Having attended a Houston area high school in the late 90′s, we were fast adapters and fans of Wes Anderson’s work. Many of my schoolmates were extras in Rushmore and there were a couple of years that my bobbed haircut, penchant for berets and geek glasses presented a striking resemblance to Margaret Yang. Then the proximity to Austin, the SXSW festival– I couldn’t escape Anderson’s work. I liked it, I liked the way the sets and costumes were meticulously worked through and the feeling that everything was flat, 2D– camera moving across each scene like comic book panels.
And of course, the Charlie Rose clip– Rose asks Anderson, “Who watches your movies?” And he responds after a bit “outsiders”. There was never a character I couldn’t relate to, Halloweens of dressing as Margaret, Margot, Max. Then the whole Anderson train lost steam, and no one was eager to head to the movies and sit through another one of his films– no one I knew who had previously been huge fans (ownership of both Criterion and regular DVDs, script books, dropping references from Bill Murray characters–) had any interest, nor did the boxoffice.
“It’s the same movie over and over again,” was the common complaint. I started reading some criticism on Anderson, and realized that despite my huge fandom for Rushmore, Bottle Rockets and The Royal Tenenbaums– I kind of crashed after The Life Aquatic and despite the loveliness of Darjeeling Limited– I too, hit a Wes Anderson wall. While I know there’s a mini-buzz about the Fantastic Mr. Fox, in the back of my mind, the question is– what happens if never really advance as a screenwriter and director? You do this one thing, you do it well– and that’s it. I hope something shakes up Anderson’s personal life, a baby, a fire, a new adventure to pull from other than reliving a hindsight, highly stylized, upper middle class upbringing. I hope for the best, a boxoffice rattle, Scorsese to be reaffirmed.
I think certain criticisms that I’ve heard about myself repeatedly start to linger,” he says, looking out the window, almost embarrassed for exposing himself in this way. “The things that I think about are whether or not I’m telling the same kind of family stories and whether these movies are so meticulously art-directed or organized that people can’t get into the story. I feel like with Darjeeling Limited, I got a lot of people saying I was repeating certain things. But for me, I was doing a movie in India about these three brothers and those things are different. I mean, it’s in India. It’s a completely different movie.
“In the end, I just do whatever I do, probably,” he says.
On the “decline” of Wes Anderson:
What’s Wrong With Wes Anderson?
Here’s a series the Onion AV Club did in 2007: