![\"bottlerocket\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/bottlerocket.jpg\")
\nWes Anderson is capable of perfect moments like this. But I don’t think he even cares.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nWes Anderson is capable of perfect moments like this. But I don’t think he even cares.<\/i><\/p>\n
I love him, don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m a Wes Anderson fan. I really am. Every single one of his movies are either very good or great. Well, almost<\/i> every single one. His latest, Moonrise Kingdom<\/a>, is quite bad. And that worries me. Because until it, Anderson had that whole \u2018style and<\/i> substance\u2019 thing down pat\u2014and then suddenly, not so much. To the untrained eye, one might assume it was simply a much-needed slapdash, throwaway, breather film after the hard work and meticulousness of Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/a>. But I suspect something worse going on. I suspect hackery.<\/span> It hurts to realize that an artist doesn\u2019t care as much as you do about their own work, or even put as much thought into said work as you might have hoped. I experienced this very crushing blow this past week when I watched, or rather, tried to watch, the audio commentary for Bottle Rocket<\/a>, right after re-watching it for the first time in many years and re-realizing how absolutely fantastic it is. This was a movie I watched incessantly as a teenager, and it certainly helped calcify my desire to make movies of my own, so to say I love it is an understatement. I didn\u2019t get too far into the commentary though, because it was pretty brutal.<\/p>\n From the start, it\u2019s clear that Anderson and Owen Wilson do not want to be there. It then also becomes clear, quite quickly, that they don\u2019t even remember what\u2019s in<\/i> the movie. In their mind, they\u2019ve lumped it in the same pile as the black and white Bottle Rocket short they did a few years before it (which got them the money to make the feature-length version) and can hardly remember what scenes are in each. From their tone, you\u2019d swear they were watching some shoddy student film they made as youths, rather than one of the absolute greatest debut films of all time. They come across as disaffected and bored as if you plucked two random teens from the audience of Fast & Furious 6<\/a> and sat them in front of this movie and gave them microphones.<\/p>\n What exactly is<\/i> Wes Anderson scoffing at here? Is it the fact that Bottle Rocket doesn\u2019t feature the signature Wes Anderson design and colors and tint? For that matter, Rushmore<\/a> doesn\u2019t either. In small doses, sure it does (just like Bottle Rocket) but the iconic \u2018Wes Anderson style\u2019 really didn\u2019t begin until The Royal Tenenbaums<\/a>. He was cultivating a much different style before then; a more subtle, mature style. And then from Royal onwards, things got kooky.<\/p>\n I have no problem with \u2018kooky\u2019. If a movie works, it works. I\u2019ll roll with any style you can throw at me so long as there\u2019s substance there, and the two mesh. For instance, I\u2019ve long been a hater of shakycam in instances where the cameraperson is not a character in the film\u2014that is, until I saw La Promesse<\/a>. The Dardenne brothers do it right. They plan their shots beautifully and the pace takes on a certain rhythm that just could not have been achieved any other way. They\u2019re the unsung kings of shakycam, no doubt about it.<\/p>\n Similarly, it\u2019s safe to say Anderson is the king of kook. Even if you don\u2019t like his style, his style is<\/i> distinct, and synonymous with him. That\u2019s a hell of an achievement, but it\u2019s a blessing and a curse. Just look at the career of Tim Burton. When your style is distinct as hell, and has a diehard following that is obsessed with it, it\u2019s quite easy and tempting to stop putting actual effort in and just coast\u2014and Moonrise Kingdom is definitely Anderson\u2019s first \u2018coast movie\u2019.<\/p>\n But perhaps other ones were that as well. His ambivalence towards Bottle Rocket really unnerved me, and made me wonder if he even puts much thought into any<\/em> of his\u00a0movies. I have no doubt that he\u2019s a highly intelligent guy, but the impression of him that I\u2019ve had in my mind since I was a teen, of this extremely meticulous and deliberate filmmaker, might \u00a0in fact be quite far off. Perhaps he just coasts on his own impeccable instincts and taste.<\/p>\n If that’s true, fine. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with that. It\u2019s worked great for him almost every film. Some kids need to study all night to ace a test, some kids can just show up and ace it\u2014and ultimately, all I care about, as a filmgoer, is that said test is aced. But in a perfect world where I can have whatever I want, I\u2019d prefer Anderson go back to making films like Bottle Rocket and Rushmore again; smaller pictures with smaller brush strokes. Every book in a film doesn\u2019t need to have an elaborately designed cover, Wes. Maybe someone can pick up a book with no<\/em> cover once in a while, ya feel me? Such a thing might keep the focus on the characters.\u00a0But alas, do whatever you want, buddy. Just make it good. Here\u2019s hoping The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/a> is dope. I\u2019m quite intrigued by the fact that it\u2019s your first solo screenwriting credit. (My fingers are crossed that this is because you got sick of that perennial hack Roman Coppola after Moonrise and decided to just bang one out on your own for once.) Anyways, see ya in 2014, in theaters, as always.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love him, don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m a Wes Anderson fan. I really am. Every single one of his movies are either very good or great. Well, almost<\/i> every single one. His latest, Moonrise Kingdom<\/a>, is quite bad. And that worries me. Because until it, Anderson had that whole \u2018style and<\/i> substance\u2019 thing down pat\u2014and then suddenly, not so much. To the untrained eye, one might assume it was simply a much-needed slapdash, throwaway, breather film after the hard work and meticulousness of Fantastic Mr. Fox<\/a>. But I suspect something worse going on. I suspect hackery.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,18],"tags":[2481,2490,32,1974,2488,2489,2484,2491,2492,2495,2486,2493,2485,2482,2002,2487,2325,104,185,2496,2483,2494,2480],"class_list":["post-3087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysessays","tag-bottle-rocket","tag-bottle-rocket-commentary","tag-cody-clarke","tag-dardenne-brothers","tag-delirious","tag-eddie-murphy","tag-fantastic-mr-fox","tag-fast-furious-6","tag-fast-and-furious-6","tag-grand-budapest-hotel","tag-jay-mohr","tag-la-promesse","tag-mohr-stories","tag-moonrise-kingdom","tag-owen-wilson","tag-pluto-nash","tag-rushmore","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-the-grand-budapest-hotel","tag-the-royal-tenenbaums","tag-tim-burton","tag-wes-anderson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3087"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3774,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3087\/revisions\/3774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThere\u2019s a saying that one should never meet their idols. Jay Mohr tells a sad story about this on his podcast\u00a0Mohr Stories<\/a>, about\u00a0being on the set of Pluto Nash<\/a> talking to Eddie Murphy and bringing up one of his favorite standup bits of all time, from Delirious<\/a>, in which Eddie impersonates his father complaining to Eddie that the family dog is stupid and doesn\u2019t know his own name. The father then \u2018proves\u2019 this by calling the dog\u2019s name\u2014to which the dog suddenly walks away, and the Dad says \u201cSee?\u201d This is one of Jay\u2019s favorite jokes of all time, because the dog does<\/i> in fact know his own name, he just doesn’t like Eddie’s dad. Apparently, Eddie Murphy had never considered this, or at least, didn\u2019t even remember this layer to the joke. And later, he came back to Jay and said \u201cYeah, I see what you mean, I guess that\u2019s one of those like, three-dimensional jokes,\u201d still not really caring though.<\/p>\n
\nWes Anderson is capable of perfect moments like this. But I don’t think he even cares.<\/i><\/p>\n