The Wes Anderson Collection’s Matt Zoller Seitz on his new sci-fi puppet series

Matt Zoller Seitz, author of The Wes Anderson Collection sat down for an interview with us on the new series he’s been working on. “Space Rabbit” is currently raising funding on Indiegogo for a pilot episode, hoping a production company will fund the rest of the season once they see the eccentric cast of characters come to life.

Among the perks of the Indiegogo Matt’s team has set up are a book from Matt’s library along with a personal note from the Pulitzer Prize nominated author, a review by him on any movie or television program, and actual puppets from the show. If you’re short of ideas but not cash, we wouldn’t mind seeing him review Leprechaun 3, or perhaps the universally acclaimed Dirty Grandpa.

Could you sum up the premise of the series in a few sentences?

Space Rabbit is an anti-fascist fable that’s basically Animal Farm by way of Looney Tunes, with a happy ending. It’s set on the far side of the galaxy, on an all-animal planet called Planimus, which has been governed for generations by a republic called the Democratic Republic of Animal Territories, or D.R.A.T. Then this fascist squirrel rises to power and becomes a dictator, and all the animals who believe in the ideals of democracy have to band together and take their planet back. There’s a swashbuckling cat, a cat senator, an alcoholic lion, a praying mantis who’s the only honest reporter on the planet, and an old turtle who has incredible fighting skills and can use his shell as a shield. A lot of the characters play jazz to unwind.

Kenolta and Bad Pig from Interrogation Scene

Which films or TV shows would you say influenced this one? With actors moving the puppets instead of stop motion, the Muppets seems an obvious comparison to make. What’s similar and what’s different?

The Muppets are obviously a huge, huge influence. I co-wrote it with my old friend Steven Santos, who also edited the footage. The creatures in this thing are mainly Muppet-type characters, although we also have rod puppets, marionettes, and special fighting puppets for the scene where they have karate fights, sword fights, gunfights and stuff. The Coen brothers, Steven Spielberg and Billy Wilder are also really important in terms of tone, because they are able to move freely between very broad comedy and intense drama and back again and it doesn’t feel like you’re getting emotional whiplash. Fargo, the show on FX based on the Coens, is also very good at that. It’ll be really silly one minute, and then it’ll break your heart.

And also maybe Game of Thrones or House of Cards, too, because a lot of the action is about people in government and the military forming alliances and then selling each other out and stabbing each other in the back, sometimes literally. Except instead of Kevin Spacey doing it, it’s a squirrel.

My old friend Wes Anderson is also an influence. It was by studying the way he puts a movie together while writing The Wes Anderson Collection and the Grand Budapest Hotel book that I realized I could do this myself, relatively cheaply. I’ve directed stuff with actors but always in real-world locations, available locations. I never did live action fantasy because I figured it was beyond my reach, budget-wise. Well, Wes makes his films very economically and they look a lot bigger than they are, so I took a close look at how he does it and I learned a lot. Wes basically pre-directs his movies using animatics, which are basically storyboards strung together to make a facsimile of the finished movie.

I did this with my storyboards for Space Rabbit and it allowed me to figure out exactly how long a shot would be, almost down to the second, and then I could have the crew build sets that were exactly to the size and shape of what the camera is seeing, so that we don’t waste time or money building anything the audience will never actually see. There’s a lot less on screen than you think, it’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. The sets are all plywood and cardboard that’s been painted to look like concrete or steel, that kind of thing. We bought nearly everything we needed at a hardware store.

We have a direct shout-out to Wes in our first clip. The alcoholic lion gets arrested and made a fall guy for assassinating the president of the planet, who’s an old goat, and when they put the lion in jail, he’s wearing Owen Wilson’s yellow jumpsuit from the end of Bottle Rocket.

Matt at rehearsal

A sci-fi movie with puppets is certainly an original idea, how did you come up with it?

I’ve been playing with puppets and stuffed animals ever since I was a little kid. I started out creating characters for my little brother from the stuffed animals in his menagerie, then I did the same thing as a grownup when I had kids. These were never cute, harmless characters, though. They were always kind of neurotic and complicated. That’s the Jim Henson influence. Miss Piggy, Fozzie and Kermit are interesting but they’re not always happy-go-lucky, you know what I mean? They have dark nights of the soul, they get jealous, they make mistakes.

Who’s the intended audience? Is this a show for kids, is it just for adults?

Ideally this is the sort of project that parents tell very young children they can’t see, not because of any specific content—there is slapstick violence but no profanity or sex—but because of the political satire aspect, which is very much informed by what’s happening in the country right now. And then they’ll sneak over to some other kid’s house and watch it anyway.


If you want to help Matt make his series, you can support the project on Indiegogo for another month. We don’t yet know the exact release date, but it’ll be exciting to see if Wes beats Matt to the next big animation, or the reverse.

New Wes Anderson book with introduction by Matt Zoller-Seitz

You can already pre order this book that promises to be as beautiful and collectible as the other two “The Wes Anderson Collection” books. Tip: BookDepository.uk is my favorite page to buy books because they are not expensive and the worldwide delivery is free.

This book collects the best artwork from the first five years of “Bad Dads,” an annual exhibition of art inspired by the films of Wes Anderson. Curated by Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco, “Bad Dads” has continued to grow and progress and has featured work from more than four hundred artists. From paintings to sculptures to limited-edition screen prints, the artworks vary greatly in style, but share the imagery and beloved characters from the mind of one of Hollywood’s most noteworthy and imaginative filmmakers. The book features an original cover by graphic artist Max Dalton, a foreword by writer and director Wes Anderson himself, and an introduction by TV and movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz, author of the bestselling Wes Anderson Collection books.

20 years ago

On February 21st 1996, Bottle Rocket was released, the first feature film directed by Wes Anderson.

Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote this beautiful article to commemorate this special date.

Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson exiting Columbia Pictures offices after signing deal to make Bottle Rocket, which was released 20 years ago this week.
Source: Consequence of Sound facebook.

Continue reading “20 years ago”

Friday News Round-Up 6/8/12

  • (Above) Suzy’s earrings have never looked so good than in this artistic poster by Alex Quinn.
  • The Museum of the Moving Image has republished their five-part video series on the Substance of Style for Wes Anderson. The series is extremely detailed, well-researched, and absolutely engrossing. Absolutely recommended.
  • Roman Coppola talks with Interview Magazine regarding his experiences co-writing The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. (Bonus trivia: In the interview, Roman uses the phrase “a memory of a fantasy,” which was coined by an interviewer during Cannes, which was referenced by Wes in his NPR interview.)
  • Watch the full 40 minute Moonrise Kingdom press conference from Cannes over here.
  • Short List has “alternative” designs for the Moonrise Kingdom poster, some of which we’ve featured here before, but it’s worth taking a look at the whole gallery. Certainly telling that the film inspired so many diverse images.

Substance of Style, Part 5

The last one, part 5!

This is the fifth in a five-part series of video essays analyzing the key influences on Wes Anderson’s style. Part 1 covers Bill Melendez, Orson Welles, and François Truffaut. Part 2 covers Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols. Part 3 covers Hal Ashby. Part 4 covers J.D. Salinger.

In defense of The Life Aquatic

Spurred on by Matt Zoller Seitz’s video essays “The Substance of Style,” Jamie Rich has written an eloquent defense of The Life Aquatic, the film in Wes’ oeuvre that has received perhaps the harshest criticism:

That said, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou always seems to be the most maligned of these core films. Invariably, when talking about the movies with others, there is almost a knee-jerk need to claim that it is not as good as its siblings. It’s a comment that is so predictable and automatic, it has become one I no longer trust, at least without some further qualification. More often than not, it’s a movie that its detractors have seen once and never revisited, and whether they realize it or not, their main problem is an inability to forgive it for not being either Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums–which, of course, is absurd and also misses how amorphous the auteur really is. When you think about it, though one can draw a connector between those other films, that Rushmore is about the singular experience of the lone outcast and Tenenbaums is the collective experience of a family of outcasts (and one that Max Fischer might not have necessarily thrived in), they are also quite different. For as much as is made out of Anderson’s signature style, the creator is not as singular as even his ardent fans make him out to be. Though his is a rarefied world, a kind of shared universe where any of these stories could exist side by side in terms of creating a larger whole, each movie is distinctly different. They may have variations on similar themes, the way that, say, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear all mine relatable veins of love both romantic and familial, but they distinguish themselves as separate entities; in tone and setting, the Wes Anderson oeuvre is as vast as those three Shakespeare plays (read more).

The Substance of Style, Part III

The next installment of Matt Zoller Seitz’s video essay at the Museum of the Moving Image has been posted. This one focuses on director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Being There). Seitz concludes:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Anderson’s selective adoration. But when you look at the totality of what Ashby accomplished—the social and political dimensions that all his films explored, the blunt honesty of their expression—Anderson’s work can’t help but come up short, just as the work of Anderson’s imitators is overshadowed by the genuine article.

Our pal Gerry Caravan responds:

Tell Matt Seitz he just made my list of things to do today. In all seriousness, I guess I can see Seitz’s point, but you can only conclude “Anderson’s work can’t help but come up short” when you demand of Anderson’s work the things it is quite pointedly refusing to do.

Part II.
Part I, “Introduction.”

The Substance of Style, Part II

Another video essay from Matt Zoller Seitz at the Museum of the Moving Image. This time, Martin Scorsese, Richard Lester, and Mike Nichols.

Here is Part I, “Introduction.”

“Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style” at the Museum of the Moving Image

Matt Zoller Seitz has created a five-part video essay, Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style, over at the Museum of the Moving Image website. Part I, “Introduction,” is now available for viewing (sorry that no embedded video is available).

With just five features in 13 years, Wes Anderson has established himself as the most influential American filmmaker of the post-Baby Boom generation. Supremely confident in his knowledge of film history and technique, he’s a classic example of the sort of filmmaker that the Cahiers du cinéma critics labeled an auteur—an artist who imprints his personality and preoccupations on each work so strongly that, whatever the contributions of his collaborators, he deserves to be considered the primary author of the film. This series examines some of Anderson’s many cinematic influences and his attempt to meld them into a striking, uniquely personal sensibility…

This series will take the process a step further, juxtaposing Anderson’s cultural influences against his films onscreen, the better to show how he integrates a staggeringly diverse array of source material into a recognizable, and widely imitated, whole. It will examine some, but certainly not all, of Anderson’s evident inspirations. Along the way, it may incidentally illuminate why Anderson-esque movies—from Garden State to Son of Rambow—can seem, no matter what their virtues or pleasures, a weak substitute for the real thing. (link for more)

You may remember Matt’s A Little Love: The Art of Bill Melendez (posted after the break). Discuss this video essay over at the Yankee Racers forum. Thanks to Racer Loraxaeon for the lead!

Continue reading ““Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style” at the Museum of the Moving Image”