a&e | FILM PREVIEW Mark Zoller Seitz (pictured) will discuss the films of Wes Anderson and sign copies of his book on Friday, February 21, at Isla Vista Theater at 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, February 22, at the Santa Barbara Library’s Faulkner Gallery at 7 p.m. All events are free and sponsored by KCSB-FM, Granada Books, and Magic Lantern Films. Call 893-3921 for info.
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THE FANTASTIC MR. SEITZ
DAVE BUNTING
New York Magazine Critic Pens The Wes Anderson Collection by Aly Comingore
F
or film geeks, music buffs, and Bill Murray fans, few things compare to the release of a new Wes Anderson film. In the 13 years since his Bottle Rocket hit the big screen, the Texas-born writer/ director has been meticulously crafting film after film, building a repertoire and style that is unequivocally Andersonian. On the visual front, his movies look and feel like tiny works of art, painstakingly detailed, brightly colored, and perfectly encapsulated in Anderson’s frame. The scripts are dry, witty, and almost music-like in their pacing. And the songs — oh the songs — run the gamut from British-invasion rock (Rushmore) to Portuguese takes on David Bowie classics (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) and are all flanked by Mark Mothersbaugh’s gorgeously tweeful original scores. This March, Anderson unveils his next, eighth film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and in advance of the release, Abrams Books has released an ode to Anderson of their own. Like the films it chronicles, The Wes Anderson Collection is a dense and stylized anthology — part coffee-table book and part scrapbook-style art project. Written by New York Magazine critic and longtime Anderson friend Matt Zoller Seitz, it dissects the director’s films one by one and pairs all the pictures, posters, and illustrations with a lengthy interview about each. This weekend, Seitz comes to town to discuss and sign his Collection. Recently, we talked movies, writing, and why he holds Anderson’s films so close to his heart. Was Wes on board with the book from the getgo? Not really. It took about a year to sort of put all the pieces together in terms of contracts and rights and all that business. There was also an element of reluctance on his part because, while he’s proud of his work, he doesn’t like to toot his own horn. He didn’t want to be seen as actively participating in the creation of his own myth. He made it very clear from the beginning that I was the author and he was the subject. There was never any confusion about that. How is he as an interview subject? He’s great. As long as you confine yourself to aesthetics and the details of the production, he’s incredibly forthcoming. But the closer you travel toward the core — to the middle of his personality — the more he tends to clam up.
What came as the biggest shock to you? I was pretty surprised to learn that Bill Murray made $9,000 for being in Rushmore, especially when you realize that he wrote a $25,000 check to Wes to pay for a helicopter shot that the studio wouldn’t pay for. If he [Anderson] had cashed that check, Bill Murray would have paid Wes for the privilege of acting in Rushmore. It would have been an even better story if he had cashed that check. How did Wes react to the finished book? He liked it. He liked it a lot. I didn’t have any real doubt that he wouldn’t. We’d been working on it for three years, and we didn’t start to show him proofs until the final year. He never had any negative or critical comments about it. I don’t think Wes would have agreed to do this book if he thought that my sensibility would result in something that he couldn’t stand to look at. And I’m happy to be proven right on that hunch.
Was there one film in particular that you were especially excited about dissecting? Probably The Life Aquatic, which is my personal favorite of his films. But I think the biggest surprise for me was Rushmore, which is, if not his most popular film, then certainly one of them. The thing that struck me about Rushmore is that even though it has this reputation for being a very light film — basically a comedy — the more you watch it, the more it feels like a drama, and the more the story of this motherless child begins to seem poignant rather than amusing. The fact that Max lost his mother at a young age just seems like an interesting and convenient biographical detail the first time you see it, but the more you watch, the move the more you realize the whole movie is really about that.
You’ve gracefully bowed out of reviewing these movies over the years, simply because you’re too close to the source. That said, what do you think is the biggest critical misconception about Wes’s films? There’s one thing that’s not a misconception necessarily but more a matter of taste, which is the idea that his movies are too stylish, that they are superficial. But that’s a complaint that a lot of visually interesting directors get. If you go and look back through the history of cinema, Alfred Hitchcock got that complaint, Stanley Kubrick got that complaint, Jacques Tati got that complaint. What do all these directors have in common? Well, the only thing they have in common is that they’re all really important filmmakers that people never get tired of watching. I think people are starting to figure out that Wes is a director of considerable depth, as well as cleverness, and that was honestly my main mission going into this project. People ask me why I wrote the book, and the main answer is “To get the rest of the world to see what I see when I look at Wes Anderson’s films.” That was always the mission. I could stand here at a cocktail party and explain it to you, but it would be much easier with pictures and text.
For our full interview with Matt Zoller Seitz, visit independent.com/seitz. february 20, 2014
THE INDEPENDENt
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