When you need more Wes Anderson in your life

As COVID-19 tightened its grip on the world, and cinemas shut their doors, you might have heard movie studios and distributors talking about how they remain firmly committed to the theatrical experience, or words to that effect. This basically means they think there’s more money to be made from a film if they hold back its release date, instead of offloading it to a streaming service.

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Wes Anderson’s latest, The French Dispatch, was originally set to be dispatched on July 24, 2020. It was pushed back to October 2020, but now (barring yet another variant that makes a visit to the cinema as sensible as financing a Harvey Weinstein production of a Bryan Singer film starring Kevin Spacey), Anderson’s film will be unleashed upon a grateful world on October 22, 2021.

Searchlight Pictures, the company distributing The French Dispatch, is certainly committed to the theatrical experience, which is helpful. Searchlight used to be known as Fox Searchlight, and was owned by 20th Century Studios (or 20th Century Fox, if you prefer), which is now owned by Walt Disney Studios. This means that if The French Dispatch had gone straight onto a streaming service, it would have been Disney+, where the film would have been fighting for attention alongside Speed 2: Cruise Control and Alien vs. Predator. Wouldn’t have been quite the same, would it?

In eager anticipation of the newest addition to Wesley Wales Anderson’s body of work, it’s time to take a look at a few items that allow you to bring his films to life.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)

The Life Aquatic has its fans, but it wasn’t especially well-received at the time. But to consider the film as Anderson smugly smacking his audience in the face with whimsy is to grossly underestimate its charm.

Combining minimalist performances with surreal stop motion animation visuals, the film’s relatively fast pace and Italian archipelago setting make this a different Wes Anderson movie, but still one that still has the distinctive Anderson aesthetic. Also, Willem Dafoe plays an angry German, and one can’t hope for more than that.

Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo returned to score The Life Aquatic, having worked on Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums. This was the last film that the two collaborated on, with Alexandre Desplat scoring Anderson’s subsequent films. Motherbaugh’s work on The Life Aquatic is a delight, although the true sound of the film comes from Seu Jorge, and his Portuguese covers of David Bowie songs. Sit back, listen to The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions, and imagine yourself in pursuit of the stop motion animated shark that ate your best friend.

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Rushmore (1998)

Bottle Rocket is where it started, but it was Rushmore that truly made Anderson into the playful auteur we all know and love. Bill Murray loved the script so much that he agreed to do it for scale, which meant he was paid a grand total of $9000 for his work on the film. He also offered to pay the $25,000 needed for an aerial shot when the studio was unwilling to do so. It was also Jason Schwartzman’s film debut, although if it hadn’t been, he could have just called his uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, and asked for a favour.

Sadly, the Rushmore Academy depicted in the film, with its limitless extracurricular activities and surprising drama club budget is entirely fictional. The closest you can get is to drink your morning coffee from a Rushmore Academy mug, and pretend you graduated from the place.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Although the screenplay is an original work, Anderson freely admits that he borrowed/stole from Stefan Zweig, an Austrian novelist, whose persona loosely inspired the character of Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes). Zweig’s own experiences with the advent of the Nazi Party also mirrors the rise of facism in the film’s fictional country, Zubrowka.

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A tie-in book was released with the film, containing excerpts from Zweig’s novels, along with some short stories and musings from Anderson himself, but if you want to read the novels that directly inspired the story, check out Beware of Pity and The Post-Office Girl.

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The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

If there was to be any merchandise inspired by The Royal Tenenbaums, it would be Tenenbaum-themed antidepressants and vouchers for psychotherapy. Amazon doesn’t sell any of that (not yet, anyway), but you can pretend to be a supporter of Richie Tenenbaum’s once great tennis career with a flag commemorating his face in all its depressive and arguably-incestuous-feelings-about-his-adopted-sister glory.

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Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Ah, forbidden adolescent love, so potent that it inspires two young lovers to run away together, escaping into the wilds of a relatively small island, with Bruce Willis and Tilda Swinton in hot pursuit.

Arguably the warmest and most sentimental of Anderson’s output, the film also served as a reminder that Bruce Willis can do some darn good work when he wants to. Key portions of the film’s soundtrack are brought to life onscreen via the portable record player that Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman) bring with them. The record player depicted is a rare Japanese Barrington, dating back to the 1960s, however you can replicate the experience with a portable suitcase-style record player with built-in speakers.

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Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)

Anderson tinkered with stop motion animation in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and refined his obsession in Isle of Dogs (2018), but Fantastic Mr. Fox is where he first truly explored the medium with appropriately bonkers results.

The complexity and intricacy of the animation is brought to life in the film’s companion book, although if you really want to act out scenes from the movie, you should have eaten at McDonald’s in 2009. It should never be forgotten that there was once a set of Happy Meal toys based upon a Wes Anderson film.