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Famous Like Me > Director > A > Wes Anderson

Profile of Wes Anderson on Famous Like Me

 
Name: Wes Anderson  
   
Also Know As:
   
Date of Birth: 1st May 1969
   
Place of Birth: Houston, Texas, USA
   
Profession: Director
 
 
From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia
Filmmaker Wes Anderson.

Wesley Wales Anderson (born May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas) is an American writer, producer, and director of films and commercials. He attended St. John's School, a private school in Houston, which was later used as a filming location for Rushmore. Anderson then studied philosophy at the University of Texas, where he met future collaborator Owen Wilson.

Films

Films directed by Anderson are full of subtleties, and often need to be seen several times in order to be appreciated. Common among all his films is the complete absence of major villains: his characters may be misguided and might cause others pain, but are always without malice. The lack of traditional antagonists prompts Anderson's characters to interact with each other in a more intimate fashion, locating their problems within themselves and their beloved friends or family rather than in enemies to be defeated.

Anderson cites his influences as including in particular French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut and Louis Malle, with whom his films share vivid characterization and a tragicomic sensibility: Anderson's works are considered comedies, though they appeal to an acquired sense of humor. Those who acquire this taste become avid fans and look forward to the release of each new film. Contemporary works with similar philosophies of story and character interaction might include Jeunet's Amélie (2001) or, less obviously, Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003).

Anderson's more recent films, notably The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), have a pageant-like feel. The camera remains stationary in many instances, allowing the audience to study the focus of the scene. The scenes themselves are framed with detailed props, background characters, and vibrant colors, all of which support and enrich the main characters and their emotionally open dialogue. Anderson is also adept at incorporating elements of theater into his films, such as the plays and scene cues in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums or the elaborate sets of The Life Aquatic. Anderson's multifaceted pictures are complemented by the work of composer (and Devo singer) Mark Mothersbaugh, who wrote instrumental tracks for Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic. Actor and musician Seu Jorge also contributed to the soundtrack for The Life Aquatic with live acoustic renditions of David Bowie songs in Portuguese.

Anderson's films can also be seen in terms of the themes of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. No one—not even a washout like Herman Blume or Steve Zissou (Bill Murray in Rushmore and The Life Aquatic) nor a deceitful schmuck like Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums)—is beyond redemption. Anderson's characters are separated by all kinds of barriers, but the barriers are gradually overcome as they recognize the flaws and true desires in themselves and others. Typically, an Anderson film ends with several different narrative threads being resolved, relationships being restored, and things both trivial and significant being brought back to their rightful places.

Also of note: each Anderson film involves some characters in uniforms or jumpsuits, and each film ends in slow-motion.

Personnel

Anderson has created each of his films with many of the same actors and other crew. Actor Owen Wilson co-wrote Wes Anderson's first three films and has appeared in major roles in three of Anderson's films (he briefly appears twice in Rushmore. First as a go-kart driver, and later as "Edward Appleby" in a framed picture). Actors Bill Murray, Kumar Pallana, his son Dipak Pallana, Stephen Dignan, Andrew Wilson (the "third" Wilson brother, after Luke and Owen), Luke Wilson, Brian Tenenbaum, Eric Chase Anderson, and Seymour Cassel have each appeared in three. Anjelica Huston has appeared in two. Jason Schwartzman has appeared in only one Anderson film, though he was rumored to have been the first choice for a role in Life Aquatic, yet was unavaliable.

The Pallanas, Seymour Cassel, Brian Tenenbaum, Stephen Dignan, Eric Anderson (in his roles on film as opposed to behind the scenes), and Andrew Wilson often have smaller, yet still important roles.

Mark Mothersbaugh (as mentioned above) has been involved in the scoring of multiple Anderson films, and Wes Anderson's brother, Eric Anderson, has been involved in set design for several of the films and had very minor parts in three.

Recent work

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou marked Anderson's first use of serious special effects, as the creatures of the underwater locales featured in the movie were created through stop-motion animation. His interest in stop-motion animation will emerge as a full-length project, his next film: a claymation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr Fox.

In 2005, Anderson produced The Squid and the Whale, directed by Life Aquatic co-writer Noah Baumbach. It garnered two awards at the Sundance Film Festival.

Acclaim and criticism

Anderson is unique among filmmakers in that his are the only films guaranteed a spot on the prestigious Criterion Collection DVD label. Both the Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic discs were in preparation as the films themselves were in production; usually, it is only after a film has been released that it may be selected as meriting the Criterion spine label.

Critical reviews of Anderson's work, however, have been decidedly mixed. Especially after Rushmore, some critics have found the filmmaker's idiosyncratic tastes for acting and visual presentation to be overwrought, pretentious, and ultimately devoid of emotional substance. A common theme among reviews of Anderson's work is that he has a style which the viewer either buys into and loves, or does not accept and instead finds annoying and overly precious.

In an article titled "The Next Scorsese" for the March 2000 edition of Esquire, director Martin Scorsese himself nominated Wes Anderson as "The Next Scorsese", and has elsewhere pinned Anderson as his favorite new director of the 1990s.

Filmography

  • Bottle Rocket (short) (1994)
  • Bottle Rocket (1996)
  • Rushmore (1998)
  • The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
  • The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
  • Fantastic Mr. Fox (2006)

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Wes Anderson