Earlier this week, Wes Anderson could be found strolling through an empty Hollywood Bowl, hands folded behind his back as he made his way to the stage, flashing a warm smile as he looked at the 17,000-plus seats.
The Bowl is giving him a little tour before a series of concerts that arrive at the venue this weekend, where those seats will be filled with fans likely wearing Margot Tenenbaum-inspired fur coats or… Moonrise Kingdom-Cool Konskin hats, Wes Heads will be on his way to celebrating the sounds of his beloved cinematic films.
“There are a lot of great people in this thing, but for Jackson Browne to do this song, these two songs, is a little surreal to me,” says the ever-shy Anderson. Hollywood Reporter In a brief moment at the end of that visit, where he also met up with longtime collaborator Jason Schwartzman, the duo shot a short promotional video for the concerts. “I saw that today when they were training, and I will say it was just an overwhelming moment for me.”
For three decades, music has been an unofficial figure in Anderson’s canon, the X-factor in creating equal parts of the twisted, tragic, and bizarre tone that has defined all of his films and turned him into one of cinema’s most influential auteurs.
Now, this character is officially getting his lead role, as the scores and the needle go down in all of his films Bottle rocket to Phoenician plan He’ll take center stage starting with the first show at the Bowl on Friday night, and two more on Saturday and Sunday.
As Anderson hinted, Brown is among the artists taking part in the event, where he will perform his classic song “These Days,” which will forever be associated with the director thanks to Nico’s version playing the famous soundtrack. Royal Tenenbaum The scene in which Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) steps off the bus to meet Richie (Luke Wilson).
In addition to Brown, Beck, Mark Mothersbaugh, Devo, Jim James, Rufus Wainwright, Karen O and Jenny Lewis, all among the star-studded cast on the bill, The LA Phil will perform select songs from the films of writers Anderson Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat as well, marking the first time many of the scores have been played in front of a live audience. And as befits the Anderson connection, Bill Murray serves as showrunner.
“It’s crazy that this hasn’t been done before,” said Schwartzman, who has co-starred in seven of Anderson’s films and had a starring role in 1998. rushmore, he says from the dressing room at The Bowl two days before the first ceremony on Friday.
Schwartzman, who served as founding drummer for the Los Angeles rock band Phantom Planet before turning to acting, He’s also in the lineup, where he’ll play a couple of songs, tell jokes, and do “anything else they ask me to do.”
Of course, Anderson’s films have no shortage of iconic musical moments between Mothersbaugh and Desplat’s scores and the pop music selections that Anderson chooses with his longtime music supervisor Randall Poster. “These Days” may be the most famous, but among many others, there’s also The Faces’ “Ooh La La” which concludes the final scene in Rushmorewhile Max Fischer dances in slow motion with Rosemary Cross before the final curtain closes. Or the Beach Boys’ “Heroes and Villains” in their first heist Wonderful Mr. Fox. Or “Play with Fire” by the Rolling Stones DARJEELING LIMITED While Frances, Peter and Jack finally open up to their long-time homeless mother without saying any words.
“It’s very hard to pick just one,” Schwartzman says when asked to pick a favorite. “It changes with the mood. I love this piece by Mark Mothersbaugh when they’re storming the beaches on Bing Island Aquatic life. It’s a wonderful, strange piece of music. Or maybe a “needle in the hay” in Royal Tenenbaum.“
Beyond an eclectic mixtape of art rock songs and orchestral compositions, the performances are intended to give an uninhibited look at how carefully music choices ground Anderson’s films.
“It’s not even just a character, the music has always been another actor,” Schwartzman says. “In Wes’s films, you work with music as an actor in a way that I’ve never experienced before, and haven’t done since. Right after I was cast RushmoreWes and I went to his car, and he pulled out a TDK cassette tape that just said,Rushmore songs. And he played the entire soundtrack to me as it would later appear on the actual soundtrack, walking me through each scene to the music and what I was going to do as it was happening.
He recalls many scenes from the film being shot live with music in the background, adding that in his decades of experience working with Anderson, “a scene is explained to me through pieces of music.” Schwartzman says that as an actor, this kind of intentionality about music helps him define his character and how he makes decisions.
“It’s not just you. It’s the clothes, it’s the camera, it’s the lights, and part of it is the song. It helps you move. I’m sure if you put your headphones on and put something on and walked down the street, wouldn’t you feel like you were walking differently?”
It can be difficult to describe what an Anderson film is like, but you know it when you hear it.
“It would be like the weather equivalent in a scene. Sometimes the notes could be snow, rain, leaves blowing, sun,” Schwartzman says, humming a short crescendo as a description. “I love their vocal quality. The way they record. The close-mic sound of Mark Mothersbaugh’s recordings. The plucking sounds. And they always have interesting combinations of instruments playing off each other. It never gets boring, the compositions are like little movies themselves.”
