The World of Wes Anderson
From IFC, “Starting Small: Ten Notable Shorts That Became Features.” Among them, Bottle Rocket:
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.
Ian Dingman, the artist who designed the cover of the Criterion Collection Bottle Rocket, graciously agreed to make a banner for the site.
You can see the glorious result above! Thanks, Ian!
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.
From an Amazon review:
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.
It’s not the first time Waris has been on a fashion blog. He was on Facehunter in 2007, repping fashion designer, Benjamin Cho.
Bob Maplethorpe, potential get-away driver, go!
Brought to you by the 2009 Wes Anderson Film Festival.
Suggest the next Wes Moment! E-mail edwardappleby @ yankeeracers.org or tweet @rushmoreacademy!
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
(Just a reminder: Owen Wilson will be presenting tonight’s Top Ten List on the Late Show with David Letterman.)
The debut music video from Company of Thieves, is inspired by Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. The video for the song “Oscar Wilde” was filmed at Sycamore Elementary School in Kokomo, Indiana, over the course of just one day in December 2008. It includes over 60 props which were mostly bought from flea markets and vintage stores. The video was shot on Kodak Vision3 500T 16mm film using an Eclair ACL camera with 12mm and 14mm lenses, with 23 lighting setups. The footage was digitally transferred to uncompressed 10 bit format and edited in Final Cut. If you like the song, it’s available for free download.
An old favorite of ours, Dave Kehr, has a great review piece on the new DVD:
Stylistically, “Bottle Rocket” swings between poles of tension and release, order and chaos. In purely visual terms the film is tightly structured, with a systematic use of color (white for Dignan, bright red for Anthony), frontal compositions anchored by the horizon line, and a self-consciously theatrical sense of space: an open foreground for the action, played against a flat, immobile background (just as the motel rises from the flatlands around it). And there is no more linear plot structure than that of the heist film, in which pleasure lies in the orderly fulfillment of a precise program.
The long-awaited Bottle Rocket Criterion Collection edition is out this Tuesday! The Blu-Ray edition has been delayed, to be released December 16 according to Amazon.com.
Be sure to buy Bottle Rocket and all of your holiday gifts through our links. It helps support the site!
DVD Beaver has a great feature on the new Criterion DVD set compared to the original DVD. Be sure click through, but here is a preview of the new Criterion Collection edition:
Update: Looks like DVD Beaver has cut off our image stealing, so head over there to see the screencaps.
(more after the break)
Continue reading “Bottle Rocket Criterion out this Tuesday!”
