A plea to Owen Wilson
An open letter to Owen Wilson [“Look Beyond the Facade in Wes Anderson’s Films,” July 1]:
For years, I believe people had the sense that Wes Anderson was the genius behind the three films you co-wrote with him (“Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums”). This is probably because Anderson’s persona jibes with our expectations for an artistic genius, while you, as much as I hate to admit it, come off as the class clown.
So it was easy to believe that Anderson was the brains behind the operation and that you were the color. But now that I’ve seen all of the Wes Anderson movies, it’s now clear to me that we had it backward.
Because ever since you stopped collaborating with Anderson, things have gone downhill in his work. Some of the movies he made without you showed moments of true brilliance, but none of them were the masterpieces that are “Rushmore” and “The Royal Tenenbaums,” two films as much about character development as about oddball behavior, unusual costumes, retro props and quirky sets — the tricks that are Anderson’s specialty.
In order for absurdity — the hallmark of any Anderson film — to work, it must be paired with emotional honesty. That’s why, simply put, “Moonrise Kingdom” broke my heart. And that’s why we need you, Mr. Wilson, to make sure your buddy never makes another almost-great film. We need you to tone down his oddball moments, to edit out his Parisian prologues, to say no to his unnecessary narrators in inexplicable long red coats and to encourage him, instead, to capture the provocative emotions of his fascinating main characters.