ARTS 6 Thursday, July 11, 2019 The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com “You can never publish my love,” Rogue Wave chants, in the song that the title of this series riffs on. Maybe that’s true, and we can never quite account for our love on paper or in print, but we sure can try. That’s what this series is devoted to: publishing our love. Us, the Arts section of The Michi- gan Daily, talking about artists, some of the people we love the most. Perhaps these are futile approximations of love for the poet who told us we deserve to be heard, the director who changed the way we see the world, the singer we see as an old friend. But who ever said futile can’t still be beautiful? [An homage to David Foster Wal- lace’s “David Lynch Keeps his Head.”] 1. WHO THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT To date, Writer/Director Wes Anderson has made nine feature films, four short films and three high- ly stylized commercials. He has been nominated for seven Oscars — those being two for Best Animated Feature, three for Best Original Screenplay and one each of Best Picture and Best Director — though he has won none. A Wes Anderson piece is known by its unique pastel, tableaux style and its melancholic, deadpan humor. Ander- son has been referred to as one of the few actively working ‘auteurs,’ a term associated with historic filmmakers like Mike Nichols, Luis Buñuel and Jean-Luc Goddard. 1(A). THE FOOTNOTE FOR SEC- TION 1 The three directors listed as examples of ‘auteurs’ were chosen only half-arbitrarily, each of these three artists having lent something to Anderson’s films somewhere over the course of his twenty-six-year career. A hundred names of filmmakers from the last seventy years could have been swapped in or swapped out to fit this label. Auteur is a fairly vaunted title, but it’s really just a fancy way to describe a filmmaker who is inti- mately involved in the entire creative process, from the very inception of the idea to the last cuts in post- production — an artist who retains a near autocratic level of control over all aspects of the film. The term origi- nated in the sixties during the French New Wave as a way to classify direc- tors who operated outside the Hol- lywood establishment, though this particular distinction has been all but lost over the years. 2. ENTERTAINMENTS WES ANDERSON HAS MADE THAT ARE MENTIONED IN THIS ARTI- CLE “Bottle Rocket” (1996), “Rush- more” (1998), “The Royal Tenen- baums” (2001), “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” (2004), “Hotel Chevalier” (2007), “The Darjeel- ing Limited” (2007), “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (2009), “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012), “CASTELLO CAVALCANTI” (2013), “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), “Come Together” (2016) “Isle of Dogs” (2018) 3. THE DIRECTOR’S BACK- GROUND AND OTHER WIKIPE- DIA-ISH STUFF Wes Anderson was born in Hous- ton, Texas in 1969 to an archeologist and a father who worked in adver- tising. His parents separated and divorced when he was eight years old, the event deeply affecting the young boy. Anderson made silent films with his Dad’s Super 8 camera as a child, using his friends and brothers as cast and crew. Anderson attended the University of Texas at Austin after graduating high school. There he pursued a philosophy degree while working part time as a cinema pro- jectionist. At school he took as many play- writing classes as he had time for, meeting his future creative partner Owen Wilson in one of these classes in his second year. Anderson and Wilson became roommates, bonding over their love for directors like Cas- savetes, Malick and Huston, as well as their shared desire to create. The duo made their first short film “Bot- tle Rocket” together in 1993, when Anderson was twenty-four. The short made it to Sundance, word-of-mouth eventually landing them a five-mil- lion-dollar deal for their first feature by the same name. Anderson has an older brother Mel who works as a physician, and a younger brother Eric who works as a writer and artist. Eric’s paintings have appeared in many of his broth- er’s films, most notably as the water- color movie-poster for Anderson’s second film, “Rushmore.” Anderson married Lebanese writer Juman Malouf in 2010. The couple had a daughter, Freya, in 2016. Anderson has lived in Paris for many years. 4. THE PART THAT WAS SUP- POSED TO BE THE WHOLE ARTI- CLE “Fantastic Mr. Fox” came out when I was ten years old, and I prob- ably saw it a year or two afterward. I remember finding it to be mostly strange and off-putting. The taxider- my-like puppets and their off-kilter family banter was a departure from the easily comedic Aardman Clay- mation film’s I’d adored as a kid (spe- cific devotion paid to “Chicken Run” and “Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out”). And though I don’t think I immediately got it, “Mr. Fox” had my curiosity piqued. I got the sense that this kids movie trusted me a little more as a viewer, that there was more to this fantastical forest than I could then see — there was a dramatic tex- ture to the movie that most family flicks go without. Having gorged myself on two “Toy Story” movies and a “Shrek” sequel, I was left forever waiting for the “Mr. Fox” sequel that never came. I ran into Ander- son next at the 2015 Academy Awards, where “The Grand Budapest Hotel” was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four. I was reluctant to stay up late, knowing I’d be tired at school the next day, but I couldn’t pull myself away from the screen. What was this funny looking pink-and-purple comedy that kept getting nominated next to “Whip- lash” and “Birdman?” Considering myself to be a high-brow ticket-buyer at the time, I stuck to Iñárritu and didn’t explore “Grand Budapest” any further. Two years later, during my senior year of high school I made a docu- mentary for a C-SPAN student com- petition. My team and I were struck by how creative the previous year’s winner had been with her film (my then, and continued, understand- ing of C-SPAN as synonymous with parched). Convinced we needed to spice our direction up a bit, we hunt- ed for fresh inspiration. It was a piece of algorithmic, targeted-marketing, divine intervention that brought to my YouTube feed the H&M commer- cial “Come Together” that Anderson had made that year (that week, even). I was instantly enamored, watching “Come Together” and his previous Prada advertisement “CASTELLO CAVALCANTI” on repeat the rest of the school day. I showed both the films to my documentary co-conspir- ators and suddenly we had our muse. That was a Monday. By Saturday night I had watched every Anderson film, short and advert to date. 4(A). WHY THIS TYPE OF ARTI- CLE MAKES ME UNCOMFORT- ABLE I’ve found trying to nail down exactly why something is/was important to me is a tall order. I was surprised by this. I didn’t think it would be all that different to what I’ve written before, but designing this article was difficult, a frustrat- ing process for me. I think the exer- cise of repackaging into tight, punchy sentences my admiration for an art- ist that has sprawled out of control makes me nervous that I’m going to leave something out, or not do that admiration justice. I pity my friends, family and associ- ates who had to live through my Ander- son phase, as it was all-consuming. It was quotes and Wes-only chit-chat and a subconscious structured in plani- metrically framed dolly slides — I fan- boyed to an embar- rassing extent. Wrapping that all up into a nice little article-essay feels like a mountainous task, fear of misrepresenting both the artist and the late 2016/early 2017 ver- sion of myself always looming large. I also have doubts about how worthy of an article my affection is. When planning this article out, I was anxious about the threat of hid- ing the artist too much, when, really, I think this should be about them. I feel much more comfortable writ- ing a piece about the reasons for my affection toward a work of art rather than the affection itself. The end goal, I think, is to motivate some- one else to give it a try. So, maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll have a similar experience to mine. Then the purest, most sincere version of this article is probably one line: Go watch “The Royal Tenenbaums.” Experience it for yourself. Walk into it with an open mind, and maybe you’ll find your entire sense of what a movie is/ can be changed by the time you read “Directed by Wes ANDERSON.” A ten-part ode to Anderson FILM NOTEBOOK DESIGN BY KATHRYN HALVERSON STEPHEN SATARINO Daily Film Editor That was a Monday. By Saturday night, I had watched every Anderson film, short and advert to date. Read more at michigandaily.com