I’ve been drawing water from my Wes Anderson past for over 25 years now. The glorious ’90s plus The Royal Tenenbaums, I mean.
The last time I was truly delighted, Wes-wise, was 11 years ago, which is when I first saw The Grand Budapest Hotel at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s been a rough decade since. For me, at least.
Budapest aside, I am a genuine, whole-hearted fan of only a handful of Wes’s films — Rushmore (which I’ve always adored like a brother), Bottle Rocket, the original black-and-white Bottle Rocket short, most of The Royal Tenenbaums. But I dearly love the Wes signage, specifically the shorts and parodies. The SNL Anderson horror film short is heaven.
I will always be on Team Anderson, and I will never resign. Partly because I’m…well, 85% to 90% certain that one day Wes will reach into his heart and decide to broaden his scope, or perhaps even re-think things somewhat. (Wes is still relatively young.) He has to — artists have no choice. I just hope and pray he’ll make more of an effort to blend his hermetic Wesworld aesthetic with the bigger, gnarlier, more complex world that’s been there all along.
For those who’ve never watched the original 13-minute Bottle Rocket short that played at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival, please give it a looksee. It boasts some of that raggedy, roughshod quality that defined Wes’s aesthetic 32 or 33 years ago…a quality that will never return, of course, but it’s a nice contact high all the same.
