A tribute from one director to another.
ART AND TEXT BY MICHAEL LINDSAY-HOGG
I WANTED TO PUT WES Anderson in the company of some of his regular collaborators: Tilda Swinton, the cousins Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola (who both write with Wes), Bill Murray, Anjelica Huston, and the Wilson brothers, adding a little Rushmore action figure. I’d e-mail the images to Wes, and, via the same method, we’d have little chats. I first thought of making cowboys out of the characters. The Stetsons and sombreros took up too much room, but I kept Wes holding a pistol.
WES: Am I armed?
ME: At the moment. The artist needs some protection. Metaphorically, anyway.
WES: I’m pleased to be armed, then.
I knew from the time I was 14 or so that the only world that might have me was the one of the theater (and TV and movies), having no demonstrable ability for anything else. I asked Wes did he know, say, by the time he went to college, he’d be a director?
WES: I always did feel very happy and comfortable directing people and so on. I’ve always loved getting a group together and putting on a show. Without the show -no group.
This is such a pithy explanation of Wes’s way. “Without the show-no group.” Often the same people as collaborators, with him as leader, animating them, as in The Fantastic Mr. Fox, or taking them on a train, as in The Darjeeling Limited, or, now, to a Boy Scout camp. His touch is light, his control is sure, his visual sense is unrivaled and his alone, and at the end of the adventure that is Moonrise Kingdom he leaves you with something you hadn’t expected, a meditation on the frailty of love, and its capacity to endure. •