In Which Wes Anderson Breaks Down His Perfect Mixtape For You Guys

the iTunes playlist: Wes Anderson

It is verifiably true that white people love Wes Anderson movies, they also love Wes Anderson. This midgety little auteur has come a long way since his magnificent debut feature, Bottle Rocket. Here is a brief guide to the cinema of Wes Anderson before we hand it over to him to discuss his musical taste.

Bottle Rocket, 1996: genius-level debut, cinematography and plot aren't all there, Luke Wilson's Orientalism plot a little racist, but Owen makes himself a supastar and that's all you can really ask for, B+

Rushmore, 1999: critics initially balked at its overlong third act, no movie has ever been more in love with itself, Schwartzman deserved best actor, like most Anderson movies it grows on you like a fungus, there will never be another, A+

The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001: so bizarre and sprawling it's hard to digest, has the spirit of six different movies, another botched third act, and yet there's so much to love, from buckley to danny glover's performance, to owen wilson's arc, to luke wilson's suicide attempt, a classic, A

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, 2004: love letter to Jacques Cousteau, Murray is again terrific, long-lost son plot is a half-baked, pregnant Cate turns us on, total male perspective a la Darjeeling, best plot consistency, best set design, there's too much to savor here, watch it again and see what I mean, A-

The Darjeeling Limited, 2007: Smaller canvas, Adrien Brody is terrible, Schwartzman adds nothing, you can't even watch Owen, setting and Orientalism are off-putting, great Angelica performance in cameo, meandering at times, worst script so far, an entertaining enough misstep, don't watch Hotel Chevalier if you value your life, C+

from here:

O: Do you ever hear a song and think, “I have to have that in a movie?”

WA: Yeah, I do all the time.

O: What’s an example of that, a case where a song actually made it in?

WA: Every single song that’s in Rushmore.

"The Longest Time" - Billy Joel (mp3)

My brothers and I would perform this song in the family living room to great effect. Thankfully, there were no cameras running.

"When I Live My Dream" - David Bowie (mp3)

In its original version.

life aquatic script

What finally sparked the making of this movie after 14 years of it staying in your head?

I wrote a little short story when I was in college. It wasn't even a short story, it was like one paragraph that was just a description of this one character and Anjelica's character and the ship, The Belafonte, and just the setting. So, I had that but I didn't mean for it to be a movie. I was just trying to write a story and it never really got any further. It was actually Owen Wilson who kept bringing it up from time-to-time over the years and kept reminding me about it and got me into thinking about it some more. I remember one day on The Royal Tenenbaums seeing Anjelica and Bill Murray on the set together. All they had together was about 30 seconds but I felt there was a great rapport between the two of them that would be worth exploring.

"Summer Day" - Coconut Records ft. Zooey Deschanel (mp3)

Classic Coconut Records. A beautiful duet.

"The First Cut Is The Deepest" - Buva (mp3)

We were very lucky to be able to use two great Cat Stevens songs in Rushmore. Here is a particular favorite of Randy Poster's (music supervisor on The Darjeeling Limited) from early in Stevens' career.

"Dishes" - Pulp (mp3)

Jarvis Cocker is in my mind one of the most original voices and creative thinkers in these parts. He is not Jesus, but he has the same initials.

"Tive Razao" - Seu Jorge

Until Seu Jorge releases his next record, we have to be happy with what we can find on iTunes. This is one of his best.

"Gates of Steel (live Devo cover)" - Yo La Tengo (mp3)

Mark Mothersbaugh has created all the original music for my movies. This is one of my favorite Devo songs.

"Alec Eiffel" - The Pixies (mp3)

I believe this song is about an architect.

"The Well and the Lighthouse" - Arcade Fire (mp3)

I have jumped on the bandwagon.

"Rally" - Phoenix

While I have a known affinity for the music of the British Invasion, Phoenix makes a very strong argument for the oncoming French one.

"Yeah!" - Horace Silver

There is a cue in Bottle Rocket that Mark Mothersbaugh wrote called 'No Jazz' (this was an edict from the studio). Horace Silver argues for the other side.

"Sweet Thing" - Van Morrison

From one of the most enduring albums of recorded music, this song always overwhelms me. How many times I played it when I should have been doing my homework...

"Ceremony" - New Order (mp3)

We almost used this in The Life Aquatic, and sometimes when the wind is full I wish we did.

Anderson's next film is The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

You can find Ellen Page's iTunes playlist here.

In Which You'll Never Catch Me

Dynamite, Pole Vaulting, Laughing Gas, Choppers

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Let us travel back in time to a milder, gentler, more lackadaisical time. A time when the internet hadn't seeped so deep into our pores that we electrically learnabrate in our sleep at night. When the only website I read on a regular basis was Ain't It Cool News and only Bjork fans knew who Michel Gondry was.

Ah yes, I was talking about 1999. It doesn't sound too long ago, does it? That pre-9/11 world way back when. But it was before that even, back even further to 1996 when Bottle Rocket came out and I first fell in love with Dignan. Or was it Owen Wilson?

Or was I in love with Wes Anderson and his aesthetics? It was hard to tell, we were all so young. I was in love with the movie and the characters and the dialogue and the soundtrack. Oh god, the soundtrack! Before Graduate-y indie and Scorsese seventies rock tunes permeated down into every last Garden State and Juno.

Anthony: Which part of Mexico are you from?
Inez: Paraguay.

All the stylistic markers were already there; the symmetry, the tracking and two shots, the fastidious attention to detail. The easy rapport between all three Wilson brothers had yet to be frayed by time and fame. Wes Anderson's weird colonialist fetish for ethnic girls could still be somewhat more easily explained away.

Just a beautiful film with a cinematic vocabulary of cleanliness saturated in color. Bottle Rocket rambled and breathed while remaining tight as a drum. As Anderson's films have moved increasingly away from depicting naturalism, I can't help but feel something has been lost. With bigger sets and budgets, he widened his geographic scope each time to be more spectacular.

A lot of what I loved so much about Bottle Rocket was how it dazzled with the mundane. How Wes wore his references (French New Wave! The Seventies!) on his too short sleeves while seemingly proving Godard's theory that to make a film all you needed was a girl and a gun, and barely even that.

I loved how he made Texas mini-mall parking lots look so beautiful. How he transformed a suburban neighborhood (granted an upscale one in Dallas) into a weird American paradise. How he made normal touchstones look painterly and landscapes perfect.

It recalled the work of American artists like Edward Hopper, Walker Evans, and Ansel Adams. And writers, especially poets like Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams. Specifically, of W.C.W.'s poem The Red Wheelbarrow.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I would love it if Wes made a Western. I know the Coen Brothers and P.T. Anderson threw down the gauntlet pretty hard this year but there's no reason he couldn't pick it up. But I don't think Wes will do it, at least not for a while yet. I do wish he would embrace the place he came from. There are way more than enough movies already about rich people from New York and their issues.

Hey look, I found a perfect project for Wes Anderson's Western. It's a Larry McMurtry book called Sin Killer:

A wild comedic ride with the Berrybender family in 1832. They've come over from England and are on a boat making its way up the Missouri River. There's Lord Berrybender, his wife, his mistress, 6 of his 14 legitimate children, servants, guides, tutors, artists and a couple of Indian chiefs traveling home from Washington. The family is rich and spoiled and totally clueless. They meet a variety of tragedies but the writer presents it all as a farce.

Diner Scenes were de rigeur in 90s Indie Films

Sounds ideal, huh? It has all the earmarks of an Anderson joint plus and Wes could maybe help get himself off the hook for worshipping rich white people so much if they're all killed off for transgressing borders. Kinda like Life Aquatic x Mark Twain x Aguirre The Wrath Of God = Swiss Family Tenenbaums.

Owen as Dignan, not drinking his milkshake. Awww bb.

Twenty one years earlier James Caan (Mr. Henry) and Tak Kubota (Rowboat) were both in the Sam Peckinpah film, The Killer Elite (1975).

Bottle Rocket scored the worst test screening points in the history of Columbia Pictures at the time.

Where's Bob Mapplethorpe? Why, he was in Drillbit Taylor.

Oh and how bout Inez? She's in a coming-of-age movie called El Brassier de Emma. Sounds coming of agey.

We'll get him. We'll get him. Man, dont worry about that, we'll get him. And when we do, we'll blow up his car, do something. I can guarantee you that. What makes me furious is thinking about the look on Bob's fat face, thinking he pulled one over on us. I tell you another thing. If our paths cross again, you're gonna see a side of Dignan that you havent seen before. A sick, sadistic side, cause I'm furious at Bob.

Why so melancholy Owen love? Premonitions of Drillbit Taylor?

When's that Criterion Collection edition coming out guys? I imagine the Marrakesh Express backlash will be over by then. Maybe there'll be a little to-do if Owen feels like coming out of his mole-hole. I feel about Owen Wilson the way I feel about kittens.

I love how Bob totally rolled right out of Reservoir Dogs.

Cain chasing after his brother Abel in the fields East of Eden

Little Banana, the best Bottle Rocket fansite, where all these screen caps came from. They have the original screenplay for the Bottle Rocket short, side by side comparison with the shooting script, and a transcript of Dignan's notebook.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Black Feathers" — Ed Harcourt (mp3)

"Sour Milk, Motheaten Silk" — Ed Harcourt (mp3)

"Russian Roulette" — Ed Harcourt (mp3)

Ed Harcourt myspace

The 400 Blows? Is that like a sequel to The 300? It's bad?

"They'll never catch me........Because I'm fucking innocent!"

In Which Billy Murray's First Guest-Post Feels Imminent

Our Executive Editor sent along this dispatch the other day...

"Just caused a blue mercedes station wagon driven by a bright red-visored Bill Murray and co-piloted by Wes Anderson to stop short at the intersection of 13th and University. Both were looking at their iPhones, and both looked up to smile in apology and wave me to cross. Beluschi may have been in the back seat."

...which made us recall with no small amount of affection the following gem from the TR archive:

Real Talk

by ALEX CARNEVALE & WILL HUBBARD

WH: Owen Wilson is free! Ten minutes ago he almost hit me on his bicycle on Wooster Street.

AC: Wow. Just...wow.

the carne asada cart right near owen's bicycle

WH: It was a baby blue beach cruiser; I assume he was on his way to Jamba Juice for an Acai Antioxidant Blast with Energy Shot. He had some silly little goatee thing going, but he looked healthy. There was a dark haired, chubbier fellow with him--I mean it all happened so fast. Unfortunately I didn't have the poem I wrote for him on hand, because I think he would have been touched. Do you like poetry, Owen?

AC: Were you able to detect whether or not Owen seemed depressed?

WH: He sort of looked lackadaisical, like he didn't have anywhere in particular to go. I suppose his calendar is pretty wide open at this point. He definitely didn't look happy, but that may have had something to do with the cobblestones. Shouldn't he be on extended vacation in the Seychelles?

AC: He probably should be, but Owen's all about keeping it real. That is why he's dating Jessica Simpson after all. The only thing more disturbing that the image of those two having rough sex is the revelation in today's Page Six that Lance Armstrong is hooking up with Ashley Olsen. The only thing weirder is Charlie Sheen and anyone. Now that becoming an idolator of Bob Creeley is out of the picture, what's Owen's next move? Scientology? Kabbalah?

What exactly about Kate Hudson do you think he found so irresistible?

Sloth love Chunk

WH: He definitely needs to lose himself in a cause. I mean believing in global warming is the same thing as believing in the Cabal, or aliens, right? I think some good Modernist literature would fix him up just fine. I wonder if he's ever read Faulkner? Kate Hudson just has nice abs; her face is as busted as her mom's. Why won't Gawker post my fucking sighting already?! Slackers. Jessica Simpson, sheesh. "Owen I don't care about your crooked nose or your existential misery, I just love you forever."

AC: Yeah, global warming is made up. Speaking of Faulkner, I read a quote from him today that could provide solace to Owen in this very difficult time. "If I were reincarnated, I'd want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything." Well put, Billy boy. Who do you think is a better writer, you or Faulkner? Wait, don't answer that.

I also agree that Kate Hudson is overrated, I mean, she looked totally weird in the movie she did with Owen. That movie was terrible, but I watched the whole thing, and I even considered watching it again one time. It would have been a lot better if Sandra Bullock had played Kate's part, though. Also Vince Vaughn should have played Fred Claus in it.

WH: True. Also, there was a rumor Kate has six toes.

let's make some bad career decisions people

AC: Ain't nothing wrong with an extra toe. Now that Owen's dating Jessica, I guess he's bound to get herpes. The only positive result I could see coming from that development would be that he would be forced to get to know women better before sleeping with them. There is one other positive possible result of that; marriage to Jessica Alba of course. Who do you think would make a good couple with Owen, and please say a brunette.

WH: As the great Greek poet Cavafy says "sexual pleasure will have much to teach him."

AC: I always think that you can see it coming.

WH: Sexual pleasure?

AC: Enlightenment.

SONGS TO ROUSE OWEN OUT OF HIS DEPRESSION

"Slowly Growing Old" -- Alasdair Roberts (mp3)

"He Poos Clouds" -- Final Fantasy (mp3)

"Oh! You Pretty Things" -- David Bowie (mp3)

Goldie Hawn on Laugh In

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