Wes Anderson's tribute page

Who is Wes Anderson?

Wes Anderson is an American film director whose works feature a recurring ensemble of actors, including Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. He is known for quirky, comical movies with flawed characters, with projects ranging from The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou to Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson has also enjoyed success with the stop-motion animated films Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs.

He was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas. His father, Melver Anderson, ran an advertising and public relations company, and his mother, Texas Anne Burroughs, worked in both real estate and archaeology. Anderson grew up with his two brothers Eric and Mel, but their parents divorced when Anderson was eight. While trying to cope with the disintegration of his parents' marriage, Anderson often misbehaved at school.

Filmography

• Bottle Rocket

  Bottle Rocket is a 1996 American crime comedy film directed by Wes Anderson in his feature film directorial debut. The film is written by Anderson and Owen Wilson and is based on Anderson's 1994 short film of the same name.

• Rushmore

  Rushmore is a 1998 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson about an eccentric teenager named Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman in his film debut), his friendship with rich industrialist Herman Blume (Bill Murray), and their love in common for elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams).

• The Royal Tenenbaums

  The Royal Tenenbaums is a 2001 American comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson and co-written with Owen Wilson. It stars Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson. Ostensibly based on a nonexistent novel, and told with a narrative influenced by the writing of J. D. Salinger, it follows the lives of three gifted siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure in adulthood. The children's eccentric father Royal Tenenbaum (Hackman) leaves them in their adolescent years, then returns to them after they have grown, falsely claiming he has a terminal illness. He works on reconciling with his children and ex-wife (Huston).

• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

  The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a 2004 American comedy-drama film written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach and directed by Anderson.[1][2] It is Anderson's fourth feature-length film and was released in the United States on December 25, 2004. The film stars Bill Murray as Steve Zissou, an eccentric oceanographer who sets out to exact revenge on the "jaguar shark" that ate his partner Esteban. Zissou is both a parody of and homage to French diving pioneer Jacques Cousteau, to whom the film is dedicated.

• The Darjeeling Limited

  The Darjeeling Limited is a 2007 American comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson which he co-produced with Scott Rudin, Roman Coppola and Lydia Dean Pilcher and co-wrote with Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. The film stars Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Schwartzman as three estranged brothers who agree to meet in India a year after their father's funeral for a "spiritual journey" aboard a luxury train. The cast also includes Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Barbet Schroeder and Anjelica Huston with Natalie Portman, Camilla Rutherford, Irrfan Khan and Bill Murray in cameo roles.

• Hotel Chevalier

  Hotel Chevalier is a short film written and directed by Wes Anderson and released in 2007. Starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman as former lovers who reunite in a Paris hotel room, the 13-minute film acts as a prologue to Anderson's 2007 feature The Darjeeling Limited. It was shot on location in a Parisian hotel by a small crew and self-financed by Anderson, who initially intended it to be a stand-alone work. Its first showing was at the Venice Film Festival première of the feature film on September 2, 2007, and it made its own debut later that month at Apple Stores in four U.S. cities.

• Fantastic Mr. Fox

  Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 American stop motion animated comedy film directed by Wes Anderson, who co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach. The project is based on the 1970 children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson star. The plot follows the titular character Mr. Fox (Clooney), as his spree of thefts results in his family, and later his community, being hunted down by three farmers known as Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), Bunce (Hugo Guinness), and Bean (Michael Gambon).

• Moonrise Kingdom

  Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, and starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban, and introducing Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward. Largely set on the fictional island of New Penzance somewhere off the coast of New England, it tells the story of an orphan boy (Gilman) who escapes from a scouting camp to unite with his pen pal and love interest, a girl with aggressive tendencies (Hayward). Feeling alienated from their guardians and shunned by their peers, the lovers abscond to an isolated beach. Meanwhile, the island's police captain (Willis) organizes a search party of scouts and family members to locate the runaways.

• Castello Cavalcanti

  Castello Cavalcanti is a short film written and directed by Wes Anderson, released in 2013, and starring Jason Schwartzman as an unsuccessful race car driver who crashes his car in an Italian village. The 8-minute film was filmed at Cinecittà in Rome, Italy and financed by Prada. It debuted at the Rome Film Festival[1] and was released online on November 13, 2013. It quickly became popular and received critical acclaim

• The Grand Budapest Hotel

  The Grand Budapest Hotel is a 2014 comedy-drama film written and directed by Wes Anderson. Ralph Fiennes leads a seventeen-actor ensemble cast as Monsieur Gustave H., famed concierge of a twentieth-century mountainside resort in the fictional Eastern European country of Zubrowka. When Gustave is framed for the murder of a wealthy dowager (Tilda Swinton), he and his recently befriended protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) embark on a quest for fortune and a priceless Renaissance painting amidst the backdrop of an encroaching fascist regime. Anderson's American Empirical Pictures produced the film in association with Studio Babelsberg, Fox Searchlight Pictures, and Indian Paintbrush's Scott Rudin and Steven Rales. Fox Searchlight supervised the commercial distribution, and The Grand Budapest Hotel's funding was sourced through Indian Paintbrush and German government-funded tax rebates.

• Isle of Dogs

  Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島, Hepburn: Inugashima) is a 2018 adult stop-motion animated science fiction comedy film written, produced, and directed by Wes Anderson and starring an ensemble cast consisting of Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Bill Murray, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Scarlett Johansson, Kunichi Nomura, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe, Akira Ito, Greta Gerwig, Akira Takayama, Frances McDormand, F. Murray Abraham, Courtney B. Vance, Yojiro Noda, Fisher Stevens, Mari Natsuki, Nijiro Murakami, Yoko Ono, Harvey Keitel, and Frank Wood. The film is set in the fictional retro-futuristic Japanese city of Megasaki, where Mayor Kenji Kobayashi has banished all dogs to Trash Island due to a canine influenza pandemic. Kobayashi’s nephew Atari sets out to find his missing dog Spots with the help of a group of dogs led by stray dog Chief.

• The French Dispatch

  The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, or simply The French Dispatch, is a 2021 American anthology comedy drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson from a story he conceived with Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman. It features an expansive ensemble cast and follows three different storylines as the French foreign bureau of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper publishes its final issue.

• Asteroid City

  Asteroid City is an upcoming American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson. The cast has been described as being "larger than most other Anderson films that are ensemble in nature."[1] It is set to be released domestically by Focus Features, while Universal Pictures will handle foreign distribution.

• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

  The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is an upcoming American adventure comedy film written and directed by Wes Anderson. Based on the eponymous short story from the collection of short stories The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More by Roald Dahl, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular character alongside Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Rupert Friend, and Richard Ayoade. It is scheduled to be released in 2023 on Netflix.

I know that feeling of looking back and thinking, that part I'd like to fix. So I obsessively try not to compromise.

Wes Anderson