Portrait of the artist: Wes Anderson, film director
Interview by Laura Barnett

What got you started?

Filming thrillers and jungle chases on Super 8 when I was about 10. I was trying to imitate Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars and, above all, Hitchcock. Watching The Man Who Knew Too Much made me realise that there was such a thing as a director.

What was your big breakthrough?

Making my first proper short, Bottle Rocket, with Owen Wilson on 16mm film when I was 23. Nobody was interested in it except [director and producer] James L Brooks, who picked it up and let us turn it into a full-length movie.

What have you sacrificed for your art?

Well, I’m 40 and I don’t have children yet. I do want to have them: perhaps I already would, if I wasn’t so involved with these movies.

What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?

If it was really going to be the soundtrack to my life, playing on endless loop, I’d need a classical piece – it would be hard for me to work with a great song playing. So maybe a Chopin nocturne.

Is there an art form you don’t relate to?

I can’t say I deeply appreciate tapestry.

Is it hard to be original in Hollywood?

It can be difficult to get people to take a chance on something unfamiliar – and it can take time to get an audience interested in it, even when the movie is made. There are some original movies I’ve seen that didn’t work for me the first time round: the first Buñuel film I saw, I didn’t understand his sense of humour. But I’ve never had trouble with a studio telling me they thought my films should be a certain way.

What work of art would you most like to own?

It’s a shame to pillage museums and take art back into private hands. But I have always loved Bronzino’s painting of Lodovico Capponi, in New York’s Frick collection.

Which films do you wish you had made?

Coming Home, Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown. There’s no aspect to all three that isn’t great: the scripts, the casts, the filming, the music.

Which artist working today do you most admire?

Richard Rogers, for his body of work and his approach to it.

What’s the worst thing anyone ever said about you?

There was a mean thing in the Guardian once: the interviewer described me as having “my feet on the table and my nose in the air”. But much worse was a review in the San Francisco Chronicle that described my first film as a “mind-numbing black hole with no right to exist”. I saved that one.

In short

Born: Texas, 1969.

Career: Films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Fantastic Mr Fox, out now on DVD.

Low point: “Realising that my film The Life Aquatic had been seen by half as many people as my previous movie.”

Lodovico Capponi by Bronzino

A little story at The Hollywood Reporter about the contenders for Best Animated Feature at this year’s Academy Awards.

Vote for Fantastic Mr. Fox in Moviefone’s Oscar poll!

From Fox Searchlight:

FANTASTIC MR. FOX director/co-writer/producer Wes Anderson sat down with Fox Searchlight’s own lovely Stephanie Allen, the basis of a video series in which Wes discusses various aspects of how FANTASTIC MR. FOX came to fruition. And the film’s now been nominated for two Academy Awards! Watch all eight videos here.

Wes On Author Roald Dahld (1/8)

More after the break…
Wes on the Characters and Actors (2/8)

Wes on What Makes Mr. Fox Fantastic (3/8)

Wes on the Film’s Art Direction (4/8)

Wes on the Music of Mr. Fox (5/8)

Wes on the Special Effects (6/8)

Wes on Directing Animation (7/8)

Wes on His Style and Artistic Vision (8/8)

(the Wes parody is third)

(not-so) Bonus: a harsh take on Salinger — and Wes

Our favorite Wes parody is still the McCain ad.

via /Film, Yankee Racer Magnus Rushlee

This morning it was announced that Fantastic Mr. Fox received two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Animated Feature and another for Best Original Score. This is the second nomination Wes has received, after receiving a Best Original Screenplay nomination with Owen Wilson in 2002. But what are Fantastic Mr. Fox’s chances come Oscar time? We’ll take a look at that and get Wes’ reaction to the nominations after the break.

Along with Fantastic Mr. Fox, four films were nominated for Best Animated Feature, including Coraline directed by Wes’ The Life Aquatic collaborator Henry Selick, Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, Ireland’s The Secret of Kells, and Pixar’s Up. As we predicted, Up received a nomination in this category and a nomination for Best Picture. Assuming that Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up are the front-runners in the category (which we can), what this could mean for Fantastic Mr. Fox is a chance to win.

Voters for the Best Animated Feature category, unlike the Best Picture category, are required to see all five nominees.  This means that voters will definitely have to see Up, and what could happen is that those voters to decide to vote for Up in the Best Picture category and go with Fantastic  Mr. Fox in the Animated category.

Finally, AwardsDaily has a round-up of a lot of nominee reactions given to the media, and here’s Wes’.

I am very honored to have received an Oscar nomination for Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Roald Dahl’s classic story has been one of my favorite books since I first learned to read, and it was an amazing experience to work with my many, many very skilled collaborators and bring it to life as a stop-motion film! I would like to congratulate Alexandre Desplat, who wrote our wonderful score, for his nomination as well. – Wes Anderson, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Animated Feature

Let’s hope Wes wins, because hes’ getting pretty good at acceptance speeches.

Here’s Wes’ acceptance speech as Weasel from Fantastic Mr. Fox at the recent National Board of Review awards ceremony. It is awesome.

After you watch the high quality version above, you can watch a video from the event embedded after the jump to see how it played in the room.

 
If the video goes down, here are two reports on the evening from The New York Times.