Wes Anderson

Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American filmmaker. His films are known for their symmetry, eccentricity and distinctive visual and narrative styles, and he is cited by some critics as a modern-day example of the auteur. Three of his films – "The Royal Tenenbaums", "Moonrise Kingdom", and "The Grand Budapest Hotel –" appeared in BBC Culture's 2016 poll of the greatest films since 2000.
Anderson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for "The Royal Tenenbaums" (2001), "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012) and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014), as well as the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for the stop-motion films "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) and "Isle of Dogs" (2018). With "The Grand Budapest Hotel", he received his first Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Picture, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay. He currently runs the production company American Empirical Pictures, which he founded in 1998. He won the Silver Bear for Best Director for "Isle of Dogs" in 2018.
Early life.
Wesley Wales Anderson was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas. He is the son of Texas Ann Anderson (née Burroughs), a realtor and archaeologist, and Melver Leonard Anderson, who worked in advertising and public relations. He is the second of three boys; his parents divorced when he was eight. His older brother, Mel, is a physician, and his younger brother, Eric Chase Anderson, is a writer and artist whose paintings and designs have appeared in several of Anderson's films, such as "The Royal Tenenbaums". Anderson is of English, Swedish and Norwegian ancestry.
He graduated from St. John's School in Houston in 1987, which he later used as a prominent location throughout "Rushmore". As a child, Anderson made silent films on his father's Super 8 camera which starred his brothers and friends, although his first ambition was to be a writer. Anderson worked part-time as a cinema projectionist while attending the University of Texas at Austin, where he met his roommate and future collaborator Owen Wilson in 1989. In 1991 he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy.
Film career.
1990s.
Anderson's first film was "Bottle Rocket" (1996), based on a short film of the same name that he made with Luke and Owen Wilson. It was a crime caper about a group of young Texans aspiring to achieve major heists. It was well reviewed but performed poorly at the box office.
His next film was "Rushmore" (1998), a quirky comedy about a high school student's crush on an elementary school teacher starring Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, and Olivia Williams. It was a critical success. The film launched Murray's second act as a respected actor within independent cinema. Murray has since appeared in every Anderson film to date. At the 1999 Independent Spirit Awards, Anderson won the Best Director award and Murray won Best Supporting Male award. Murray also earned a nomination for Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture. In 2000, filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised "Bottle Rocket" and "Rushmore". Since its release, "Rushmore" has gained cult status, and in 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
2000s.
Anderson's next comedy-drama, "The Royal Tenenbaums", was released in 2001. The film focuses on a successful and artistic New York City family and its ostracized patriarch played by Gene Hackman. The film also starred Anjelica Huston as the ex-wife and Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Gwyneth Paltrow as the children. The film was a box-office and critical success. It represented his greatest financial success until "Moonrise Kingdom" in 2012, earning more than $50 million in domestic box-office receipts. "The Royal Tenenbaums" was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an "Empire" poll as the 159th greatest film ever made.
Anderson's next feature was "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004) about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray. The film also starred Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, and Michael Gambon. The film serves as a classic example of Anderson's style, but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films, and its box office did not match the heights of "The Royal Tenenbaums". In September 2006, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" for Anderson's artistic "malaise" following the disappointing commercial and critical reception of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", proclaiming themselves to be fans of World Cinema and of Anderson in particular. They offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his "The Darjeeling Limited", including lyrics for a title track.
"The Darjeeling Limited" (2007) was about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India. It reflected the more dramatic tone of "The Royal Tenenbaums" but faced criticisms similar to "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the movie partly as a tribute to Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired all my other movies in different ways" (the film is dedicated to him). The film starred Anderson staples Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson in addition to Adrien Brody, and the script was co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman, and Roman Coppola.
Anderson has also made several notable short films. In addition to the original "Bottle Rocket" short, he made the Paris-set "Hotel Chevalier" (2007), which was created as a prologue to "The Darjeeling Limited" and starred Jason Schwartzman alongside Natalie Portman, and the Italy-set "Castello Cavalcanti" (2013), which was produced by Prada and starred Jason Schwartzman as an unsuccessful race-car driver. Additionally, he has directed a number of television commercials for companies such as Stella Artois and Prada, including an elaborate American Express ad, in which he starred as himself. In 2008, Anderson was hired to write the screenplay of the American adaptation of "My Best Friend", a French film, for producer Brian Grazer; Anderson's first draft was titled "The Rosenthaler Suite".
In 2009, Anderson's stop-motion-animated film adaptation based on the Roald Dahl book "Fantastic Mr Fox" was released. The film featured George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, and Michael Gambon. The film was highly praised among critics and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, although it barely made back its production budget.
2010s.
In 2012, Anderson's film "Moonrise Kingdom" was released, debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, where it competed in competition for the Palme d'Or. The film is a coming-of-age comedy set in a fictional New England town about two children who run away together and are followed by their families, and their small town community. The two children are played by newcomers Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman. The film also includes performances in its ensemble from Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton. The film was emblematic of Anderson's style and earned Anderson another Academy Award nomination for his screenplay. The film was also a financial success, earning $68.3 million at the box office against a budget of only $16 million.
In 2014, Anderson's next film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel", was released and starred Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, as well as several of his regular collaborators, including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman. It is mostly set in the 1930s and follows the adventures of M. Gustave, the hotel's concierge, making "a marvelous mockery of history, turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures," according to "The New York Times". The film represented one of Anderson's greatest critical and commercial successes, grossing nearly $175 million worldwide and earning dozens of award nominations, including nine Oscar nominations with four wins for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup, and Best Original Score. These nominations also included his first for Best Director.
Anderson returned to stop-motion animation with "Isle of Dogs". Production on the film started in the United Kingdom in October 2016, and it was released in select theaters on March 23, 2018, and wide on April 6, 2018. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best Original Score.
2020s.
In August 2018, it was reported that Anderson is working on his next film, set in post-war France, and was set to begin filming at Angoulême, beginning in November 2018. Named "The French Dispatch", the film stars Benicio Del Toro, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Adrien Brody, and Timothée Chalamet, and was previously scheduled to be released in July 2020, before being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic to October 2020, before being pulled from the schedule, rumored now to be released in 2021.
Anderson is already preparing his next film, but very few details have transpired to the press. In May 2021 it was announced that it will be filmed in the Spanish city of Chinchón, where a huge diorama set reproducing Monument Valley is under construction.
Directing techniques.
Anderson's cinematic influences include François Truffaut, Louis Malle, Pedro Almodóvar, Satyajit Ray, John Huston, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski. Anderson has a unique directorial style that has led several critics to consider him an auteur. Wes Anderson is considered a central figure in the American Eccentric Cinema tradition.
Themes and stories.
Anderson has chosen to direct mostly fast-paced comedies marked by more serious or melancholic elements, with themes often centered on grief, loss of innocence, dysfunctional families, parental abandonment, adultery, sibling rivalry and unlikely friendships. His movies have been noted for being unusually character-driven, and by turns both derided and praised with terms like "literary geek chic". The plots of his movies often feature thefts and unexpected disappearances, with a tendency to borrow liberally from the caper genre.
Visual style.
Anderson has been noted for extensive use of flat space camera moves, obsessively symmetrical compositions, knolling, snap-zooms, slow-motion walking shots, a deliberately limited color palette, and hand-made art direction often utilizing miniatures. These stylistic choices give his movies a highly distinctive quality that has provoked much discussion, critical study, supercuts, mash-ups, and even parody. Many writers, critics, and even Anderson himself, have commented that this gives his movies the feel of being "self-contained worlds," or a "scale model household". According to Jesse Fox Mayshark, his films have "a baroque pop bent that is not realist, surrealist or magic realist," but rather might be described as "fabul[ist]". In 2019, the company Murals Wallpaper from the UK launched a line of wallpapers inspired by the visual design of Anderson's films.
From "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" on, Anderson has relied more heavily on stop motion animation and miniatures, even making entire features with stop motion animation with "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and "Isle of Dogs".
Soundtracks.
Anderson frequently uses pop music from the 1960s and '70s on the soundtracks of his films, and one band or musician tends to dominate each soundtrack. "Rushmore" prominently featured Cat Stevens and British Invasion groups; "The Royal Tenenbaums" featured Nico; "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," David Bowie, including both originals and covers performed by Seu Jorge; "The Darjeeling Limited" and "Rushmore," the Kinks";" "Fantastic Mr. Fox", the Beach Boys; and "Moonrise Kingdom", Hank Williams. (Much of "Moonrise Kingdom" is filled with the music of Benjamin Britten, which is tied to a number of major plot points for that film.) "The Darjeeling Limited" also borrowed music styles from Satyajit Ray's films. "The Grand Budapest Hotel", which is mostly set in the 1930s, is notable for being the first Anderson film to eschew using any pop music, and instead used original music composed by Alexandre Desplat. Its soundtrack won Desplat the Academy Award for Best Original Score, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, and World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Score of the Year. The soundtracks for his films have often brought renewed attention to the artists featured, most prominently in the case of "These Days", which was used in "The Royal Tenenbaums".
Personal life.
Anderson is in a relationship with Lebanese writer, costume designer, and voice actress Juman Malouf. Malouf gave birth to the couple's daughter, Freya, in 2016. She is named after a character from the film "The Mortal Storm."
Anderson lives in Paris but has spent the majority of his adult life in New York. He is the brother of artist Eric Chase Anderson, who illustrated the Criterion Collection releases of some of Anderson's films ("Rushmore," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and "The Darjeeling Limited") and provided the voice of Kristofferson Silverfox in "Fantastic Mr. Fox".
Filmography.
As a director
Recurring collaborators.
Anderson's films feature many recurring actors, including the Wilson brothers (Owen, Luke, and Andrew), Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Anjelica Huston, Wallace Wolodarsky, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Kumar Pallana, Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton. Frequent co-writers include Roman Coppola (who has also served as a second unit director), Noah Baumbach (with Anderson also co-producing his own film "The Squid and the Whale"), Owen Wilson, Schwartzman and Hugo Guinness. Anderson has also worked frequently with producers Scott Rudin, Jeremy Dawson and Steven M. Rales. Robert Yeoman has served as director of photography for all of Anderson's live-action films, with Tristan Oliver handling cinematography for his two animated features. Mark Mothersbaugh composed Anderson's first four films, with Alexandre Desplat taking over for every film since "Fantastic Mr. Fox". Randall Poster has served as music supervisor for all of Anderson's films since "Rushmore".