-What’s the secret, Max? You seem to have it pretty figured out.
-I don’t know. Uh.. I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life.
“I wrote a hit play! …And I’m in love with you”.
That time Wes Anderson forced a retired Pauline Kael to watch “Rushmore” in a movie theater:
I already had Pauline Kael’s phone number because I’d found it when I was looking through somebody’s Rolodex a couple of years ago.
”Hello. My name is Wes Anderson. I’m calling for Pauline Kael, please.” I had immediately recognized her voice (from a tape I have of her on ”The Dick Cavett Show”) when she answered the telephone, but I wanted to give her a chance to introduce herself.
”Who are you?” she said, suspicious and steely. I paused.
”I’m a filmmaker, and I’ve just finished a movie called ‘Rushmore,’ and I was hoping maybe I could …”
”How long is it?”
”Ninety minutes.”
”Ninety?”
”Or slightly less. Ninety-ish,” I said.
”That’s a long ‘Rushmore.’ ”
I hesitated. I thought she was making a joke, but I didn’t get it. I said, ”Well, it’s got a pretty quick pace.”
”What’d you do on it?”
”I directed it.”
”Who wrote it?”
”Me and my friend Owen Wilson.”
”Who’s in it?”
”Bill Murray.” This was my trump card. I knew from her reviews that Bill Murray was one of her favorite comedians.
”Which Bill Murray?”
There was a silence. ”The Bill Murray. You know Bill Murray. You love Bill Murray.”
”What was he in?”
My mind drew a blank. ”What was he in?” I repeated the question. I could only think of one title. ” ‘Meatballs,’ ” I said.
It didn’t ring a bell. ”You’ll know him when you see him.”
She laughed uncomfortably and said, ”O.K.” She asked if ”Rushmore” was my first film, and I told her no, that I’d directed a movie called ”Bottle Rocket.”
There was another silence.
”Well, lets hope this one’s not too thrown together.”
I thought about this. ”How do you mean thrown together?” I said.
She didn’t answer. I waited. She laughed quietly, and then she seemed to warm up all of a sudden: ”O.K., send me the tape,” she said.
”Actually, to tell you the truth, I’d prefer to screen it for you. Is there a movie theater near you?”
She paused. ”There’s the Triplex.”
”Let me show it to you at the Triplex.”
She sounded skeptical. ”How are we going to do that?”
”I’ll get the studio to set it up.”
”That could be expensive,” she said.
”Well. Let’s stick it to them,” I said.
She liked the sound of this. ”O.K., let’s stick it to them,” she said. She told me she didn’t drive, and that someone would have to pick her up and take her to the theater.
I said: ”I’ll do it myself. How do I get to your house?”
”I don’t know,” she said.
”O.K. I’ll figure it out.”
A few weeks later I drove from Cambridge to Ms. Kael’s house in Great Barrington, Mass. I brought some cookies with me which I thought I would offer her during the first reel.
Her house is stone and shingle and very large, and I saw a deer duck into the trees at the corner of the yard as I came up the driveway. I knocked on the screen door and she looked out. She was sitting in a wooden chair. ”My God, you’re just a kid,” she said.
She told me to open the door. I tried it. I told her it was locked. She told me the lock had been stiff for 20 years, and that I should just fiddle with it. She said she knew it was 20 years because she’d just finished paying off her mortgage.
I fiddled with the lock for a minute and got the door open. We shook hands and I said: ”It’s very nice to meet you. How are you?”
”Old,” she said.
She was a few inches under 5 feet tall, and she stood shakily with a metal cane that had four legs at the base. We both had on New Balance sneakers.
She has Parkinson’s, which makes her shake a little bit and leaves her unsteady. She told me she had been in the hospital with meningitis during the week after we spoke on the telephone, which explained her forgetting who Bill Murray was. She told me I would have to hold her hand and help her get around, and I told her that would be just fine. On the way to the theater she told me she’d invited her friend Dorothy to join us. ”I would’ve gotten a group together, but I didn’t want to have too many people, in case the movie isn’t any good.” I nodded and pulled into the driveway next to the theater. There was a small-town police station there, and I stopped in front of it.
”You can’t park here, Wes.”
”Oh, I think we’ll be O.K.”
She shook her head. She said that this was proof I was a movie director. No one else would think they could double-park in front of a police station.
We went into the lobby and she introduced me to Dorothy. ”This is Wes Anderson. He’s responsible for whatever it is we’re about to see.” Then Ms. Kael told me I should change my name. ”Wes Anderson is a terrible name for a movie director.” Dorothy agreed.
(More)
am currently reading this remarkable biography of JD Salinger and there’s a chapter about his experience at Valley Forge Military Academy (the model for Pencey Prep in Catcher in The Rye)
- flunked out of several public and private schools before his dad enrolled him to Valley Forge
- Young Jerry’s academic performance was well below the average. His most dismal grades were in Latin and geometry. (uh. “I saved Latin” and solved The Hardest Geometry Problem In The World)
- He was manager of the school fencing team, but this no doubt came under the heading of Dramatic Art.
- Served as a reporter for the school paper, acted in two school plays, taking a female part in each, and winning rave reviews. (“ I wrote a hit play and directed it, so I’m not sweating it either.”
- no indication that he was much involved in sports. His records state that he liked Ping-Pong and soccer, but he seems to have been alarmingly accident prone (on various occasions suffered a broken leg, a broken ankle, a broken arm, struck on the head by a ball)
- he always talked in a pretentious manner as if he were reciting something from Shakespeare and he had a sardonic wit.
- (THE BEST ONE:) His only other recorded interest is in “TROPICAL FISH”
You guys.
all this time i thought Max was Holden but it turns out Max was Jerome and Holden was Jerome and Max was Wes and Wes was Jerome and Holden was Wes and..
