From Dallas To Zubrowka: The Imagined Worlds of Wes Anderson

“That’s the kind of movie that I like to make, where there is an invented reality and the audience is going to go someplace where hopefully they’ve never been before. The details, that’s what the world is made of.” – Wes Anderson.

Books, architecture, costumes, and curio items: they fill the busy frames of Wes Anderson’s work (in collaboration with longtime DP Robert Yeoman and production designer Mark Friedberg), and in part serve to make the writer/director’s eight feature films and four shorts so rich, rewatchable, and increasingly successful with audiences. But as much as the emphasis on Anderson’s work tends toward the visual, it’s the way he uses his fictitious universes, details, and cast dynamics to support a human emotional base that elevates his films.

“Somehow I feel like [my film] needs its own world to exist in,” the director recently explained to us on the eve of his latest ambitious work, the WWII era-set “Grand Budapest Hotel” (review here). “And then I have a whole group of people who I have worked together for years and that’s kind of what we like to do together: make the place for these characters to do their things.” Whether it be The Republic of Zubrowka, The Ping Islands, or Rushmore Academy, the world-building in Anderson’s films occupies a unique slot in each of his narratives, so strap in as we chart how each universe strengthens and focuses each film, starting with the acclaimed debut feature that launched his career.

A Texas Trail of Ill-Conceived Crime – “Bottle Rocket” (1996)
ANTHONY: “One morning, over at Elizabeth’s beach house, she asked me if I would rather go water skiing or lay out. And I realized that not only did I not want to answer that question, but I never wanted to answer another water-sports question… or see any of these people again… for the rest of my life.”

Anderson’s 1996 directorial debut, a short-turned-feature written with Owen Wilson while they studied at UT Austin, finds the director at his most imprecise—hinting at many of the themes and visual motifs to come, but locating a shaggy charm in its tale of three misfit criminals in Texas. As Anthony (Luke Wilson) completes his stay at a mental hospital for “exhaustion” and pairs with old pal Dignan (Owen Wilson) for a string of low-level robberies, the film delves into its own singular version of Dallas and its surrounding towns.

Unlike in most of Anderson’s later filmography, the locations remain largely unvarnished, whether it be Hinckley Cold Storage at 4000 Commerce in Dallas—home to the film’s final botched heist—or the Hillsboro Motel, where Anthony and Paraguayan maid Inez’s romance first blossoms. This being Anderson’s first feature, the relatively small budget ($7 million) can answer for some of that approach. However, he also wisely uses the value in inspired character moments and a variety of wry visual cues: witness getaway driver Bob’s relationship with his drug-dealing brother, Future Man, Dignan’s incredible 75-year-plan for he and Anthony, or the delightful internal dynamic of a strip mall bookstore, revealed mid-robbery as Anthony approaches a young clerk. (“Rob?” “Uh-huh?” “Why aren’t you in literature?” “It’s all full up.”)