In an on-going series that takes a look at films from the past twenty-five years that have found their audiences in non-traditional routes, the A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias has taken a look at Wes’ first film, Bottle Rocket.
We did it, though, didn’t we?” —Owen Wilson as Dignan, Bottle Rocket
Back when Fantastic Mr. Fox debuted a few months ago, the following thought occurred to me: “Wes Anderson is forever doomed to make Wes Anderson movies.” Here’s a director who did all he could to step outside his comfort zone, adapting someone else’s work for the first time—in this case, that of Roald Dahl, an author with his own singularity—and using stop-motion animation, a painstaking collaborative process that seems like it should suppress his auteurist instincts. Alas, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a Wes Anderson movie from frame one, because he found a way to square his sensibility with Dahl’s (or, as detractors might put it, “shoehorn it in”) and wrangle a team of animators into bringing his homemade, obsessively detailed Rankin-Bass universe to life. There are two ways to look at it: Anderson is either to be praised for his consistency of vision, or damned for painting himself into a stifling creative corner. This may explain why the maker of such gentle, eccentric, lovingly particular comedies remains one of the more polarizing directors in the business.
Read the full article at the A.V. Club, complete with clips from the film.
Todd Gilchrist at Cinematical writes about Bottle Rocket in their Shelf Life feature. It’s an interesting read and we agree with his conclusion. Full article after the break.
Wes Anderson’s movies have entertained and enchanted audiences for more than a decade now, offering a singular and yet strangely universal point of view time and again about oddballs and outsiders who simply want their creativity to connect with others. This week, Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox arrives in theaters (in limited release), and while we’ve already fallen in love with the his latest work (thanks in no small part to his particularly fertile adaptation of author Roald Dahl’s source material), it seemed appropriate to go back and revisit his first film, the oft-forgotten Bottle Rocket, to remind ourselves where the writer-director started, if not where our love affair with his work began. Read the rest of this entry…
What’s another $4,000 after paying private school tuition? That was probably the pitch made by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson to their fathers, a year after the two met in a playwriting class at the University of Texas at Austin and decided to pen a script together about a trio of unlikely hoodlums. Similar to the clueless would-be criminals they created — Bob (Robert Musgrave), Anthony (Luke Wilson) and Dignan (Owen Wilson) — Anderson and Wilson scored the initial amount of cash that they asked for from their parents, but only wound up shooting eight minutes of 16mm footage before running out of funds. As a result, the Wilsons’ father contacted family friend and “Paris, Texas” screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson to see if the kids’ work had promise, which led to Carson finding enough money to finance the rest of the 13-minute short, as well as producer Barbara Boyle getting in touch with then-Gracie Films vice president Polly Platt. The short got into Sundance in 1993, and though the unusually rhythmic patter of the characters didn’t make much of an impression on audiences in Park City, it got the attention of Platt’s boss, James L. Brooks, who would ultimately bankroll the feature — which ironically was rejected by Sundance, though there’s no question who got the last laugh.
So What’s Different? Beyond an expansion of the plot, not a whole lot is different except for a jazzier score and that it’s shot in black-and-white.
Wes fan Anant Prabhakar has created a great tribute video to Anderson called “Let Me Tell You About Wes: Part 1.” We’ll be sure to tell you about Part 2, or whatever it is, if it actually exists.
I recall noticing that something was off when I watched the robbery scene for the first time on the Criterion edition of Bottle Rocket but didn’t know what at the time.
The Criterion 2-disc Bottle Rocket is outstanding, but don’t toss your original disc just yet… the new edition is a slightly different edit that loses one laugh and adds another. I couldn’t find any reference to these changes in the supplementary material at all.
MISSING: Originally, during the book store robbery, Anthony grabs a random book off the shelf and opens it, revealing the title page “Job Opportunities in Government – 1995″ which always gave me a little chuckle. Now for some reason the book opens to a black and white photograph of a military plane (it goes by so fast you’d have to freeze frame to make it out.)
ADDED: Originally, when Bob hands his earnings over to Future Man to cover his attorney fees, he asks if he can keep a few bucks for gas, and the scene ends. Now the scene plays a few seconds longer, and we hear Future Man’s reply: “No, you can’t.”
Perhaps the most respected male fashion bloggeur, Scott Schuman (aka The Sartorialist), has stopped Frequent [Wes] Collaborator, and dedicated turban wearer,Waris Ahluwalia for a photo in New York — Fifth Ave., to be precise. In addition to his website, Schuman also has his own page in GQ every month. That’s some fashion clout.
Waris Ahluwalia on The Sartorialist
It’s not the first time Waris has been on a fashion blog. He was on Facehunter in 2007, repping fashion designer, Benjamin Cho.
The renowned jazz label Fantasy Records released a digital soundtrack for Wes Anderson’s short film Bottle Rocket (1994) back on December 9. Read on for the press release. Click below to buy it on Amazon and support the site!
1. The Chant / Artie Shaw
2. Old Devil Moon / Sonny Rollins
3. The Route / Chet Baker
4. Skating / Vince Guaraldi Trio
5. Stevie / John Coltrane
6. Nothing But The Soul / Horace Silver
7. Happiness Is / Vince Guaraldi Trio
8. Jane-O / Zoot Sims Quartet
