The World of Wes Anderson
Premiere, October 1998
Who taught you the most about filmmaking? Who inspired you?
Cable access was where I learned about editing and everything. The people I learned the most from were the people that I collaborated with as a writer: my writing partner, Owen Wilson, and Jim Brooks, who was one of the producers of Bottle Rocket.
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Icon Thoughtstyle, September/October 1998
Backed by some big Hollywood players, Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson have two movies, a house in California, and the same life they had in Texas.
by Philip Zabriskie
In high school, Houston-native Wes Anderson directed shorts on a cable-access station and wrote plays, “real crowd pleasers, stuff designed to get a big audience reaction,” says the 29-year-old. “We did a play, The Alamo, that was just like a big war scene. We did one called The Five Maseratis, that all took place in these Maseratis. When I look back, it seems kind of static, because everybody was just sitting in these cars. I always cast myself as the hero. Maybe that was the reason I wanted to do them.”
“I didn’t know what I was going to do, maybe…advertising?” says Dallas-native Owen Wilson, also 29. “I guess movies seemed impossible. It seemed so far away and so difficult to break into.” Anderson and Wilson met at the University of Texas. Anderson was not wearing a monocle, as Wilson claims, but they shared prep-school backgrounds and a similar sense of humor. And, Anderson says, just as “we might think the same things are funny, we might think the same things are sad.”
Texas Monthly, May 1998
They’re not yet thirty, but they’re playing with the big boys.
by Pamela Colloff
On an overcast afternoon this past winter, a crowd of autograph hounds and hangers-on stood in silent reverence outside Don’s barbershop in Houston, craning for a view of the star rumored to be shooting a film inside. Across the street, while traffic crawled past the white trailers and frenzied production assistants cluttered the sidewalk, gawkers stood on the hoods of their cars, squinting under the white-hot floodlights. But it wasn’t comedian Bill Murray at the center of the disarray; unbeknownst to the crowd, he had already shot his scenes and flown back to New York. Rather, it was Wes Anderson, the gangly 29-year-old director and co-writer of Rushmore, who was pacing the barbershop floor and running his pale hands through his unruly thatch of hair. Wearing a slouchy green cardigan, faded corduroys, and Converse All-Stars, he looked more like a distracted graduate student who had wandered onto the set than someone shooting his second feature for a major studio.
Sources: Lawnwranglers.com (R.I.P.), from official Bottle Rocket website (Sony Pictures)
Bottle Rocket tells the gently comic story of three devoted, would-be thieves who prove the importance of friendship, honor and duty as they ineptly pursue a life of crime.
Directed by Wes Anderson, Bottle Rocket is written by Owen C. Wilson and Wes Anderson. In addition to Owen C. Wilson, Luke Wilson and Robert Musgrave, the film also stars Andrew Wilson, Lumi Cavazos and James Caan as Mr. Henry. Polly Platt and Cynthia Hargrave are the producers. The executive producers are James L. Brooks, Richard Sakai, Barbara Boyle and Michael Taylor. Robert Yeoman is the director of photography; David Wasco is the production designer; David Moritz is the editor. The film is co-produced by Ray Zimmerman and L. M. Kit Carson. Karen Patch is the costume designer. Music is by Mark Mothersbaugh.
Continue reading “Production notes from Bottle Rocket {archive}”
“Slouching toward Hollywood”
September 7, 1995 – Dallas Observer
By Matt Zoller Seitz
Can four young Dallas filmmakers sell their dream-and still keep their souls? Matt Zoller Seitz follows the trail of Bottle Rocket.
Jimmy Caaaaaaan!
Luke Wilson was thrilled. It was November 1994, and the star of The Godfather, Thief, and Misery, icon to two generations of aspiring young actors and a walking template of life’s rougher passages, was jogging beside him on train tracks near a downtown Dallas factory.
A film crew was gathered nearby. They were shooting a scene for the new movie Bottle Rocket. In it, Luke Wilson played a younger thief taken under the wing of an older heist expert–Mr. Henry–played by Caan.
November 7, 1993 – Los Angeles Times
By Jeffrey Wells
Watchers of raw talent, take note: 24-year-old Texas filmmakers Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson hit town Monday. But unlike many Hollywood neophyte arrivals, this duo has already locked a big-studio deal. With James L. Brooks and Columbia Pictures, no less.
Last month, the pair completed a deal with Brooks (“Broadcast News,” and the forthcoming “I’ll Do Anything”) and the studio to back their co-written debut film, “Bottle Rocket,” a dryly comic, low-key drama about a trio of middle-class goofballs who embark on a life of crime. The $5-million-or-so venture, to be directed by Anderson and produced by Brooks, Polly Platt and Cynthia Hargrave, will roll in Dallas sometime in mid-’94, and go out theatrically and in other media through Columbia. The Columbia-Brooks launch sets Anderson and Wilson apart from other young filmmakers — the Hudlin brothers (“Boomerang”), Robert Rodriguez (“El Mariachi”), the Hughes brothers (“Menace II Society”) — who came up hardscrabble-style through independent or self-financed ranks. In fact, the Texas duo had a little help: screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson (“Breathless”), who discovered the pair in late 1991, godfathered the development of the “Bottle Rocket” script and provided the Tinseltown connections.
Continue reading “Lost In Filmland? These Guys Sure Found a Way {archive}”