My Kingdom

*Ahem*

(They all turn around in their chairs and look at him.)

"What kind of bird are you?"

(Pause.)

"I'm a sparrow.  She's a dove--"

"No-- what kind of bird (beat) are you?"

----------------------------

I've seen the trailer maybe twenty or so times.  Maybe I have Aspergers-- maybe I'm just in love.  I don't know.  In any case, I've been waiting for a long, long time.  I had plans to drive up to New York City to see it two weeks ago, but it just didn't happen.  I'm not as impetuous, or as quixotic, or as liberated as I used to be.

Twins'll do that to a guy, you know.

Because I wasn't alive in the late 19th century, I'll never know the thrill of hearing that "a new operetta by Gilbert & Sullivan" is premiering at the Savoy, or is coming to New York.  I'll never get to hear the scuttlebutt or the gossip about the costumes or the sets, and I'll never get to see the sheet music for "The Law is the True Embodiment" when it was brand new.  That would have been it for me.

So, because I live in this place and this time and in this century, the release of a new Wes Anderson movie is, I suppose, as close as I'll ever get to that feeling.  And now, at long last, "Moonrise Kingdom" is rising at a theatre near me.

Which is good, because I'm damn tired of waiting.

When I read a little review of "Rushmore" all those years ago, one reviewer called it "A love letter to the misfits of the world."  I didn't need to read any more of that review to know that I needed to see this film.  I couldn't have known that, as Max Fisher danced with Miss Cross to the clanking chords of The Faces' "Ooh La La" that I'd be in tears. I couldn't have known that I would have a fight with my allergist about the ending of that movie, that he argued that the film shouldn't have ended happily for Max-- that, because the movie ended how he wanted, he never learned anything, he never grew as a character.  I argued that Max did learn and Max did grow, but that the film ended how he would have ended it if he'd written it.

What kind of bird is he?

It's funny, being drawn to films about people whose family dynamics are completely fucked up.  You'd think it's how I must have grown up-- surrounded by eccentric people who possessed an uncanny inability to communicate anything resembling affection-- but I didn't.  My upbringing was mundane and regular and safe and surrounded by love.  We were not without our problems, but we weren't Tenenbaums, and we never wanted to be.

Wes Anderson films are more than the sum of the camera angles, the flat presentation of the characters, the shirt and tie combos (in "Rushmore", Herman Blume wore monochromatic shirt-and-tie combinations-- all yellow, all blue, etc, and in "Royal Tenenbaums", Royal favored hues of purples and green stripes-- effeminate choices for such a, well, bastard) or the chic, carefully selected eyeglasses or the indie-cool, carefully selected soundtracks.  It's not the charming, pizzicato tinklings of Mark Mothersbaugh or, now, Alexander Desplat.  It's not the many, many details.

I think it's the sad sincerity of even the most insincere characters.  It's their unabashed presentation, it's the way in which they plod through life, saying awful things with a great innocence.  They're telling the truth even when they're lying through their teeth.

And I guess I like that.  I guess I'm like that, too.  Even though I wish I wasn't.

I suppose I keep coming back to these films because they're some kind of mirror, albeit a distorted one, with cooler clothes, of who I am and I think that, if I watch enough times, if I step aboard the Darjeeling, Ltd one more time, if I close my eyes and listen to the words and the music and the pauses, maybe one day I'll figure out what kind of bird am I.

These Are O. R. Scrubs

It seems like it was written in the stars.

It seems to have been ordained from the start.

Before they were conceived by Wes Anderson, we all knew I was going to love them.

Aside from "Bottle Rocket" (too unintentionally uneven) and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (too intentionally droll), I've been pretty much in love.

And, it's like-- obviously. I wear glasses. I'm emotionally overwrought. I'm eccentric. I'm... white. Why shouldn't I, wouldn't I, couldn't I love Wes Anderson movies? Is there any reason, conceivable or otherwise?

No. There isn't.

There are people I know and care about and respect who don't like these movies, and I can appreciate that. I understand and acknowledge that. But I can also remember seeing "Rushmore" in the movie theatre in Manayunk with a good friend of mine who's long since moved away to Minnesota and we maybe talk once every three years, if that. And I can remember, as Rod Stewart and "The Faces" clanged along with their guitars and their off-key piano as Max Fisher and his teacher met on the dance floor to complete his, and Wes Anderson's, fantasia-- I cried. It wasn't the hysterical, heaving, heart-bursting crying that came out of me, and my two sisters, as we arrived at the end of Tim Burton's "Big Fish", it was a much more restrained, tears forming and rolling kind of crying. More like falling, it was. And we could spend a lot of time talking about what that was and why that was, but I don't really see much of a point in doing that.

It just... was.

I was having a chat with a friend of mine recently about Wes Anderson movies, and it's not easy having a chat with a new friend, about anything, really, but it's made extra tricky when he's a great deal more intelligent than I am, and knows more about pretty much anything that we happen to discuss. He is an extroardinary film buff, and so I tread lightly in conversation. I like to listen to him talk, and I am much happier when I'm listening to him than when I'm talking to him. But I realized something very interesting (at least, it's interesting to me) during our chat about Wes Anderson films. My friend was talking about how, in the "Darjeeling, Ltd" there wasn't a central location that the action centered around to ground the film, and that bothered him. In "Rushmore" it was, well, Rushmore Academy. In "The Royal Tenenbaums", it was 111 Archer Avenue. In "The Life Aquatic" it was the submarine. I argued that, in "Darjeeling, Ltd" it was the train, and noted the meticulous care that was taken to paint the train and to treat it as another character in the film, but I don't think my friend was buying it. And, frankly, I wasn't buying it either, because I couldn't conceive of how something like that even mattered. And it made me realize that this friend of mine and I look at film in an entirely different way. He conceptualizes and is engaged by construct and directorial intent. His way of looking at films is technical and almost clinical.

I fall in love with the characters. I crave them. I ache when they try to connect with each other and cannot. The scene where Chas drags Royal into the old closet filled with board games to rip him a new asshole. The scene where Mrs. Fox tells Mr. Fox she never should have married him. The scene where Francis tells Peter and Jack, "I want us to become brothers again, like we used to be." The scene where Miss. Cross offers Herman a carrot.

I just... I don't know.

This past weekend, Mrs. Apron and I took my aunt who's visiting from Australia to an Art for the Cash-Poor art show in Northern Liberties. If you know Philadelphia, you won't be surprised to hear that it was a hipster art show. Chicks with sleeve tattoos carrying ironic dogs. Dudes in little plaid shirts and skinny jeans and wax-tipped moustaches. One vendor was selling computer-art renderings of Wes Anderson film posters. Another vendor was selling oil-on-canvas paintings of scenes from Wes Anderson films-- Baumer sitting on the bench waiting for Margot to step off the Green Line Bus, etcetera. I was instantly embarrassed by my love for these films, these movies that I seemed pre-destined to connect with. Of course, I bought three of the posters anyway. Because, let's face it, you can't stop love.

Ooh-La-La...

Awkward Friends

When "Rushmore" came out, I realized two things:

1.) I will never be as simultaneously cool and awkward as Jason Schwartzmann.

and

2.) I love movies about awkward, unlikely friendships.

In case it's been too long since your last finely-aged Wes Anderson fix, I will take great pleasure in reminding you that, to the jangly soundtrack of the British pop invasion, bespectacled, precocious, and sometimes homicidal Rushmore Academy student Max Fisher becomes close friends with local business magnate Herman Blume, who is approximately four decades Max's senior, and wears monochromatic shirt-and-tie combinations.

In one of several touching scenes, after a falling out, Max and Herman meet outside of Max's father's barber shop. Max is wearing a green velour suit and, in honor of his friend, sports a gold shirt with a identically-hued bowtie. Max pulls a velvet-covered box from his pocket and opens it to reveal two lapel pins, both adorned with the Rushmore Academy bee mascot. "I thought you could wear one and I could wear the other," Max says, in that charmingly awkward way of his. One says "Punctuality" and the other says "Perfect Attendance," and Max offers one to Herman, also a Rushmore alum. Herman is obviously touched, and takes a careful moment to consider his choice.

"I'll take Punctuality."

And, through the rest of the film, Max wears "Perfect Attendance" and Herman wears "Punctuality," with pride.

There are a lot of reasons why I love "Rushmore." We don't need to go into all of them here, but I think the main reason why I love "Rushmore" is because it's a film that celebrates a phenomenon that I find irresistable: the bond between two inconceivably-matched men. Incongruous friendships-- intensely loyal, often tumultuous, engaging, interesting, maybe 3% homoerotically-charged, but mostly goofy, tender, powerful, gentle and real.

Although I'm writing this post at 8:07pm, EST on Sunday evening, I feel pretty confident in betting that one of those films is going to win the Academy Award.

While ardent linguistic schdorks like my wife may have been super-jazzed about the speech pathology implications and particulars of the film, it's tender-hearted schleps like me who were moved by the unlikely friendship between an English monarch and an Australian speech specialist and occasional amateur thespian. They laugh together, they fight like bears, they curse (bugger bugger bugger fuck!) and they find a way to continue being friends for the rest of their lives, in spite of the fact that, really, those two had no business cavorting about behind the radio microphones of the times.

One of my other favorite films stars Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt; it's called "The Impostors." Tucci plays Arthur and Platt plays Maurice, and they are two struggling stage actors who live together in impoverished circumstances. Together, they wind up as stowaways aboard a ship-- with hilarious consequences. Maurice calls Arthur "Arthie." They hug. They bicker. They sleep next to each other in little rickety twin beds. They fight crime together. And they practice making dramatic faces at each other. They share slices of bread and cups of tea and, when Maurice is ready to serve the meager feast, he makes sure, after thinking about it for a moment, to give his friend the bigger slice.

After a fight, Maurice pats Arthur's knee, to say, "I'm sorry" with no words. Arthur takes a sip of tea, nods his head silently, and pats Maurice's knee, giving it an extra little rub to say, "I know."

And I thought to myself and then out loud to Mrs. Apron tonight, where are these movies celebrating uncommon, kind of dorky, yet genuine and sincere and heartfelt female friendships?

"I don't get it-- why can't there be movies like that featuring to unlikely women friends? Or is every movie about female friendship, like, 'Sex and the City' or some horesecock like that?"

"Yeah," my wife said, "every movie about female friendship is, basically, that. Because women aren't allowed to be meaningful or awkward. We have to be hot and go shoe-shopping. I remember hearing an interview on NPR about a woman who kept getting cast as the stupid side-kick bitch in movies and she was like, 'No, this is a stupid device, and I'm not doing it anymore.' It sucks."

And it does suck. It goes hand-in-hand with the erroneous notion that women can't be funny. Women can have unlikely friendships in movies, and they don't have to be lesbians, or one hot chick and her awkward friendlette who is used for explication and emotional baggage unloading.

I don't understand why this can't happen. Would some intelligent feminist please explain this to me? I have to go not watch the Oscars.