2. There's a recurring Wes Anderson character, the young boy or teen or barely adult man who yearns to enter into the world of adult hood, who pushes himself into the world of adults & becomes emotionally entangled with their lives. It's hard not so see that as autobiographical
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3. Rushmore (1998) was Anderson's second film but the first one with his signature style of deadpan artifice. Kael had already retired from the New Yorker when he made it, but Anderson wanted to get her stamp of approvalz; the Andersonian callow youth winning adult approval.
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4. Kael was already deep into Parkinson's when Anderson called her. He mentioned Bill Murray was in Rushmore & Kael responded, ''Which Bill Murray?'' Nevertheless, Anderson pushed on. She said, send over a tape. He replied, no, I'll rent a theater to screen it for you.
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5. Kael agrees. Anderson shows up to her house to take her to the screening. She surveys him and says, ''My God, you're just a kid." A scene that could almost have been in the very movie Anderson was taking her to see.pic.twitter.com/tE7thFn25q
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6. The screening doesn't go as Anderson hoped for. After the movie, Kael said, ''I don't know what you've got here, Wes.'' Anderson nodded. Kael: ''Did the people who gave you the money read the script?''
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7. After the screening Anderson takes Kael back to her house. They talk. Kael offers him some of her books (first editions, hardcover) and signs one, ''For Wes Anderson, With affection and a few queries. Pauline Kael.''
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8. This is a bittersweet story, about hero-worship and belatedness. We can never really meet our heroes because by the time we get to see them, the moment of heroism is already gone, they are different. More fundamentally, our heroes can never see us as we want to be seen.
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9. I bring up the Kael story because I think it offers us a way into The French Dispatch, Anderson's latest attempt to steamroll through time itself and magically enter into the world he read about as a boy.
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10. The French Dispatch is a divisive movie: the supreme example of Anderson's imperial nostalgia, his attempt by sheer artifice to undo & remake history. Depending on viewers, it's either masterful or cloying & empty.
@DavidKlion & I take it up here:https://jeetheer.substack.com/p/podcast-well-always-have-paris?r=bh54&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter …Show this thread
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Wow! They kinda look alike.
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Right?? Looking at the picture and half-skimming the tweet I thought this was going to be a story of a young trans woman who ran away from her parochial family and became herself in New York City.
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