stay for the credits

June 10th
09:27

75 notes

One of my favorite Bottle Rocket stories, also told in the Criterion collection of the DVD by Wes Anderson:

“I feel like I was never more confident in my life than when we made that film and never less confident than when we screened it. The first time we screened it was part two of my life. Because up to that point my attitude was, “Just wait till they see this.” And a lot of people were like, “Does this story hold together? Are people going to understand why these boys are acting like this?” And I was like, “I think they’re going to understand. It’s pretty funny.”

“We screened it in Santa Monica at the AMC 17 on the Third Street Promenade for an audience of 400 people. And as the reels unspooled, I, sitting in the back row with all the studio executives, I began to see people leaving and they were leaving in groups—people don’t go to the bathroom in groups. They’re not coming back, you know, they take their coats. And it became really excruciating.

“At a certain point, I left, I tried to be very discreet about it because I didn’t want to add to the exodus feeling, but I also couldn’t take it. I went up to the projection booth to watch, and they just left all throughout the film, and it was a really miserable thing.

“Afterwards, we had the audience cards, their reactions…And a lot of their things were “Favorite whatever: None.” One after the other. But we were going through it, kind of analyzing it, everyone’s feeling bad for me that I won’t be able to do this with my life.

“And then I remember, I got one of these [cards], and it was like an outline of a dissertation. This girl had sat there longer than everybody else and she’d written a whole thing and quoted things, and I was like “This is our audience!” There was literally one positive thing. She was getting everything.

“Six years later, I was at some kind of function, some kind of DGA thing, and this girl introduced herself to me and said, “I was at your screening in Santa Monica.” “I know who you are. I know exactly who you are.” She was uncomfortable, she wasn’t sure what I was talking about. And I said, “No, no, no…I know you.”

June 8th
14:00

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Thanks to my production manager L. for bringing this to my attention!

In Wes Anderson’s indie mega-hit Moonrise Kingdom, 12-year-old Suzy (Kara Hayward) packs an unusual set of items for her runaway adventure with her pen-pal boyfriend, Sam (Jared Gilman): A half-dozen (fictitious) storybooks she stole from the library, three of which she reads aloud over the course of the film. Anderson commissioned six artists to create the books’ evocative jacket covers, but initially the director wanted to take the artistry even further. “At one point in the process, when she’s reading these passages from these books, I’d thought about going into animation,” he says.

Anyone who’s seen the film knows Anderson ultimately chose to simply hold on the faces of his cast as they listen to Suzy read, but with his experience making the stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox still fresh in his mind, Anderson never quite let go of the idea.

So in April, the idiosyncratic filmmaker decided to animate all six books anyway, as a supplementary treat to the film itself. “I wrote passages for the other books that didn’t have any text [read aloud in the film], and we animated that too,” he says. “So we now have this piece where our narrator, Bob Balaban’s character, takes us through these little sections of each of these books.”

You can check out the animated short here:

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/06/07/moonrise-kingdom-animation/

May 23rd
07:20

128 notes

Via

criterioncorner:

Bill Murray Crashes a Wes Anderson Interview at Cannes

“All you can do is have stock in a human being, and I feel like all my stock has really increased in value many, many times.” - Bill Murray.

May 1st
11:41

32 notes

Tiscali: It’s worth noting that many of the cast come from famous or dysfunctional families, a bit like the Tenenbaums.Wes Anderson: It’s interesting. You know, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, certainly Anjelica Huston, all those families are real achievers, you know, and fame is an issue for their whole families. For Anjelica Huston (daughter of John Huston) I think there’s definitely things for her to relate to in terms of the character that Hackman is playing. Hackman - I didn’t know much of anything about his background, but after we’d finished the movie I saw an episode of Inside The Actors Studio which he did while we were filming. And he talked about his father, and it seemed to really relate to what he’d been playing in the movie - it caught me so much off-guard. You know, there was no dialogue between us about it, but it was clearly something he couldn’t have helped but to tap into.
Tiscali: What did he say in the programme?Wes Anderson: His father left his family when he was 13 or so, and he just described this moment when Hackman and his friends were playing in the street, and his father drove by. And Hackman saw him driving by, and his father kind of waved from the window but didn’t stop the car. And it was the last he saw him for ten years. And Hackman had really choked up when he was telling it. It was very moving. I’d never heard anything about this at all. And he’d been playing this father who abandons his family for years and years. (via)

Tiscali: It’s worth noting that many of the cast come from famous or dysfunctional families, a bit like the Tenenbaums.
Wes Anderson: It’s interesting. You know, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, certainly Anjelica Huston, all those families are real achievers, you know, and fame is an issue for their whole families. For Anjelica Huston (daughter of John Huston) I think there’s definitely things for her to relate to in terms of the character that Hackman is playing. Hackman - I didn’t know much of anything about his background, but after we’d finished the movie I saw an episode of Inside The Actors Studio which he did while we were filming. And he talked about his father, and it seemed to really relate to what he’d been playing in the movie - it caught me so much off-guard. You know, there was no dialogue between us about it, but it was clearly something he couldn’t have helped but to tap into.

Tiscali: What did he say in the programme?
Wes Anderson: His father left his family when he was 13 or so, and he just described this moment when Hackman and his friends were playing in the street, and his father drove by. And Hackman saw him driving by, and his father kind of waved from the window but didn’t stop the car. And it was the last he saw him for ten years. And Hackman had really choked up when he was telling it. It was very moving. I’d never heard anything about this at all. And he’d been playing this father who abandons his family for years and years. (via)

11:25

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strangewood:

“Wes Anderson has a very special kind of talent: He knows how to convey the simple joys and interactions between people so well and with such richness. This kind of sensibility is rare in movies.”

Martin Scorsese on Wes Anderson (born May 1, 1969)

October 21st
11:52

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"Anderson had tried to stay positive but recalled that Murray had actually come to set, even when the actor was not involved in filming, just to protect the director. ‘You were not scared of Gene,’ Anderson said to Murray. ‘I noticed early on so I started asking you to come be there. I remember, there was a scene where Gene goes for a walk in the park and I looked up on the top of this rock and you were standing with a cowboy hat watching the set. And you were just there to show solidarity and I was very touched by that.’"

— Wes Anderson recalls Bill Murray protecting him from Gene Hackman (via noirdeoro)

March 28th
19:49

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(by kingeswife)

Actor Owen Wilson and director Wes Anderson in Owen’s mom’s kitchen doing a polaroid casting for their indie film Bottle Rocket, while referencing Avedon’s In the American West. Shot by Laura Wilson.

January 28th
07:54

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marinaesque:

“I remembered this passage from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story “The Freshest Boy”:

He had contributed to the events by which another boy was saved from the army of the bitter, the selfish, the neurasthenic and the unhappy. It isn’t given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

—and it occurred to me that more than everything else—more than all the things in his stories that I have been inspired by and imitated and stolen to the best of my abilities—THIS describes my experience of the works of J. D. Salinger.”

- Wes Anderson-

November 19th
12:33

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heyygraaant:

Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, & Director Wes Anderson on set of the film Rushmore.

On the first day of principal photography, Wes Anderson delivered his directions to Bill Murray in a hushed whisper, so awed was he to be working with the actor. Graciously, Murray deferred publicly to Anderson, helped haul equipment and - when Disney denied a helicopter scene that would have cost $75,000 - he gave Anderson a blank check to cover the cost. (via)

November 3rd
21:38

28 notes

Source

Rushmore (1998). Written by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson. Final draft, May 12, 1997.

October 13th
16:47

158 notes

Via

huffingtonpost:

Here’s a little story Wes Anderson wrote in college not long before his 21st birthday.

September 5th
21:54

53 notes

“Isn’t it funny how you used to be in the nut house and now I’m in jail?” - Dignan.