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Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American Academy Award nominated writer, producer, and director of films and commercials.

Biography

Early life

Anderson was born in Houston, Texas to Melver Leonard Anderson and Texas Ann Burroughs, the middle child of three brothers. His father was in advertising, and his mother was an archaeologist. 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.

After making a short, 14-minute version of Bottle Rocket, Anderson and Wilson attracted the notice of producer James L. Brooks who encouraged the duo. With his help they were able to get their short film into Sundance and secured funding for the feature-length version of Bottle Rocket.

Personal life

Anderson is fairly discreet about his personal life. He resides mainly in New York City, but also keeps a home in Los Angeles. He has been romantically linked to actress Tara Subkoff, but their current relationship status is unknown.

He is friendly with filmmaker Noah Baumbach and actor/screenwriter Owen Wilson and is friends with Sofia Coppola. His brother, Eric Chase Anderson, is a writer and illustrator who does most of the artwork for his films.

Film Work

Wes Anderson has been hailed as a true auteur, heavily involved in every aspect of his films' production: writing, cinematography, production design, music selection, etc.

Trademarks

Anderson has several trademarks that have so far remained consistent throughout his four films (and even a few commercials).

• Montages set to music.
• Precise, meticulous widescreen framings using wide angle lenses.
• Soundtracks featuring old school punk, British invasion artists and other 1960s/1970s bands.
• Musical scores by Mark Mothersbaugh.
• Closing shots that start at regular speed then transition to slow motion.
• Moving shots utilizing a track and a camera dolly (as opposed to steadicam).
• Owen Wilson (as a co-writer and/or an actor).
• Deeply flawed (yet likeable and accomplished) protagonists.
• Idiosyncratic costuming (i.e. characters wear the same thing every day).
• Bird's eye view camera shots.
• A shot of one or more of the characters underwater.
• Certain films follow certain structures (ie: Rushmore is presented like stage play, The Royal Tenenbaums like a novel, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou like a Jacques-Yves Cousteau documentary).
• Each one of his films has a brief scene in which one of characters is holding an item in close view and is in deep focus of it (In Bottle Rocket, it was the small locket picture of Inez's sister. In Rushmore, it was the swiss army knife from Max's friend Dirk. In The Royal Tenenbaums, it was a green tic-tac held by Mr. Sherman, and in The Life Aquatic, it was a sand dollar given by Ned to the pregnant reporter).
• A persistent search for intimacy and personal connection by generally upper-class intellectuals that consistently fails due to deep character flaws ('Royal Tenenbaums,' 'The Life Aquatic,' and 'Rushmore')
• Notes and letters being read in first person
• A character being punched in the nose (Max in Rushmore while criticizing an actor in his own play , Anthony after Dignan finds out he gave a $500 tip to Inez, Richie while trying to break up a brawl between Eli and Chas, etc.)

Influences

Anderson's acknowledged inspirations include several directors of the French New Wave. François Truffaut and Louis Malle in particular influenced his penchant for sympathetic tragicomic characterization, his unconventional mis-en-scene, and his unabashedly personal approach to filmmaking. He often cites Mike Nichols's The Graduate as a recurring inspiration for his own work, which also features adolescent themes. Anderson is also noted for drawing on famous works of American literature, particularly the down-beat work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.D. Salinger. Fitzgerald's famous quote that "There are no second acts in American lives" seems to apply to all of Anderson's characters, who tend to fall quickly from their initial success and renown (although many of them make limited comebacks). Anderson's increasingly stylized films also borrow youthful aesthetic qualities from comics such as Charles Schultz's Peanuts (The Royal Tenenbaums/Rushmore) and Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin graphic novels (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). A less known aesthetic influence is the French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue: the name Zissou derives from Lartigue brother's name, and a quick look to his old, charming black and white photos will unveil many similarities with Anderson visuals.

Themes

Flawed Protagonists

Anderson's films tend to focus on characters who are well-heeled, well-educated and/or privileged. Despite this, Anderson's typical protagonist is usually something of a misfit, with their greatest accomplishments far behind them. Protagonists are generally likable but often exhibit narcissistic or self-centered behavior.

Downfall and Redemption

Anderson's protagonists are often the cause of their own downfalls, mainly stemming from their own hubris or narcissism. The protagonists generally overcome this downfall by the end of the film.

Parental Figures

Parental figures are often portrayed as absent or ineffectual. Fathers tend to be neglectful or unresponsive to the needs of their children. Mothers are generally caring, but have often died before the actions of the film. (Interestingly, cancer is the usual cause of death.)

Love/Sex

Sex in Anderson's movies takes place almost entirely off screen. Frank sexual talk is common, but usually deals in generalities as opposed to specifics. Love interests (always a man chasing a woman) tend to be unattainable or problematic. (i.e. foreign cleaning lady, teacher, adopted sister, pregnant reporter) Anderson consistently exposes the failure of intimacy in well educated and often wealthy characters: moments of intimacy as simple as hugs in 'Tenenbaums' are extremely awkward and seem unpracticed, Steve Zissou essentially attempts to trick Ned into thinking he is his son, and in 'Rushmore' Max and Mr. Blume repeatedly make dishonest and malicious attempts to woo Miss Cross.

Other Themes/Trademarks

Anderson's films often use pop music from the 1960s and 1970s in addition to Mark Mothersbaugh's original film scores. The Life Aquatic notably featured Brazilian musician Seu Jorge performing Portuguese-language versions of several songs by David Bowie.

Anderson's play-like nature for the on-screen pageant increasingly is supported by the detailed mise-en-scene.

There is a lack of true villains in his films. Characters are often misguided and may hinder the protagonist but do not in any way affect their goals. Anderson's stories have characters deal with internal problems that resolve without much confrontation. Buchan in Rushmore is a bully but he is not Max's problem and he eventually becomes an actor in Max's play. Henessey is Zissou's "nemesis," but he in no way seeks to destroy Zissou, in fact Zissou steals from Henessey.

He almost always puts in the same drum solo in most of his movies at a certain point; the book store robbery in Bottle Rocket, the first (interrupted) groudbreaking ceremony in Rushmore, the car crash scene in The Royal Tenenbaums and in The Life Aquatic when Steve Zissou and his crew break into Alistair Hennessey's research complex.

Anderson is often inspired by author JD Salinger, as in Bottle Rocket, Anthony's sister is disappointed, just as Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. Max gets kicked out of his prestigous school as does Caufield. The Royal Tenenbaums are based on Salinger's Glass family.

Critical interpretations

Some have argued that the themes of Anderson's films have a significant relationship to 19th Century Romanticism. Anderson's tendency to fetishize states of childhood, his emphasis on imaginative individualism, his focus on characters who fall from an initial state of grace, his portrayal of melancholy as a redemptive state, and his interest in the power of nature as a site for self-discovery (particularly in The Life Aquatic) are all signs of a Romantic artistic temperament. Jacques-Yves Cousteau's idealism is a constant inspiration for Anderson.

Many critics understand Anderson as a postmodernist filmmaker in the vein of Jacques Rivette. These critics emphasize Anderson's tendency to use extensive intertextual quotations, parody different genre-conventions quite blatantly, and include many different reflexive gestures within each of his films.

Personnel

Anderson has created each of his films with many of the same actors, crew members, and other collaborators. This has contributed to a great consistency of both style and dramatic content.

Actor Owen Wilson co-wrote Wes Anderson's first three films and has appeared in major roles in three of Anderson's films. Actors Bill Murray, Kevin Clevette, Kumar Pallana, his son Dipak Pallana, Stephen Dignan, Andrew Wilson (the "third" Wilson brother, though older than Luke and Owen), Luke Wilson, Brian Tenenbaum, Eric Chase Anderson (Wes' brother), and Seymour Cassel have each appeared in three of his films. Anjelica Huston has appeared in two of them.

Eric Anderson has been involved in set design on several of his brother's 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 of his commercials. Anderson's pictures always feature the music of composer (and Devo singer) Mark Mothersbaugh. Production designer David Wasco has also worked on three of Anderson's films.

Other work

• Anderson's interest in stop-motion animation (used in The Life Aquatic) led him to his next full-length project, a stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr Fox.

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

• In 2006, he directed a "My Life, My Card" American Express commercial. [1]

• On August 2, 2006, Production Weekly reported that "Owen Wilson will reunite with his long-time friend Wes Anderson on the director's next project." The article goes on to say that, "In the script, by Anderson, Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, Wilson will play one of three brothers who journey through India." Schwartzman and Adrien Brody will play Wilson's brothers. The film has been titled The Darjeeling Limited.

Acclaim and criticism

Critical reviews of Anderson's early work were initially very positive and hopeful, with some very loud exceptions. His second film Rushmore was a critical darling, and many argued that Anderson would soon become a major artistic voice in American cinema. Many critics noted a strong sense of sympathetic but intelligent humanism in Anderson's films that linked them to the work of Jean Renoir and François Truffaut. Filmmaker Martin Scorsese is a fan of Anderson's, praising "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore" and calling Anderson "the next Scorsese" in an Esquire magazine article. The Royal Tenenbaums was also a critical favorite and garnered Anderson an Academy Award nomination, although many objected to Anderson's increasingly stylized, knowingly ironic, and reference-laden filmmaking style, thinking of it as a kind of emptily clever, hip formalism. The film was his first high-profile commercial success, featuring several notable A-list stars. In September '06, a bizarre "letter of intervention" appeared on the website of the musical group Steely Dan, claiming that the authors - musicians and "Fans of World Cinema" Walter Becker and Donald Fagen - had a cure for Anderson's artistic "malaise".

Filmography

• Bottle Rocket (short) (1994)
• Bottle Rocket (1996)
• Rushmore (1998)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
• The Darjeeling Limited (2007) [production begins December 2006]
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (2008) [pre-production]

External links

• Into The Deep, in-depth Anderson profile at The Guardian (February 12, 2005)
• Wes Anderson's American Express commercial
• "The 'Quirky' New Wave". Alternate Takes
• "Scorsese Proclaims Wes Anderson the Next Scorsese"
• "Say a Prayer for Surf Boy, Wherever He Is: A Look at Rushmore"
• Wes Anderson interviews Bill Murray Interview Magazine
• Announcement of Wes Anderson's new film The Darjeeling Limited.

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