Wes Anderson Biography

Wesley Wales "Wes" Anderson (born May 1, 1969) is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor. His films are known for their distinctive visual and narrative style.

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001, Moonrise Kingdom in 2012 and The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014, as well as the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009. He received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy for The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014. He also received the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2015.

Early life

Wesley Wales Anderson was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas, the son of Texas Ann (Burroughs), a realtor and archaeologist, and Melver Leonard Anderson, who worked in advertising and public relations. He is the second of three boys; his parents divorced when he was eight. His elder brother, Mel, is a physician, and his younger brother, Eric, is a writer and artist whose paintings and designs have appeared in several of Anderson's films. Anderson is of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry.

He graduated from St. John's School in Houston in 1987, which he later used as a prominent location throughout Rushmore. As a child, Anderson made silent films on his father's Super 8 camera, starring his brothers and friends, although his first ambition was to be a writer. Anderson attended college while working part-time as a cinema projectionist. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in philosophy in 1990, where he met future frequent collaborator Owen Wilson.

Film career

Anderson's first film, Bottle Rocket (1996), based on a short film that he made with Luke and Owen Wilson, was a crime caper about a group of young Texans aspiring to achieve major heists. Though well reviewed, it performed poorly at the box office.

Anderson's next film, Rushmore (1998), a quirky comedy about a high school student's crush on an elementary school teacher, starring Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman, was a critical success. Murray has since appeared in every Anderson film to date. In 2000, filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Anderson's next comedy-drama film about a successful artistic New York City family and its ostracized patriarch, represented Anderson's greatest success until Moonrise Kingdom in 2012. Earning more than $50 million in domestic box office receipts, The Royal Tenenbaums was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an Empire poll as the 159th greatest film ever made.

Anderson's next feature, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray, serves as a classic example of Anderson's style but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films and its box office did not match the heights of The Royal Tenenbaums. 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" for 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.

The Darjeeling Limited (2007), about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India, reflected the more dramatic tone of The Royal Tenenbaums, but faced similar criticisms to The Life Aquatic. Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the 2007 movie, partly as a tribute to the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, whose "films have also inspired all my other movies in different ways" (the film is dedicated to him). The film starred Anderson staples Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson in addition to Adrien Brody, and the script was co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman and Roman Coppola.

In 2008, 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. Although not earning much more than its production budget, the film was highly praised and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

Following the critical success of Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson made Moonrise Kingdom, which opened the Cannes Film Festival 2012. The film, emblematic of Anderson's style, was a financial success and earned Anderson another Academy Award nomination for his screenplay.

Anderson's latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), starred Ralph Fiennes, Jude Law, F. Murray Abraham, and Saoirse Ronan, among many others, along with several of his regular collaborators including Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman. Set in the 1930s, it followed the adventures of M. Gustave, the hotel's concierge, making "a marvelous mockery of history, turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures", according to The New York Times. The film represented one of Anderson's greatest critical and commercial successes, grossing nearly $175 million worldwide and earning dozens of award nominations including nine Oscar nominations with four wins. Anderson received three Oscar nominations, including his first for Best Director for the film.

Anderson has also created several notable short films. In addition to the original Bottle Rocket short, he made the Paris-set Hotel Chevalier (2007), which was created as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited and starred Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman, and the Italy-set Castello Cavalcanti (2013), which was produced by Prada and starred Jason Schwartzman as an unsuccessful race-car driver. Additionally, he has directed a number of television commercials for companies such as Stella Artois and Prada, including an elaborate American Express ad, in which he starred as himself.

Anderson's cinematic influences include Franois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Satyajit Ray, John Huston, Mike Nichols, Hal Ashby, Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski.

In 2016 Anderson produced clothing brand H&M's christmas advert, featuring recurring collaborator Adrien Brody.

Directing techniques

Themes and stories

Anderson has chosen to direct mostly fast-paced comedies marked by more serious or melancholic elements, with themes often centered on grief, loss of innocence, parental abandonment, adultery, sibling rivalry and unlikely friendships. His movies have been noted for being unusually character-driven, and by turns both derided and praised with terms like "literary geek chic". The plots of his movies often feature thefts and unexpected disappearances, with a tendency to borrow liberally from the caper genre.

Visual style

Anderson has been noted for his extensive use of flat space camera moves, obsessively symmetrical compositions, snap-zooms, slow-motion walking shots, a deliberately limited color palette, and hand-made art direction often utilizing miniatures. These stylistic choices give his movies a highly distinctive quality that has provoked much discussion, critical study, supercuts and mash-ups, and even parody. Many writers, critics and even Anderson himself have commented that this gives his movies the feel of being "self-contained worlds", or a "scale model household". According to Michael Chabon, with "a baroque pop bent that is not realist, surrealist or magic realist", but rather might be described as "fabul[ist]".

From The Life Aquatic on, Anderson has relied more heavily on stop motion animation and miniatures, even making an entire feature with stop motion animation with Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Soundtracks

Anderson frequently uses pop music from the 1960s and '70s on the soundtracks of his films, and one band or musician tends to dominate each soundtrack. In Rushmore, Cat Stevens and British Invasion groups featured prominently, The Royal Tenenbaums included songs recorded by Nico and The Velvet Underground, The Life Aquatic was replete with David Bowie including both originals and covers performed by Seu Jorge, The Kinks appeared on the soundtrack for The Darjeeling Limited and Rushmore, The Beach Boys in Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Hank Williams for Moonrise Kingdom. (Much of Moonrise Kingdom is filled with the music of Benjamin Britten, which is tied to a number of major plot points for that film) The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is mostly set in the 1930s, is notable for being the first Anderson film to eschew using any pop music, and instead used original music composed by Alexandre Desplat. Its soundtrack was the most acclaimed, winning Desplat the Academy Award for Best Original Score, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Score of the Year. The soundtracks for his films have often brought renewed attention to the artists featured, most prominently in the case of "These Days", which was used in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Personal life

Anderson is in a relationship with Lebanese writer, costume designer and voice actress Juman Malouf. He lives in New York City but has spent extensive time in Paris.

He is the brother of artist Eric Chase Anderson, who illustrated the Criterion Collection releases of Anderson's films (except for Moonrise Kingdom) and provided the voice of Kristofferson Silverfox in Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Filmography

Features

Year	Title	Director	Producer	Writer	Actor	Role	Notes
1996	Bottle Rocket					Passenger on Bus (uncredited)	Co-written with Owen Wilson
1998	Rushmore					Student (uncredited)	Co-written with Owen Wilson
2001	The Royal Tenenbaums					Tennis Match Commentator (uncredited)	Co-written with Owen Wilson
2004	The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou						Co-written with Noah Baumbach
2005	The Squid and the Whale						Co-produced with Peter Newman, Charlie Corwin, and Clara Markowicz
2007	The Darjeeling Limited						Co-written with Jason Schwartzman and Roman Coppola
2009	Fantastic Mr. Fox					Weasel	Co-written with Noah Baumbach
2012	Moonrise Kingdom						Co-written with Roman Coppola
2014	The Grand Budapest Hotel						Co-written with Hugo Guinness (story)
2014	She's Funny That Way						Co-produced with Noah Baumbach
2016	Sing					Voice role
-	Untitled Stop-Motion Animated Film						Pre-production

Short films

Year	Title	Director	Producer	Writer	Actor	Role	Notes
1996	Bottle Rocket						Short film, co-written with Owen Wilson
2007	Hotel Chevalier						Short film, created as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited
2013	Castello Cavalcanti						Short film, created for Prada starring Jason Schwartzman

Commercials and promotional videos

Year	Title	Director	Producer	Writer	Actor	Role	Notes
2004	American Express: My Life, My Card					Himself	Commercial starring Anderson as himself as he directs an elaborate fake film featuring Jason Schwartzman
2008	Softbank						Japanese commercial filmed in France and starring Brad Pitt
2010	Stella Artois: Apartomatic						Commercial, co-directed with Roman Coppola
2012	Cousin Ben Troop Screening with Jason Schwartzman						Promotional short for Moonrise Kingdom
2013	Prada: Candy						Commercial
2016	H&M: Come Together						Commercial starring Adrien Brody

Recurring collaborators

Anderson's films feature many recurring actors, crew members, and other collaborators, including the Wilson brothers (Owen, Luke, and Andrew), Bill Murray, 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), Roman Coppola (as co-writer and second unit director), Owen Wilson (who co-wrote three of Anderson's feature films), cinematographer Robert Yeoman (A.S.C.), music supervisor Randall Poster, and composers Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat.

Actor/actress	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)	The Grand Budapest Hotel (2013)	Untitled Animated Movie
Waris Ahluwalia
Bob Balaban
Adrien Brody
Seymour Cassel
Willem Dafoe
Michael Gambon
Jeff Goldblum
Anjelica Huston
Harvey Keitel
Bill Murray
Edward Norton
Kumar Pallana
Jason Schwartzman
Tilda Swinton
Andrew Wilson
Luke Wilson
Owen Wilson

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Film	Result
1996	MTV Movie Award	Best New Filmmaker	Bottle Rocket
	Lone Star Film & Television Award	Debut of the Year Shared with Luke Wilson & Owen Wilson
1998	Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award	New Generation Award	Bottle Rocket & Rushmore
1999	Lone Star Film & Television Award	Best Director	Rushmore
		Best Writer Shared with Owen Wilson
	National Society of Film Critics Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Independent Spirit Award	Best Director
2001	New York Film Critics Circle Award	Best Screenplay	The Royal Tenenbaums
2002	Academy Award	Best Original Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	BAFTA Film Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Chicago Film Critics Association Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Online Film Critics Society Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Phoenix Film Critics Society Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Toronto Film Critics Association Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
	Writers Guild of America Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Owen Wilson
2003	Bodil Award	Best American Film
	DVD Premiere Award	Best Audio Commentary
2005	Berlin International Film Festival	Golden Bear	The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
	Golden Satellite Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
2006	Independent Spirit Award	Best Feature	The Squid and the Whale
	Golden Globe Award	Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
2007	Gijn International Film Festival Award	Best Feature	The Darjeeling Limited
	Venice International Film Festival Award	Golden Lion
		Little Golden Lion
2008	Bodil Award	Best American Film
2009	National Society of Film Critics Award	Special Achievement Award	Fantastic Mr. Fox
	New York Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Director
	San Diego Film Critics Society Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	Southeastern Film Critics Association Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
2010	Academy Award	Best Animated Feature
	Annie Award	Best Writing in a Feature Production Shared with Noah Baumbach
		Directing in a Feature Production
	BAFTA Film Award	Best Animated Film
	Broadcast Film Critics Association Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	Central Ohio Film Critics Association Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Award	Special Achievement Award for Best Film
	National Society of Film Critics Award	Best Director
	New York Film Critics Circle Award	Best Director
	Online Film Critics Society Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	Producers Guild of America Award	Best Animated Theatrical Motion Picture Shared with Allison Abbate and Scott Rudin
	San Diego Film Critics Society Award	Best Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
	San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award	Best Original Screenplay Shared with Noah Baumbach
2012	Cannes Film Festival	Palme d'Or	Moonrise Kingdom
	San Diego Film Critics Society Award	Best Original Screenplay Shared with Roman Coppola
2013	Academy Award	Best Original Screenplay Shared with Roman Coppola
	Broadcast Film Critics Association Award	Best Original Screenplay Shared with Roman Coppola
	Golden Globe Award	Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
	Independent Spirit Award	Best Director
		Best Screenplay Shared with Roman Coppola
2014	Berlin International Film Festival	Golden Bear	The Grand Budapest Hotel
		Jury Grand Prix (Silver Bear)
	Chicago Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
	David di Donatello	David di Donatello for Best Foreign Film
	Detroit Film Critics Society Awards	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
	Dublin Film Critics' Circle Awards	Best Director
	Florida Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Indiana Film Journalists Association Awards	Best Original Screenplay
	Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
	New York Film Critics Circle Award	Best Screenplay
	Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	San Diego Film Critics Society Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	San Francisco Film Critics Circle	Best Original Screenplay
	Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards	Best Screenplay
	San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay Shared with Hugo Guinness
	Online Film Critics Society	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
	St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
	Toronto Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
2015	Academy Awards	Best Picture
		Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Central Ohio Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	72nd Golden Globe Awards	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
		Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
	Alliance of Women Film Journalists	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Critics' Choice Movie Awards	Best Picture
		Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
		Best Comedy
	68th British Academy Film Awards	Best Direction
		Best Original Screenplay
	4th AACTA International Awards	Best Direction
		Best Screenplay
	Denver Film Critics Society	Best Original Screenplay
	67th Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directing - Feature Film
	Georgia Film Critics Association Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	Houston Film Critics Society Awards	Best Director
		Best Original Screenplay
	London Film Critics' Awards	Director of the Year
		Screenwriter of the Year
	Location Managers Guild Awards	Outstanding Locations in Period Film
	National Society of Film Critics Awards	Best Screenplay
	Oklahoma Film Critics Circle	Best Original Screenplay
	Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Director
		Best Screenplay
	67th Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Original Screenplay
2016	Location Managers Guild Awards	Eva Monley Award	(N/A - Self)