Wes Anderson‘s Rushmore, by far his funniest, most dramatically grounded, perfectly composed and most emotionally poignant film, opened commercially on 12.11.98 — a quarter century to the day. It had opened at the New York Film Festival two months earlier, on 10.9.98.
I had just begun writing my Mr. Showbiz column that month, and boy, was I delighted with Rushmore when I saw it out at the Disney lot one night! I was floating when it ended.
Wes, whom I’d known since he hit town with Owen Wilson in ’94, had allowed me to read a copy of the script roughly a year earlier, when I was miserably working at People, and I was pretty happy with it. But the film version represented one of the very few times in my life that a movie turned out to be significantly better than the script. (It usually works the other way around.) When I posted HE’s 150 Greatest American Films list on 7.24.15, I ranked Rushmore as my #8, and I meant it. I still do.