Wes Anderson names the greatest directorial run in cinema history: “Practically unheard of”
Long viewed by many in the movie biz as the actor’s director of choice, there’s a lot more to the Texan auteur Wes Anderson than just his much-parodied ‘someone stands in the middle of a room looking blankly at the camera before cutting to a caption’ would have you believe.
Although his films are often seen as a bit arty and weird, they’re actually far more mainstream than you’d imagine, grossing more than half a billion dollars at the box office and providing regular work for his select favourite actors in the shape of Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jeff Goldblum and Tilda Swinton. His latest effort, The Phoenician Scheme, features the likes of Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson in a typically quirky black comedy featuring assassins, arms dealers and nightclub owners.
Anderson’s movies also happen to often be fantastic stories skilfully told – movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums are superbly funny, emotionally immersive movies that stand up to repeated viewings. The run of three movies he had between 2001 and 2007 with Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited stands up against most modern great directors.
And much as Anderson is the actor’s director, he has his own director of choice – that being the American counter-culture exponent Hal Ashby. Ashby, who was mostly active in the 1960s and ’70s, aligned himself with the causes and feelings of those some ten years younger than he was in making movies like The Landlord, Harold and Maude and The Last Detail with Jack Nicholson. Something of a stoner even before smoking weed was widespread, Ashby was a bit of a hippie whose films often quite bravely went against the fairly conservative political times in America, especially during the Vietnam War.
Said Wes Anderson: “Hal Ashby made five or six great movies in a row, and that seems to be practically unheard of. His movies are far beyond worth seeing. To me, they are some of the best movies ever made. Sometimes, like the opening scene and much of Coming Home, they almost resemble documentaries.”
Coming Home is a 1978 film telling the story of a Vietnam soldier’s wife who falls in love with a disabled veteran while her husband is away. While nowhere near as well-known as that decade’s The Deer Hunter, it is still thought of as one of the more challenging movies to broach the subject of what was then America’s longest war.
Never a household name, Ashby was responsible for casting Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and was originally due to direct the film before he was replaced. Instead, he partnered with Warren Beatty on the sex comedy Shampoo, which was the third highest-grossing film of 1975, beaten only by Jaws and Cuckoo’s Nest. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ gong for Lee Grant.
Anderson concluded: “Sometimes, for instance, in the cases of Harold and Maude and Being There, they are quite surreal. There is a great range, and they contain great performances by some of the best actors of their time. They are authentic and original and very moving, but as I have started sounding like a book report again, I will make this my ending.”
