The World of Wes Anderson
20. RUSHMORE (1998)
An oddball love triangle between a freakishly precocious 15-year-old, a widowed teacher, and a depressed tycoon, Rushmore is a movie that defies its eccentricities. The production is stagey, the dialogue stilted, and the performances gleefully deadpan, yet it is as tender and life-affirming a movie as the irony-drenched ’90s produced.
SIGNATURE LINE ”She’s my Rushmore, Max.” (link)
Thanks to Loraxaeon. Bravo, Max! (Yankee Racers thread)
From Time Out Chicago:
TOC: Yet you wrote songs for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, appearing in the film as the frontman of the Weird Sisters. Do kids recognize you?
Jarvis Cocker: I had a very specific look going on in that film—giant fur jacket, snakeskin trousers—that I wouldn’t normally wear down the street. That would get me attention, but probably the wrong kind of attention. I’ve been doing some stuff for a children’s film Wes Anderson is doing, an animated feature.TOC: The stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox?
Jarvis Cocker: I’ve written three, four songs, and some of that might become bits of the score.TOC: Now you’re writing the new Disney songs.
Jarvis Cocker: If you criticize Disney, the next step is “do better.” I get the chance to do it myself and corrupt young minds.
We love the Real Geezers, so here is their latest video review.
Kim Morgan wrote an intriguing piece for the Huffington Post on Father’s Day examining “five fantastically
flawed fathers” from film. These include Nicholas Cage in Raising Arizona, Ryan O’Neal in Paper Moon, and of course Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Don’t forget to steal the grandkids and hop a dump truck to show your family love sometime soon!
The Guardian paper in the UK published an informative article on foxes recently. Natually our man Wes’ new
film in production gets a mention:
Did you know?
Wes Anderson, the film director behind The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, is working on a big-screen animated version of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s story The Fantastic Mr Fox. George Clooney will play the lead role. Naturally.
Other fascinating facts and observations are noted as well:
And their loud love-making – does that not bother you?
Yeah, quite frightening. It sounds a bit like a baby being strangled. It doesn’t sound like either one of them is enjoying it very much.
A flashback Tuesday treat: Thought it might be fun to revisit the Decemberists’ video “16 Military Wives” from a couple years ago. This very Rushmore inspired video was directed by Aaron Stewart-Ahn:
“The Darjeeling Limited” has seen a country wide release in India since the last week of April. There have been a handful of mostly positive reviews for the film. Perhaps most of interest is a new-seeming interview with Adrien Brody in the Times of India. Great to see that he is still doing promotion for TDL.
Did you have any strange experiences or comic misadventure of your own?
AB: Yeah, I bought a motorcycle and I was there with my girlfriend and we were riding around a lot. I was passing a took-took, one of those little rickshaws, so I moved to the side, and there was a buffalo there. I jammed on the breaks and we skidded and I almost went head first into the rear end of this buffalo. I was laughing as I almost died because it was so absurd to me. I was thinking, ‘This is going to be the way I’m going to be remembered.’ All the hard work down the drain and this is it. I saw the headline instantly.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
From his speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” given one year, to the day, before his death:
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [Applause]
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [Sustained applause]
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood. (source)
Check out Democracy Now! for great coverage of this anniversary and the legacy of Dr. King.
Yes, another semi-fashion related post with Waris Ahluwalia. Waris is really proving to be one of Team Wes’s most prolific members. Is there nothing this man can’t do with Style? We’re going to have to coin a new term around here: Warilicious (too much? Suggestions?) Waris is still hard at work in the Jewelry and fashion business and teaches us to always say “yes”. In this Dejour Magazine interview he also mentions his upcoming film work (“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead” – a Zombie movie, among others), talks about his girlfriend’s film, being Sikh and much more.
It’s just a funny thing. Half my year is spent sitting on the floor working with my craftsmen working on the jewelry, and then the next day I’m off to Tokyo for the Jalouse party for the cover of Jalouse, and then I land here and literally land into fashion week so it’s defiantly a funny mix of worlds.
Keep cool, Waris!
Owen Wilson made an appearance last night and looked great. Rushmore was referenced in a montage in reference to Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie. We are very excited that Juno won “Best Original Screenplay.” And, we expected No Country for Old Men as “Best Picture” and Daniel Day-Lewis as “Best Actor.” Also, very cool for Marion Cotillard and the kids from Once. Bravo, Max. “And the award didn’t go to Hollywood” (L.A. Times)