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Wes Anderson
Anderson in Berlin, 2005
Born	Wesley Wales Mortimer Anderson (1969-05-01) May 1, 1969 (age 43) Houston, Texas, United States
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Texas at Austin
Occupation	Director, Screenwriter, Producer, Actor
Years active	1994–present
Influenced by	François Truffaut, Satyajit Ray, Hal Ashby[1][2]

Wesley Wales Mortimer "Wes" Anderson (born May 1, 1969)^[3][4][5][6] is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials. He was nominated for a 2001 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums and a 2010 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Fantastic Mr. Fox. His films employ similar aesthetics, using a deliberate, methodical cinematography, with mostly primary colors. His soundtracks feature folk and early rock music, in particular classic British rock. Anderson's films combine dry humor with poignant portrayals of flawed characters – often a mix of the wealthy and the working class. He is also known for working with many of the same actors and crew on varying projects.

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom opened the Cannes Film Festival 2012.^[7]

Early life[link]

This section requires expansion.

Wesley Wales Mortimer Anderson was born on May 1, 1969 in Houston, Texas.^[8] His father, Melver Anderson, ran an advertising and public relations company, and his mother, Texas Anne Burroughs, was an archaeologist who later became a real estate agent. Anderson grew up with his two brothers, Eric and Mel, but their parents divorced when Anderson was only eight. Anderson would later describe the divorce as "the most crucial event of my brothers and my growing up." This situation gave him the premise for The Royal Tenenbaums's story.^[9] As a child, the young Anderson directed many Super 8 movies starring himself and his brothers. He went to Westchester High School and St. John's School, a private school in Houston featured in Anderson's film Rushmore. There he wrote and directed many plays for the school's theater. After graduating from St. John's, Wes Anderson attended the University of Texas at Austin. There he met Owen Wilson, who became an essential writing partner and cast member in Anderson's filmography. Anderson and Wilson met during a playwriting class and became roommates. Then they worked on a script for a full-length movie called Bottle Rocket. Anderson earned his B.A. in philosophy in 1991 and released the short film version of Bottle Rocket in 1992. ^[10]

Film career[link]

Anderson's films feature many of the same actors, crew members, and other collaborators. For example, the Wilson brothers (Owen, Luke, and Andrew), Bill Murray,^[11] Willem Dafoe, Seymour Cassel, Anjelica Huston, Jason Schwartzman, Kumar Pallana and son Dipak Pallana, Stephen Dignan and Brian Tenenbaum, and Eric Chase Anderson (Anderson's brother). Other frequent collaborators include writer Noah Baumbach (who co-wrote The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Fantastic Mr. Fox, with Anderson co-producing his film The Squid and the Whale), Owen Wilson (who co-wrote three of Anderson's feature films), cinematographer Robert Yeoman (A.S.C.), music supervisor Randall Poster, and composer Mark Mothersbaugh.

Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film his 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited partly as a tribute to the legendary Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired all my other movies in different ways" (the film is dedicated to him).^[12] Jason Schwartzman reunited with Anderson for the The Darjeeling Limited, acting as well as co-writing the script with Anderson and Roman Coppola.^[13] In September 2006, following the disappointing commercial and critical reception of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Steely Dan's Walter Becker and Donald Fagen released a tongue-in-cheek "letter of intervention" of Anderson's artistic "malaise." Proclaiming themselves to be fans of "World Cinema" and Anderson in particular, they offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his The Darjeeling Limited, including lyrics for a title track.^[14]

In 2008, Wes Anderson was hired to write the screenplay of the American adaptation of My Best Friend, a French film, for producer Brian Grazer, Anderson's first draft was titled "The Rosenthaler Suite". Anderson's stop-motion animation adaptation of the Roald Dahl book Fantastic Mr. Fox was released in 2009.

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese is an admirer of Anderson's, praising Bottle Rocket and Rushmore in an Esquire magazine article.^[15]

Wes Anderson has launched the acting careers of such stars as Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Jason Schwartzman.

Advertising[link]

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In September 2007, Wes Anderson oversaw a series of six commercials for AT&T: "College Kid", "Reporter", "Mom", "Architect", "Actor" and "Businessman." The campaign also includes online, print and outdoor advertising. These TV spots are part of AT&T's "Your Seamless World" national campaign from BBDO/New York. Each ad embodies Anderson's distinct style by focusing on a subject and having the environment around them change. Each of the six AT&T commercials introduces us to a different AT&T customer. As each of these people comes before the camera and talks about the different, far-reaching locales where he or she needs cell-phone service, the visuals behind the customer change dramatically to reflect the different destinations.

The "Reporter" piece was subject to controversy when several Lebanese-American groups protested its airing as ignorant given the complex and sensitive nature of the Lebanese political situation. The ad portrayed photojournalists dodging bullets on a Beirut rooftop while the city was being bombed. It was subsequently pulled from rotation after the assassination of Antoine Ghanem on September 19, 2007 with AT&T and BBDO issuing public apologies. ^[16]

Anderson starred in and directed an American Express "My Life, My Card" commercial, which chronicled the "filming" of an action movie starring Jason Schwartzman. Anderson acts as if he is being interviewed by someone from American Express for the ad, while walking around completing tasks on set, a scene paying homage to the movie Day for Night by François Truffaut. It was aired on television and in movie theaters in both a short and extended version, during and shortly after the theatrical release of The Life Aquatic.

In 2008, Wes Anderson teamed up with Brad Pitt for a commercial for Japanese cell phone company SoftBank, filmed in one continuous shot in a French seaside town. The commercial takes inspiration from Jacques Tati's Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot.

Filmography[link]

• Bottle Rocket (short film co-written with Owen Wilson) (1992)
• Bottle Rocket (co-written with Owen Wilson) (1996)
• Rushmore (co-written with Owen Wilson) (1998)
• The Royal Tenenbaums (co-written with Owen Wilson) (2001)
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (co-written with Noah Baumbach) (2004)
• Hotel Chevalier (short film, created as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited) (2007)
• The Darjeeling Limited (co-written with Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola) (2007)
• Fantastic Mr. Fox (co-written with Noah Baumbach) (2009)
• Moonrise Kingdom (co-written with Roman Coppola) (2012)^[17]

Recurring collaborators[link]

Collaborator	Bottle Rocket (1996)	Rushmore (1998)	The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)	The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)	The Darjeeling Limited (2007)	Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)	Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Waris Ahluwalia				N	N
Eric Chase Anderson		N	N	N	N	N	N
Noah Baumbach				N		N
Adrien Brody					N	N
Seymour Cassel		N	N	N
Roman Coppola				N	N	N	N
Brian Cox		N				N
Stephen Dignan	N	N	N
Willem Dafoe				N		N
Michael Gambon				N		N
Anjelica Huston			N	N	N
Bill Murray		N	N	N	N	N	N
Mark Mothersbaugh	N	N	N	N			N
Alexandre Desplat						N	N
Dipak Pallana	N	N	N
Kumar Pallana	N	N	N		N
Jason Schwartzman		N			N	N	N
Brian Tenenbaum	N	N	N
Andrew Wilson	N	N	N
Luke Wilson	N	N	N
Owen Wilson	N	N	N	N	N	N
Wallace Wolodarsky		N			N	N

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Wes Anderson

External links[link]

• Wes Anderson at Unsung Films
• Wes Anderson at AllRovi
• Wes Anderson at the Internet Movie Database
• Tête-à-Tête with Nic Harcourt at Los Angeles Times Magazine
• "Into The Deep", in-depth Anderson profile at The Guardian 12 February 2005
• "Wes Anderson", brief profile by Martin Scorsese. Esquire.
• Interview with Wes Anderson for The Darjeeling Limited at Ioncinema.com
• Wes Anderson Interview on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos (Video)
• "Notes on Quirky" Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, No.1, 2010