THE ANDERSONS: Bottle Rocket (1996)

Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?!

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CONTENT WARNING: mental illness, robbery, gunplay, violence.

This week, we’re actually going back a year earlier to the feature debut of a director who was clearly figuring some things out still. Wes Anderson was a University of Texas graduate with a short film that did well enough at a Dallas film festival to get noticed by, of all people, James L. Brooks, and get him and his unknown buddy, Owen Wilson, a chance to make a movie for Columbia Pictures. And the result? It’s a mixed back, to be honest - the cast is really solid and the characters are superb. But for a movie full of awkward moments, inconveniences, and a full on botched robbery, the plot of this movie is surprisingly thin. And as for Wes Anderson’s renowned aesthetic - it’s there, you can see it, but it’s like looking at a rough sketch or first draft. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s pretty obvious why it flopped. Good thing Wes had some real bangers to come. Grab your jumpsuit and hop on your mini-bike as we scoot through Bottle Rocket this week on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpt of “Futureman’s Theme” from the original motion picture score to the film Bottle Rocket composed by Mark Mothersbaugh. ℗©1995 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

Excerpts from the film Bottle Rocket are © 1996 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpt of “Save Me” from the motion picture soundtrack to the film Magnolia is written and performed by Aimee Mann. ©1999 Aimee Mann ASCAP. ©℗1999 Reprise Records, a Time Warner Company.