
6 Acclaim and criticism
7 Filmography
8 External links

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Films

Anderson cites his influences as including French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Louis Malle, with whom his films share vivid characterization and a tragicomic sensibility: Anderson's works are considered comedies, though many critics find that they appeal to a particular, acquired sense of humor.

Common among all of Anderson's films is the absence of major villains: his characters may be misguided and might cause others pain, but are always without malice. The lack of traditional antagonists prompts Anderson's characters to interact with each other in a more intimate fashion, locating their problems within themselves and their beloved friends or family rather than in enemies to be defeated.

Anderson's more recent films, notably The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), have a pageant-like feel. The camera remains stationary in many instances in order to bring greater focus upon the settings, which are often vibrantly-colored and detailed. Anderson increasingly incorporates elements of theater into his films, such as the plays and scene cues in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums or the elaborate sets of The Life Aquatic. Anderson's pictures are complemented by the work of composer (and Devo singer) Mark Mothersbaugh, who wrote instrumental tracks for Bottle Rocket (1995), Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic. Actor and musician Seu Jorge also contributed to the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with live acoustic renditions of David Bowie songs in Portuguese.

Anderson's characters are usually well-to do people with lots of time on their hands, Bottle Rocket features well to do middle class young men who try to be robbers, Rushmore concerns a prep school kid, The Royal Tennenbaums deal with a wealthy family of geniuses, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou features an oceanographer. They all strive to be something they aren't. Families are usually portayed with a father that won't grow up, selfish and eccentric (Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic). In Rushmore, Max's father is a mere barber and doesn't try to set his son straight despite his bad grades and imprisonment. Mothers are also often dead. Rushmore: Max's mother is dead from cancer. The Royal Tenenbaums: Eli lives with his aunt, Ari and Uzi's mother was killed in a plane crash, Henry Sherman's wife died of cancer. The Life Aquatic: Ned's mother died from cancer. In part because Anderson's movies focus on interpersonal struggles and lack traditional antagonists, they tend to feature the themes of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. No one—not even a washout like Herman Blume or Steve Zissou (Bill Murray in Rushmore and The Life Aquatic respectively) nor a deceitful schmuck like Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums)—is beyond redemption. Anderson's characters are separated by a variety of barriers, but the barriers are gradually overcome as individuals recognize the flaws and true desires in themselves and others. Typically, an Anderson film ends with several different narrative threads being resolved, relationships being restored, and things both trivial and significant being brought back to their rightful places.

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Trademarks

Each Anderson film involves some characters in uniforms or jumpsuits, such as Ben Stiller's character Chas and his two sons in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Each film ends in slow-motion.

His films make frequent use of static shots filmed with fisheye lenses, which creates a Cinerama-like aesthetic on the big screen.

Anderson usually ends his films with all or most of his characters in a scene or shot.

Each film features an underwater shot, and the number of characters underwater increases with each film. For example, in Bottle Rocket, Luke Wilson's character swims in a motel pool and is shown swimming alone through the water. In his second film, Rushmore, Bill Murray and an extra are shown in a swimming pool. In his third film, The Royal Tenenbaums, Gene Hackman and the two sons of Ben Stiller's character are shown underwater in a swimming pool. In his fourth film, The Life Aquatic, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and two Zissou crew members are shown underwater, investigating a rogue tracking signal.

Anderson also has a fondness for the font "Futura" [1], which is used in virtually all of his films.

Each Anderson film includes a sequence with the same drum solo music. In Bottle Rocket, the music is heard during a robbery. In Rushmore, the solo is heard while an aquarium is being built on a baseball field. In The Royal Tenenbaums, the solo is heard when Ben Stiller's character is chasing Owen Wilson during a wedding. In The Life Aquatic, the solo is heard while Team Zissou raids Captain Hennessey's research laboratory.

Most of his films employ actor Bill Murray in the cast and Devo member Mark Mothersbaugh writing the score.

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Trivia

Anderson is a fan of French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue and has referenced him in his films. A shot in Rushmore is based on one of Lartigue's photographs, and the photographer's likeness was the basis for the portrait of Lord Mandrake in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. It should also be noted that Lartigue's older brother (the subject of the photograph referenced in Rushmore) was nicknamed "Zissou."

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Personnel

Anderson has created each of his films with many of the same actors and other crew. Actor Owen Wilson co-wrote Wes Anderson's first three films and has appeared in major roles in three of Anderson's films (he briefly appears twice in Rushmore: first as a go-kart driver, and later as "Edward Appleby" in a framed picture). Actors Bill Murray, Kumar Pallana, his son Dipak Pallana, Stephen Dignan, Andrew Wilson (the "third" Wilson brother, after Luke and Owen), Luke Wilson, Brian Tenenbaum, Eric Chase Anderson (Wes' brother), and Seymour Cassel have each appeared in three. Anjelica Huston has appeared in two. Jason Schwartzman has appeared in only one Anderson film, though he was rumored to have been the first choice for a role in Life Aquatic, yet he was unavailable. (It is widely believed that Schwartzman has a cameo in The Royal Tenenbaums as the announcer of a tennis match, though Anderson reveals in the film's commentary that it's his own voice.) Schwartzman is also rumored to have a role in the upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl's book, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

The Pallanas, Seymour Cassel, Brian Tenenbaum, Stephen Dignan, Eric Anderson, and Andrew Wilson often have smaller yet still important roles. Mark Mothersbaugh (as mentioned above) has been involved in the scoring of most Anderson films, and Eric Anderson has been involved in set design for several of the films. Writer Noah Baumbach has also been involved with the creative process for many of the films.

Cinematographer Robert Yeoman, A.S.C., has photographed each of Wes Anderson's feature films as well as several Anderson commericals, lending to the continuity of style and "feel" among these works. In particular, Anderson and Yeoman employ a technique sometimes referred to as "compression of space" (popularized by Roman Polanski): whereas a typical feature film production will use several different types (i.e. lengths) of lenses within a particular scene, Yeoman uses one type/size of lens for each shot within a scene. The Anderson/Yeoman collaborations tend to employ one single type of lens for the majority of a given film.

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Recent work

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou marked Anderson's first use of serious special effects, as the creatures of the underwater locales featured in the movie were created through stop-motion animation. His interest in stop-motion animation will emerge as a full-length project, his next film: a stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr Fox.

In 2005, Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale, directed by Life Aquatic co-writer Noah Baumbach. It garnered two awards at the Sundance Film Festival.

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Acclaim and criticism

Anderson's three most recent films have all been released on the Criterion Collection DVD label. It would seem that "Bottle Rocket" would be a natural choice for a Criterion release but it is owned and controlled by Sony, a company that doesn't license their films to other home video companies. Both the Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic discs were in preparation as the films themselves were in production; usually, it is only after a film has been released that it may be selected as meriting the Criterion spine label.

All three of his post-"Bottle Rocket" films were released by Touchstone Pictures, a Disney subsidiary with an agreement with Criterion that allows Disney's Buena Vista Home Entertainment to manufacture and distribute discs produced by Criterion. The three Anderson films were released as part of this agreement, as well as "Chasing Amy", "The Rock" and "Armageddon".

It was former Walt Disney Studios producer Joe Roth that brought Anderson to Touchstone, and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" completed his three-film contract with Touchstone. Free of Touchstone, Anderson has followed Roth to Revolution Studios, a move that will prohibit future Criterion releases since Revolution is a Sony subsidiary.

Critical reviews of Anderson's work, however, have been decidedly mixed. Especially after Rushmore, some critics have found the filmmaker's idiosyncratic tastes for acting and visual presentation to be overwrought, pretentious, and ultimately devoid of emotional substance. A common theme among reviews of Anderson's work is that he has a style which the viewer either buys into and loves, or does not accept and instead finds annoying and contrived. It is worth noting however that such peculiarities are, according to Truffaut and others, the source of a director's power.

In an article titled "The Next Scorsese" [2] for the March 2000 edition of Esquire, director Martin Scorsese himself nominated Wes Anderson [3] as "The Next Scorsese." Also, on a special presentaiton of Siskel & Ebert, Scorsese named Bottle Rocket as one of his favourite films of the 1990s. [4]

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