Visual Diary #25

Bottle Rocket, Ducks and Crosses, Boyd House, No Regrets Coyote

This is Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson as Anthony and Dignan in Bottle Rocket, best friends, each in their own stage of arrested development … This scene is late in the film, where, after a falling out, Anthony is back on board for the heist that Dignan has master-minded (as part of his fifty-year criminal plan). Bottle Rocket is Anderson’s first film -co-written with Luke Wilson, expanding the universe of their short film of the same name. Bottle Rocket was one of the first films I reviewed for a friend’s too-short-lived DVD industry publication Screenprint. It was distributed for free at cinemas in the manner a street press, done on a shoestring and I don’t think anyone got paid, but it still felt like a real job to me, and a way to live a life around film and literature. It was for this publication that I had my first interview with screenwriter Billy MckInnon after his debut Small Faces. He recommended that I read A Moveable Feast, and was just finishing up the script for Hideous Kinky. I had no idea about so many of the cultural references he casually dropped, but duly noted them down, and tried hard to think of interesting questions. i remember that we both smoked the whole way through the interview, which was in the lobby of the Adelphi - or maybe a cafe near there? But anyway, Bottle Rocket - it’s about big dreams, and featured things that would become later Anderson staples: incidental chat, visual arrangements of objects, a roguish gentemanly villain/mentor (James Caan is fabulous whether playing ping pong or practising karate), tentative romance, hesitation, wise children (in the manner of Salinger), eclectic, perfect music, characters creating their own morality, expressing themselves through unique wardrobe choices, colour. I’m sure it’s streaming somewhere - I watched it on DVD. I love this piece on it by Daniel Reynolds, and illustration by Brianna Ashby.

I found a lovely little old leather-bound book ‘The Story of Art in the British Isles’ and the first illustration was a sketch of a crucifixion/nativity scene (why not have both!) from one of the Saxon crosses at Sandbach. Something about the arrangment of the animals and halos was pleasing to me, so I did my own version and added a duck.

I had occasion to go to the very beautiful Boyd House at Walsh St where I heard an excellent talk on the house by Stuart Tolliday. My favourite detail was when he talked about the window in son Penleigh’s bedroom; it wasn’t on the original plan, but was put in when Penleigh voiced his disappointment that he couldn’t see the Nylex clock.

This Joni Mitchell’s Hejira, the first Joni MItchell album I ever bought. I listened to it devoutly even though it was jazzy Joni and I didn’t quite ‘get’ it. I wanted to get it and that was the important thing. Buying music as a young person before the Internet was all guess-work and lucky dips. Like, the first Byrds album I bought was Dr Byrds and Mr Hyde; it was country-esque - I was in no way ready for that after only being exposed to Mr Tambourine Man. Now, of course, I love it. Wikipedia tells me that Hejira is Arabic for ‘departure’, or ‘exodus’. The album is fifty years old this year. It has distinctive crazy slippery bass from Jaco Pastorius. I came to love it as much as the cover where she ‘wears’ the highway. Here she is singing about Sam Shepherd, that restless playwright ranchhand. No Regrets, Coyote!