Wes Anderson returns with a densely packed New Yorker homage, The French Dispatch
Meanwhile, Todd Haynes’ The Velvet Underground documentary blows the roof off of NYFF
Film Features Anderson
“Dense” might be the only appropriate adjective to describe both the New York Film Festival’s complete lineup—which encompasses works from new voices and old maestros, restored classics and uncovered gems, artist discussions, experimental programs, and a bevy of short films—and Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, a visual recreation of an issue of the eponymous weekly, itself a knock-off of/homage to The New Yorker.
Anderson submerges his audience in profound detail from the first moments, which explain the American origins of the magazine and its founder, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). Structurally, the film deploys New Yorker-esque section headings to sub-divide three self-contained tales (or “stories,” in journalistic parlance) and a scene report of the publication’s fictional home base, Ennui-sur-Blasé. Actors deliver exposition at the same rapid speed as Anderson delivers visual punchlines. Symmetrical compositions obviously abound, but they rarely linger long enough for anyone to be entranced or annoyed by them. (It’s worth noting that Anderson employs a handheld camera here more often than he has in the past decade.) The sheer number of characters and scenes and incidents will leave even the most attentive viewer dizzy and drunk on style.
Anderson has never been particularly interested in pandering to those disinterested in his particular flavor. Even judged on those terms, The French Dispatch is a niche proposition. There’s the aforementioned sheer concentration of material, of course, but also the unabashed New Yorker fandom (many if not most of the French Dispatch staff have real-life New Yorker counterparts, and at least two of the tales are based on real pieces), the cinematic homages to the French New Wave (especially Godard’s La Chinoise in the second section), and the nostalgic veneration of high/fine/French culture. All of this will either amuse or annoy. Even for those predisposed to his sensibility, the film might look like “one for him.”
Each of the tales and the scene report can be sketchily described as “love letters” to different artistic mediums, but they all feel like romances. The first tale, “The Concrete Masterpiece,” follows an incarcerated painter (Benicio del Toro) who finds his muse in a beautiful prison guard (Léa Seydoux) whose work eventually gains the attention of an avaricious art dealer (Adrien Brody). The second, “Revisions To A Manifesto,” finds journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) on the scene of a May ’68-inspired revolution, tracking the movements of a leading student revolutionary (Timothée Chalamet) and his frenemy (Lyna Khoudri). The third, “The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner,” takes the form of a culinary report by a James Baldwin-esque writer, Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), which covers a meal prepared by chef and Lieutenant Nescaffier (Stephen Park) for the Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric) that’s interrupted when the latter’s young son is kidnapped by an underworld gang. The common denominator for all of these stories is ardor, either for a person, an art form, a cause, or even just an unexpected event that reinvigorates a passion for one’s reason for living. Anderson exhibits a disarming earnestness for physical and ineffable beauty. Sex, fine art, food, and the written word are all one and the same in The French Dispatch.
Anderson’s films are all comedies on some level, but The French Dispatch takes a MAD magazine approach, stuffing each shot with enough sight gags and visual puns that you could potentially perform a frame-by-frame analysis and still not catch all of them. There’s a general silliness at play here that takes some of the starch out of the film’s premise, like how the student revolutionaries use chessboards as one of many battlefields on which to wage their war, or how the obligatory third-act chase adopts the visual styling of a New Yorker cartoon. Thankfully, it never veers into full wackiness. Nevertheless, Anderson employs a light touch with serious topics, if only to create fluid transitions between scenes and locations, and to not get too bogged down in the melancholic muck.
However, as is the case with all Anderson films, the lightness is deceptive. Each section of The French Dispatch concerns bloodshed in the form of murder, suicide, and war. Beyond the literal violence is a bone-deep wistfulness towards lost ideas and artifacts and people. It’s no coincidence that The French Dispatch covers the magazine’s final issue; finality permeates the entire film. Anderson embraces the past without succumbing to a reactionary stance. He does this by focusing on people reaching out to people and giving them their proper due, either in life or in print.
Another film about a bygone era of creation comes from director Todd Haynes (Carol, Safe), whose new documentary The Velvet Underground covers the rise and fall of the eponymous experimental rock band, focusing on Lou Reed and John Cale’s culture-changing friendship and their relationship with Andy Warhol. Yet Haynes doesn’t limit his survey to the band or its members. Instead, he partially uses the story of the Velvets as a springboard to profile the ’60s avant-garde scene in New York, with particular attention paid to filmmaker Jonas Mekas (to whom the film is dedicated) and minimalist composer La Monte Young, whose drone music was a major influence on the experimental art of the era. The Velvet Underground explores “a scene,” one that was fluid, multi-disciplined, and fiercely countercultural.
The Velvet Underground outright rejects the typical form of a music documentary. Instead, Haynes embraces experimental traditions: He takes his primary visual cue from Warhol’s Chelsea Girls by employing split screen, with one side of the frame sometimes featuring selections from Warhol’s Screen Tests and the other side featuring free-floating associative imagery, either archival footage or inspired material. Talking head interviews frequently play over or against the soundtrack; they’re rarely given the floor, so to speak. Haynes follows a chronological timeline (essentially from Reed’s birth up through his last appearance with the group at Max’s Kansas City), but he frequently digresses to paint portraits of the Factory, Nico, some of Reed’s influences (like poet Delmore Schwartz), and New York as a hub of dangerous and innovative artistic movements. The Velvet Underground is less of a Wikipedia article and more of a cinematic treatment of the band as a microcosm of a dam breaking open in American culture.
With that said, Haynes’ film will be manna from heaven for any fan of the Velvets. The film occasionally indulges in hagiography (appropriately so, in this critic’s opinion), but Haynes is much more interested in placing the band in context and illustrating how it embodied ideas brimming in the underground, some of which eventually broke through to the mainstream. “You would need physics to describe this band at their peak,” one person notes near the end of the film, and The Velvet Underground successfully demonstrates why that is while also embracing the limits of light and sound to do them justice. See the film on the big screen if you can. And tell them to play it loud.
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I hope bill murray punches his wife and threatens to murder her in this one, oh no wait that was real life
I just came back from the NYFF screening of VELVET UNDERGROUND. I had been a bit nervous about Todd Haynes’s decision to make a conventional rock doc, especially one lined-up for Apple TV (Plus? They’re all Plus). This was asked during the Q&A as well: why not go the I’M NOT THERE or VELVET GOLDMINE route? Why not make it with Barbie dolls? Todd Haynes said that this was a film about artists and so the artists needed to speak for themselves instead of being couched in artifice. Needless to say, it blew away my expectations and my eardrums. If it has any flaw it’s that it almost seems to fly by much too quickly, especially after John Cale leaves the group.
Unlike Haynes’s other music films I think this is one that has appeal for both the veteran and the neophyte, and for a band as formative and essential as the Velvets I can’t see that as a bad thing. I felt myself imagining being a gangly teen again, hearing about this scene for the first time and dreaming of living in New York. How much I would have loved this film, needed this film, back then. Then I remembered all I had to do to see the world of the film up close was step outside. NYFF itself even gets a plug in the movie. People in the audience cheered and giggled at certain moments like they were there when it happened. They probably were.
I love Wes Anderson but continue to be vexed by the love Royal Tenenbaums gets. Don’t get me wrong, I see its charm, but it’s frequently invoked as his best film. For me it ranks as my personal least favorite (not counting Darjeeling Limited, the only Anderson film I still haven’t seen). Am I alone on this? In my book it’s either Grand Budapest Hotel or Rushmore duking it out for supremacy, perhaps with Moonrise Kingdom or even Fantastic Mr. Fox or Isle of Dogs a distant third. Am I nuts?
I think a large part of it comes from The Royal Tenenbaums being right at the event horizon of Wes Anderson’s style, clearly idiosyncratic and with all the same preoccupations and aesthetics as his later work but without feeling quite as closed-off and fussy as everything since. It’s undoubtedly a movie by Wes Anderson, but it’s the last one that didn’t feel like it was exclusively for Wes Anderson with everyone else invited along for the ride in case they happen to enjoy it too.If I were to compare Anderson’s career to Fellini’s (and I think there’s plenty to say with that comparison), The Royal Tenenbaums would be his La Dolce Vita. You can see the experience gained from where he’s been, and you can tell where he’s going, but it was the last film he made as a director with a style before becoming a director as a brand (which I don’t mean as an insult but I hope it conveys what I’m trying to say here), and I think that just happened to be the sweet spot for a lot of people.
I’d agree that a lot of it is timing. A lot of viewers who liked Tenenbaums as a progression from Bottle Rocket/Rushmore, weren’t crazy about Life Aquatic, or Darjeeling. Then Fantastic Mr. Fox feels somehow in a different comparative category, so by the time of Moonrise, there’s been a decade for fans to solidify how they felt about it.I do think that Grand Budapest was strong enough to take the top spot for many people.
Full disclosure, The Royal Tenenbaums is one of my all-time favorite movies but I find a lot of later-era Anderson a bit too precious for my liking (Moonrise Kingdom in particular baffles me, I find that movie actively unpleasant and cannot comprehend the love it gets, so I just chalk it up to “not for me” and move on), but even I can’t deny the charms of The Grand Budapest Hotel. It feels like a culmination of everything good he’d been doing since The Life Aquatic while ditching or mitigating everything bad, and I can’t help but think that without another evolution like we saw after Tenenbaums, it’s just going to be diminishing returns from here on out.
You’re not nuts. Tenenbaums for me is fine. Granted I haven’t seen it in years, but I saw it for the first time after I had seen the brilliant Grand Budapest Hotel and Rushmore (my #1 and #2). If I were to rank the others: 3. Moonrise Kingdom. 4. Isle of Dogs. 5. Fantastic Mr. Fox. 6. Life Aquatic. 7. Royal Tenenbaums. 8. Darjeeling Limited. I haven’t seen Bottle Rocket.
My list is almost identical to yours. I almost don’t even count Bottle Rocket as an Anderson film, which I saw a million years ago. I don’t remember anything about it besides being underwhelmed overall, though impressed at what I thought were the acting chops of the Wilson brothers. In retrospect I think they’re really charming, which is different than being a great actor but is certainly nice to have if you want to be a movie star.
(I think that was all that Robert Redford ever had.)
Considering Anderson made Bottle Rocket with a bunch of his Austin buddies, including the Wilsons, it’s not surprising that the whole thing has a “let’s make a movie!” vibe to it. It’s a good hangout movie but you’re correct that it bears little resemblance to the others where he actually had some resources to throw at his visions.
I put Darjeeling and Life Aquatic higher. I cannot give a specific reason, though, except for Darjeeling it is at least partially due to personal family history. I have had zero desire to see the animated ones. Bottle Rocket is worth a look for completist reasons, though I do not need to see it again. Maybe there is an inflection point in a career where a director gets bigger than the actors, and that changes everything.
Royal Tenenbaums is fairly low on my list as well. Moonrise Kingdom is the only one that fell on rewatch, whilst every other film has benefitted from rewatches, and I continue to appreciate them even more. Darjeeling Limited probably most of all.
Dude, you’re NOT the only one who doesn’t enjoy Royal Tenenbaums. I mean, I can get what Wes Anderson was going for here with a film about family, but it wasn’t my cup of tea. Even with his style still growing and developing, it was quite impressively ambitious, though the execution still fall short of his later films that utilize his style far better with greater success.My favorite films from his portfolio has to be Grand Budapest Hotel for being the most perfect distillation of his style and taste in cinematic experiences with just the perfect mixture of whimsical and macabre tones. It is almost as if Wes Anderson grew up through his works and crafted a film that isn’t afraid to get dark and serious and sad just when it needed to, embracing the depth of how far humans can go to reach where they want to be.Another few films of his that I enjoyed are Moonrise Kingdom, Mr. Fantastic Fox, and Isle of Dogs. He can make wonderful films, though he’s not immune from making some duds as well, pretty much like everyone else.Hopefully The French Dispatch would be another winner that I can enjoy.
I never finished The Royal Tenenbaums. I saw some of it, found it unpleasant and just stopped watching. It was my introduction to Wes Anderson.My favorite would be Fantastic Mr. Fox. He seems like he’d prefer dealing with props to actual human beings, so stop-motion is well suited for him.
Interestingly, that wasn’t my first Wes Anderson film. That would has to be The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou a long time ago. I remember that it was a surreal film about oceanographer exploring strange creatures of the deep.His film that I thoroughly enjoyed for first time was a second one in my experience, Mr. Fantastic Fox. That showed me how capable Wes Anderson truly is as filmmaker with vision and ambitions. Moonrise Kingdom held true to that and it wasn’t until Grand Budapest Hotel that I thought it was his very best work. Isle of Dogs didn’t wowed me like before, but I still enjoyed it.Agreed about stop-motion works, it fits his style extremely well.
concurred! except about isle of dogs, i really liked it.
i think the life aquatic get better after a few viewings; it definitely did for me as it’s now my favourite film of his.
i’d be overjoyed if wes anderson made nothing but stop-motion films for the rest of his career.
Murray announcing he would be commissioning a new mission to get revenge on the shark that ate his partner (with dynamite, probably) has me rolling every time. It’s probably the most fun of his movies.
I think it’s the most emotionally resonant for a lot of people. After he stopped writing with Owen Wilson the emotions in his films get very muted (Life Aquatic being the exception). There are still deep emotions there, but they’re buried as if the movie is a Thanksgiving in Connecticut. His films feel more and more controlled as they go on, and the characters’ emotions do as well. The Brechtian elements tend to drown out the deep feelings, and makes it harder to feel them in a visceral way.
Yeesh this is a very off-putting comment thread. So much pretentiousness. One person said “whilst”! Maybe you didn’t mean to bring out the “well actually, good things are bad” boys, since you just said royal tenebaums wasn’t your fav… but still, everything following your comment is weird! A lot of people like royal tenebaums. Maybe it’s nostalgia (it’s also very good). No one here has articulated why exactly they don’t like it… though most everyone made a point to say they haven’t seen it in a while. Maybe rewatch it? Because all of you come off as just hating something for being popular (its also not that popular so don’t worry, your hipster cred will remain if you do end up liking it).
Tenenbaums just made me laugh in unexpected ways. Ritchie’s on-court breakdown at Wimbledon being a great example, when he takes off one of his shoes and then starts crying. His dad’s complaint that it cost him a lot of money on lost bets was the capper.
I think it all depends on which Wes Anderson movie was the first one you ever saw, and The Royal Tenenbaums definitely got the widest release up ‘till then, via Touchstone; subsequently, as a Belgian teenager at the time, it was also my introduction to his style of filmmaking.That being said, I’ve gone back in his discography since then, and Rushmore is definitely the one that excels from his earlier works – made clear by the fact that I’ve watched it at least four times by now, introducing it to friends and lovers. Tenenbaums, on the other hand, has significantly sunk in my ratings of his overall work, as it has little of value to offer upon rewatch.From his later movies, I also prefer Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel, and as an avid reader of The New Yorker, I’m looking forward to viewing this one at the cinema.
Tenenbaums is in the upper-middle of the pack for me — the one-two punch of Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel (each my favourite film of their respective years) is going to be very hard for him to ever top.
Royal Tenenbaums is a pretty great film – really well written, wonderful performances, and there’s a depth to it that I think gets overshadowed sometimes by a focus on Anderson’s “style.” But, no , it’s not my favourite, for sure. I’m glad to see so much love in this thread for Moonrise Kingdom, which I think is his best, and which, along with Rushmore and Grand Budapest Hotel make up my top 3.
Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel coming out in 2012 and 2014 is a hell of a couple of years.
I expect if everyone on this thread force-ranked Anderson’s films those three would be the consensus winners.
That’s me with Rushmore, a movie I straight-up do not like period (let’s watch a creep be a creep for a whole fucking movie!) but people just adore it.
I get it. I discovered Rushmore when I was a freshman in college and I identified with Max in a way that felt almost painful. I saw a very recent version of my high school self: a dreamer who clearly had unrealistic expectations about who they were and what they could achieve; someone perhaps a little too preoccupied with the appearance and projection of culture and sophistication; someone who wanted to be thought of as smart, and was smart, but nowhere near as smart as they wanted people to think they were, etc. And yes, a little bit of a creep in terms of thinking just because you love someone — or really, at that age, are infatuated with someone since you probably have no real concept of what love truly is — that somehow means you have a connection to them, or a right to pursue them. And having difficulty accepting no matter how many French films you’ve watched or obscure 60s folk songs you listen to or poems you conspicuously read under an old oak tree, they don’t love you back and they don’t need to explain why, you just need to accept it and grow the fuck up. There’s a version of the story where Max never really grows up and becomes a “nice guy”, a truly terrible asshole. I like to think he got his shit together though.
Royal Tenenbaums was pretty much my last straw with him as a filmmaker.
Royal Tenenbaums is still my favorite with Grand Budapest and Moonrise Kingdom second and third. I don’t know what’s not to love about it. And it feels more emotionally sincere than a lot of his other work.
For me it comes down to Royal, the character. I loved everyone and everything around him but I personally just found Royal himself really irredeemable. I didn’t find his antics amusing or mischievous, just flat out abusive. I’m sure there is message in the movie about loving people, especially family, despite their flaws, and sometimes those flaws manifest in ways that make people seem selfish or anti-social, but there’s a nugget of good inside, etc etc. But it was just too much for me to look past. I was just like “ugh get rid of this lying asshole already.”
I guess I thought the message was different. To me it was the we love who we love. People are often loved far beyond what they deserve and the movie explores both the bad and the good of that. Plenty of people sincerely love horrible parents and horrible siblings and horrible spouses. Their love is real.Royal at least realized that he was loved beyond his desserts and made an effort to do better, which improved his kids’ lives while they also found a way to have more healthy boundaries with him, both closer and further away. To me, it was a movie about making progress even when you don’t end up where you might have hoped to be.
I actually think the movie is about how we all want to be loved but often end up being unlovable or doing unlovable things in pursuit of that. Royal lied and manipulated. Margo lied, hid and cheated. Ritchie cut himself off from everyone. Chas became an overbearing control freak. Eli became an addict. And then Etheline was very emotionally unavailable after all her years with Royal. Then they all see that need to be loved in each other and decide to just do it and they all get a little of what they need.
Say what you will, but he certainly inspired me to ghost write a compelling tombstone epitaph.
1) Grand Budapest Hotel
2) RushmoreAs far as I’m concerned, he’s made one amazing movie, one excellent movie, and a bunch of B-’s.
Darjeeling has really grown on me. Give it another chance.
Darjeeling might be my favorite Anderson film, but I love tenenbaums as well.
I still, and always will, put Bottle Rocket in my top 3. But Grand Budapest is probably still the best. I like Tenenbaums, but you’re right. He has surpassed that one several times since its release.
Well lucky you, because Darjeeling Limited is his best movie. The best is yet to come
I’d argue for many Royal Tenenbaums was the first Wes Anderson movie they saw. It was his biggest hit of his earlier films and it very much made the cable rounds back when cable was still how most people discovered things. I’d also argue the cast helped with that. It had some pretty recognizable names in Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Gwnyth Paltrow (at the height of her acting fame), Ben Stiller. My dad, for example, couldn’t care less about Wes Anderson, but he sure wanted to see a Gene Hackman movie.
For a personal favorite moment in a film of any genre, Ben Stiller poking his head out from the back of that garbage truck ranks way up there.
I’m curious to know if part of Royal Tenenbaums’ popularity is because it is the closest Salinger fans will probably ever get to having a movie of the Glass family stories.I also think the subject of the film is compelling given that most people know some gifted kid when they are younger who doesn’t end up living up to that early promise.
Those comparisons actually got me to read all of Salinger’s works one summer. I was young then…probably would have a much deeper takeaway now after reading…but agreed, it’s a pretty spot-on non-adaptation/adaptation.
You are alone.
Rushmore is definitely my favorite, but that might just be because it was filmed in Houston while I was in highschool there and me and a bunch of my friends are in it.
Anderson went to St. John’s (and filmed parts of Rushmore there), correct?
Rushmore, TRT, everything else.
I agree with you. Tenenbaums is not my favorite.
For someone like myself, I had seen “Bottle Rocket” well before I even knew it was connected to “Rushmore”…Kumar Pallana being cast was my only reason to go back and check if these were the same “guys” making this movie. Didn’t even recognize Luke Wilson when I was a young’un, that being the more OBVIOUS connection. They seem like two different worlds if you’re not a cinephile.
So when “The Royal Tenenbaums” came out, I was happy as a clam to see the stylistic follow-up to “Rushmore”. And with that giant cast (well…giant for the time), it was great to see more of my friends and family enjoy what Anderson & Co. had to offer.
Basically, it seems whatever flick was one’s entry point really DOES have something to do with whether they enjoy one of his other movies or not. I’m way too close to “Tenenbaums” on a personal level to probably go back and watch it from a critical standpoint. That being said, it is good to hear your share how it doesn’t work for you, if only to recognize how much viewers can identify strength in his other projects.
I think it was just being in a theater watching Tenenbaums for the first time and every single one of those perfectly scored moments from “Hey Jude” to “These Days” to “Needle In The Hay” just absolutely sucking all the air out of the room and everyone getting swept away with it. Grand Budapest and Moonrise Kingdom are his best works, I agree, but there was something of a sea change while watching Tenenbaums that I hadn’t anticipated after seeing Rushmore; and after Tenenbaums we all sort of knew what Anderson’s potential was so while Grand Budapest was absolutely a masterpiece, it wasn’t that same feeling of “WHOA I didn’t expect this mastery” while watching it.
rushmore is my fav….followed closely by bottlerocket and grand budapest.tennenbaums follows after that. it seems like that was the last movie where his style didnt go full overdrive, not thats its necessarily a bad thing. its also the first one to go dark, granted bottlerocket and rushmore have their moments.
rushmore is my fav….followed closely by bottlerocket and grand budapest.tennenbaums follows after that. it seems like that was the last movie where his style didnt go full overdrive, not thats its necessarily a bad thing. its also the first one to go dark, granted bottlerocket and rushmore have their moments.
Is it possible to have a Wes Anderson-related article that isn’t immediately taken over by commenters volunteering the way they’d personally rank his filmography? Because I’ve never seen it not happen.It’s one of the few constants in the rapidly changing AV Club landscape of the last few years—like death and taxes. Also riffing on movie titles and complaining about A. A. Dowd letter grades.
It’s comforting in its predictability. And in how wrong they all are, because Life Aquatic is so clearly the best.
Nope. Same with the MCU and the Halloween franchises. It’s just part of the fun.
the last jedi* runs away *
A Wes Anderson Star Wars movie would be interesting. But the universe needs more pastels. I don’t see how it would work with the primary colors being black and white.
Is it really so shocking that Wes Anderson fans have a compulsion to fastidiously organize things?
of the WesAnderson-related comment commentary I’d rank yours as the 2nd or 3rd most relevant but the “death and taxes” seems derivative.(https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/05/11/taxes/)
During my brief time living in New York, I thought it would be cool to subscribe to the New Yorker. I wish I’d seen this first…
Wes Anderson is never less than fully in control of his particular powers as a director, but you can’t help but miss the early days when there was a little more heart and anarchy injected into the proceedings. Grand Budapest Hotel is the absolute peak of his form in live-action, every single thing is note-perfect and structured within an inch of its life, but the emotions don’t run as deep as he thinks they do. He tends to smother that stuff now in his style. Still, there is perhaps no living director where you can be more sure of what you’re getting when you buy a ticket – and thus, your satisfaction will at least be met.
I completely disagree — Grand Budapest I’d call his most emotional film.
If we’re using Grand Budapest as the peak, I think it’s hard to actually know where it’s going to go from here until more people actually see French Dispatch. You could well be right, but Grand Budapest was his last live action movie so to compare a pre- and post- of that for patterns is kind of impossible right now.
You have to admire the shit out of Wes Anderson’s absolute refusal to not make movies for upper-class, white New Yorkers and nobody else. He knows his own points of reference in life extremely well and if you don’t like it, sucks to suck.
to me, the final products speak a lot less to that than of the kind of person who likes that world but never quite feels a part of it. most of his movies are about outcasts and miscreants on the fringes of those scenes, either they don’t belong economically or do belong economically but have fucked it all up. and don’t forget he’s not some rich new yorker, he’s just a kid from texas after all.all i’m saying is that i fell in love with anderson as a teen living in the middle of nowhere, and i think he speaks a lot more to people like me than it might appear.
A bit reductive, given that he grew up in Houston, graduated from the University of Texas, co-wrote his first film (Bottle Rocket) with his roommate from UT whom he also cast in it, and then filmed his first major movie (Rushmore) in Houston — largely at his old high school. His mom, a Houston real estate agent, is literally named Texas Anderson.He’s probably reached the point now where he’s lived out of Texas longer than he lived there, but I think you’re underselling his personal points of reference and the breadth of folks who appreciate them.
Of course 99% of fanatical New Yorkers, just like fanatical San Franciscans, come from Texas, or Iowa or similar mid-American place and within five years become the sort of people who unironically say “I could never live outside of“ (although Anderson himself has left New York for Paris in recent years, although Paris, like London, is another one of those cities that newcomers become boosters of). People actually from these places originally have a more mixed view, and mostly are upset of how everything’s gotten so expensive and crowded over the last thirty years.
The Life Aquatic. Fantastic Mr. Fox. Rushmore. Top 3. Shame on all of your for leaving out Team Zissou!!!!