Wes Anderson biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Filmmaker Wesley "Wes" Wales Anderson was born on May 1, 1969, in Houston, Texas. His father, Melver Anderson, ran an advertising and public relations company, and his mother, Texas Anne Burroughs, worked in both real estate and archaeology. Anderson grew up with his two brothers, Eric and Mel, but their parents divorced when Anderson was only eight. Anderson would later describe the divorce as "the most crucial event of my brothers and my growing up." While trying to cope with the disintegration of his parent's marriage, Anderson often misbehaved at school.

In time, Anderson turned his energies from mischief making to artistic endeavors. The young Anderson directed movies starring himself and his brothers, filming them with a Super 8mm camera. He read avidly, saying later that "especially when you are younger, you get totally swept into the world of a novel. You walk around in a cloud and almost all you want to do is read it." Anderson attended St. John's School in Houston, a prep school that believes in "exacting standards" and follows the motto "to whom much is given much is expected." At the school, Anderson became known for his large and complex play productions. Often these productions were based on well-known stories, films, and even TV shows: one work was a sock puppet version of the 1980s show The Gambler, which starred Kenny Rogers.

After graduating from St. John's in the late 1980s, Wes Anderson enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. There he met Owen Wilson, who has been a writing partner or cast member in almost every film Anderson has made since. Anderson was a philosophy major and Wilson was studying English, but they had interests in common. Anderson describes that the two first encountered each other while "doing a playwriting class together: this thing where everybody, about nine of us, sat around a table and discussed plays. And I always sat in one corner, not really at the table, and Owen always sat in another corner, not really at the table, and we never spoke the whole semester."

After this class, Anderson recalls running into Wilson, and the two "started talking about writers, but we also talked about movies right off the bat. I knew I wanted to do something with movies. I don't know if he had realized yet that it was an option." The two eventually became roommates, and worked on a script for a full-length movie they called Bottle Rocket. Anderson earned his B.A. in philosophy in 1991.

Early Films

Originally, Bottle Rocket was planned as a "...really serious movie: A guy coming around a corner just a second too late and this other guy's dead, and he's screaming, 'NO!!!'", explains Anderson. The movie would star Owen Wilson and his two brothers, Luke Wilson and Andrew Wilson.