47 Quirky Facts About Wes Anderson Movies

April 6, 2023 | Christine Tran

47 Quirky Facts About Wes Anderson Movies


He quirky, he’s whimsical, he’s maybe too enamored with the color yellow. He’s Wes Anderson—the American director whose dry wit and hyper-detailed films set an aesthetic standard for movie nerds the world over. Anderson’s quaint stylization has also evoked criticism for being too niche, too exclusionary, and too monotonous (in both color and representation!). With those caveats in mind, grab your most hipster headgear and partake in 47 fanciful facts about Wes Anderson films.


1. Outdoor Recess

The cast of Fantastic Mr. Fox often completed their voicework in the great outdoors. They recorded in fields, forests, stables, and a farm in Connecticut that belonged to George Clooney’s friend.

Wes Anderson

2. Whimsically Widowed Tribute

In Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox novel, Mrs. Fox did not have first name. For the movie, Anderson dubbed her “Felicity” after Dahl’s widow.

Wes Anderson FactsFlickr

3. Vehicular Inspiration

Anderson wrote parts of Fantastic Mr. Fox while residing as a guest of Roald Dahl’s widow in their Buckinghamshire, England house. Some of the film’s bunk beds were even modelled after the bunks in an old caravan on the Dahl property.

Wes Anderson FactsFlickr

4. I Promise I’ll Give It Back, Mom

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Etheline (played by Anjelica Huston) wears glasses that belonged to Wes Anderson’s mother. Like Etheline, Anderson’s mother pursued a career in archaeology after her divorce.

John Huston FactsWikimedia Commons

5. Oh, Shoot!

When they were children, Owen Wilson shot his brother, Andrew, with a BB gun. This childhood memory inspired Royal’s shooting of young Chas in The Royal Tenenbaums. When the film zooms in on Chas’ hand, with the BB still inside his knuckles, that’s really Andrew Wilson’s hand with the real pellet still lodged there.

Students Getting Expelled factsShutterstock

6. The Stork Visits the Sea

Cate Blanchett plays the pregnant Jane Winslett-Richardson in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Right before filming, Blanchett discovered she really was pregnant. Thus, she wore a fake pregnant stomach for half of her shots in the movie and bore her real pregnant belly for the other half.

Wonder Woman FactsGetty Images

7. Shotgun Improvisation

Bill Murray randomly pulled a gun on Cate Blanchett in the interview scene in The Life Aquatic. Anderson loved it so much, he wrote the improvisation into the movie and made them film different takes.

Fellowship Of The Ring FactsGetty Images

8. Aquatic Oddities, Animated Legacies

All the amazing undersea creatures in The Life Aquatic were stop-motion animated by the legendary Henry Selick, who is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Divorce Horror Stories factsPeakpx

9. Gained in Translation

Actor and musician Seu Jorge, who played Pele in The Life Aquatic, translated all the David Bowie songs performed by his character into Portuguese. He complied these covers in an album called The Life Aquatic Studio Sessions Featuring Seu Jorge.

Wes Anderson FactsPixabay

10. Wes Gets Out-Quirked

Bud Cort, who played Bill Ubell, decided to lose 50 pounds to make it “realistic” that his character was kidnapped by pirates in The Life Aquatic. Anderson was very nervous, but Cort managed to lose the weight despite falling sick in the process. After all that, Cort says that unless you know him, you can't even really notice his weight loss in the film.

Wes Anderson FactsThe Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,Touchstone Pictures

11. Where There’s a Wilson, There’s a Way (Except Here)

Moonrise Kingdom is the first Wes Anderson film that doesn't feature Owen Wilson in any way.

Wes Anderson FactsWikimedia Commons

12. Big Boys, Little Stories

Anderson and Owen Wilson originally wrote Rushmore to have a heightened sense of reality akin to, in Anderson’s words, “a Roald Dahl children's book.” Coincidentally, Anderson would go on to adapt an actual Roald Dahl children’s book, Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Wes Anderson FactsShutterstock

13. Lit(erary) Kids

Anderson drew inspiration from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey for much of the child prodigy content in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Wes Anderson FactsThe Royal Tenenbaums,Touchstone Pictures

14. Royal Tenenbaum’s Chocolate Factory?

Gene Wilder was in the running to play Royal in The Royal Tenenbaums, but he reportedly turned it down to stay in retirement.

Wes Anderson Facts Wikimedia Commons

15. Recycled Whimsy

Next time you’re watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, play Zissou’s tour of his ship backwards. That music is The Royal Tenenbaums score in reverse.

Anjelica Huston FactsGetty Images

16. Motherly Love Speaks Volumes

Roman Coppola, the co-writer for Moonrise Kingdom, drew inspiration from his mother for Mrs. Bishop (played by Frances McDormand). Coppola’s mother also used a bullhorn to call her children together in real life.

Wes Anderson FactsShutterstock

17. Bill Covers the Bill

Bill Murray was prepared to sacrifice a lot of his own money for Rushmore. He was paid a paltry $9,000 for the entire film and even donated $25,000 to Anderson when Disney refused to fund a helicopter scene. Apparently Anderson never cashed the check, and still keeps it as a memento.

Famous People FactsGetty Images

18. Imagined Places?

Anderson had never been to India at all until he wrote the screenplay for The Darjeeling Limited in 2006. All T no shade, but it kinda shows?

Revenge factsPixnio

19. Train Game

10 custom-made rail-cars were specifically constructed for The Darjeeling Limited. No filming equipment could be affixed to the ceiling or extend more than a meter outside of a rail-car’s windows, which made things difficult. Anderson and his production team approached Northwestern Railways to customize special cars for filming from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer.

Wes Anderson Facts Wikimedia Commons

20. Ahoy, New Casting

In The Life Aquatic’s original script, a character was meant to be kidnapped by Indonesian pirates. Anderson could not find enough Indonesian actors in Italy, where they were filming, so the pirates were changed to Filipino. One of the pirates can be seen wearing a Longhorn’s cap, which is a homage to Anderson’s alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.

Keanu Reeves FactsShutterstock

21. Where There’s Smoke, There’s a Hipster

Anderson’s commitment to retro-chic is notorious. Case in point: Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot in The Royal Tenenbaums actually smoked a brand of darts that were only sold in Ireland and discontinued in the 1970s. Anderson insisted finding this obscure brand because it fit the film’s 70s vibe and made Margot’s use of them all the quirkier.

george clooney FactsPexels

22. Plan B

Anderson’s first feature film, Bottle Rocket, tanked so horribly at the box office that Owen Wilson considered dropping out of showbusiness and enlisting in the military.

To Kill A Mockingbird factsShutterstock

23. Daddy Big Bucks Has His Doubts

Mega-producer James L. Brooks is largely why Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson had the chance to expand Bottle Rocket into a feature film with Columbia Pictures. However, Brooks had doubts about the young men’s work ethic; they never took notes during meetings and Wilson allegedly exchanged the plane ticket to LA that Brooks bought him for a bus ticket in hopes of pocketing the extra cash.

The Simpsons Facts

24. Filming From the Seat of His Pants

Anderson sent pieces of his own wardrobe to the Fantastic Mr. Fox puppet-makers so they could get Mr. Fox’s comfy, corduroy style just right.

Wes Anderson Movies factsflickr

25. Never Settles for Fake News

Every newspaper article you see in The Grand Budapest Hotel is a complete and coherent depiction of the events in the headline. Each was also written by Anderson himself.

Queen Christina FactsPxHere

26. A Screen Fit for a King

The Grand Budapest Hotel deploys three distinct aspect ratios to reflect the three distinct eras of the film. For the film’s beginning and end, the aspect ratio is a contemporary 1.85:1 to reflect the Author (played by Tom Wilkinson) talking to the reader from 1985. When Zero as an old man is telling his story to a younger Author (now played by Jude Law) in the 1960s, the film accordingly takes on a retrofitted aspect ratio of 2.35:1. For the most part, the film’s action in the 1930s, so Anderson takes on the 1.37:1 ratioalso known as the “Academy ratio,” which was set as the studio standard in 1932.

Wes Anderson FactsWikimedia Commons

27. Questionable Racebendng?

In The Grand Budapest Hotel, young Zero is played by Tony Revolori, a Guatemalan-American actor. Oddly, the older version of Zero is played by F. Murray Abraham, who is not South American but of Italian and Assyrian descent.

Wes Anderson FactsWikimedia Commons

28. Futura-rama!

That font that came to be associated with Wes Anderson is called “futura.” It’s not just a signature of his film titles: futura font also decorates the buses, buildings, and book covers of the worlds inside his films, most notably in The Royal Tenenbaums.

Wes Anderson FactsWikimedia Commons

29. Close Enough Fur You?

All fur in Isle of Dogs was made from Alpaca wool.

Wes Anderson FactsPxfuel

30. Fetch That Record, Boy!

Isle of Dogs is the longest stop-motion animated film of all time. It beat out Coraline (2009) by two minutes, and it's tied with Kubo and the Two Strings.

Parks and Recreation factsShutterstock

31. Playing Mind Games on M. Gustave

Instead of offering Ralph Fiennes a specific part in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson sent Fiennes an email that asked him to read the script and choose which character that he wanted to play. Anderson called this a “psychological game” to stop the actors from frequently telling him, “Well, I like everybody else’s parts—I’m not so sure about my guy.”

Harry Potter Actors FactsShutterstock

32. From Concierge to Hollywood Close-ups

Most staff in the “Grand Budapest Hotel” (from The Grand Budapest Hotel) weren’t actors—they were actual hospitality workers whom the film crew recruited from various hotels and locations patronized during production

Not Paid Enough FactsShutterstock

33. Brother, Can You Spare a Lime?

To achieve a realistic limp in The Darjeeling Limited, Owen Wilson placed a small lime in his shoe.

Learned Too Late in Life factsPixabay

34. Cheaters Finally Prosper

Owen Wilson was expelled from the school where they filmed Bottle Rocket. He had copied answers from his geometry teacher’s textbook at St. Mark’s High School in Dallas.

Premiere Of Disney And Pixar's 'Cars 3' - ArrivalsGetty Images

35. A Jet-Set Quickie

Natalie Portman flew to India for just a half-hour of work in The Darjeeling Limited (though she had done more work on the prologue, Hotel Chevalier, earlier).

Natalie Portman FactsShutterstock

36. The Center of Attention

So how does Wes Anderson achieve those perfectly symmetrical, diorama-like shots? Planimetric staging! It’s a technique where the camera is positioned at a 90-degree angle with the subject, delivering an almost perfectly symmetrical composition.

What Is Video?Shutterstock

37. Max Returns!

Jason Schwartzman revived his Max Fischer character (and The Max Fischer Players!) for a series of shorts promoting the 1999 MTV Movie Awards. Each short restaged a MTV-nominated film using a Wes Anderson-style and Rushmore characters.

Children Of Hollywood FactsGetty Images

38. Private Dance for Two (and Two More)

The beach dance scene between Suzy and Sam in Moonrise Kingdom was saved for the very last day of filming so the young leads would be at their most comfortable with each other. It was done on a closed set with just the actors, Wes Anderson, and the cameraman.

 

Wes Anderson FactsMoonrise Kingdom,American Empirical Pictures

39. Kiss Goodbye

The words “For Juman” appear at the corner in the very last shot of Moonrise Kingdom. This is a tribute to Wes Anderson’s girlfriend, Juman Malouf (who also voiced Agnes in Fantastic Mr. Fox).

Wes Anderson FactsGetty Images

40. Snape and Scar as Social Workers?

Although Tilda Swinton ultimately nabbed the role of “Social Services” in Moonrise Kingdom, her part was also offered to Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons.

Princess Diana FactsGetty Images

41. From Drabbles to Doodles

In Moonrise Kingdom, Suzy (played by Kara Hayward) packs six fictitious YA novels that she stole from the library. Six artists were commissioned to give each book a unique style, and Wes Anderson even wrote passages for them. In 2012, Anderson released animations of all six books, each accompanied by the voice of the Moonrise Kingdom narrator Bob Balaban.

John Huston Facts Pxfuel

42. No Money, No Problem

Every actor in Hotel Chevalier appeared in the short for free. Anderson financed the rest of the production himself.

The Fast And The Furious factsShutterstock

43. The Royal Tenen-burns

Anjelica Houston’s hair caught fire from a candle as they were filming Margot’s birthday in The Royal Tenenbaums. Anderson credits Kumar Pallana (who played Pagoda) for extinguishing the blaze before anyone was seriously hurt.

Wes Anderson FactsThe Royal Tenenbaums,Touchstone Pictures

44. Move Over MCU

Hotel Chevalier was not written as a prologue to The Darjeeling Limited. However, Anderson realized shortly before filming that Jason Schwartzman’s character deeply resembled one of the protagonists of a film Anderson was in the middle of writing (that of course would Darjeeling, which began production shortly after). He repositioned Schwartzman’s character as the same person, uniting Chevalier and Darjeeling in the same cinematic universe.

Wes Anderson FactsFlickr

45. Wes Anderson Was Watching You From the Skies

GoogleEarth was Anderson’s go-to method when scouting the perfect location for Moonrise Kingdom. In his words, he was searching for “bare wildlife” ambience. So of course the Internet was the solution.

Wes Anderson FactsPixabay

46. We Don’t Negotiate With Birdnappers

While filming The Royal Tenenbaums, Mordecai the hawk was kidnapped and held for ransom. The production schedule could not spare time to negotiate, which is why Mordecai returns to Richie “traumatized” with white feathers; they simply bought a different bird.

Wes Anderson Facts Good Free Photos

47. A Royal Pain

On the set of The Royal Tenenbaums, Gene Hackman once told Wes Anderson to “pull up [his] pants” and called the director the c-word, among other aggressions. In fact, the cast and crew found Hackman increasingly scary and irritable as filming went on. The only person whom Hackman could never intimidate was Bill Murray. Inevitability, Murray found himself positioned as the set peacekeeper and supervised many of Hackman’s scenes himself.

Wes Anderson Facts Wikipedia

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26


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