I remember back in July 2009 when many folks from the online movie blogger community were coming down on the first trailer for Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox. The hits kept coming as rumors and negativity surrounding Anderson’s direction of the film was challenged as director of photography Tristan Oliver and director of animation Mark Gustafson told the Los Angeles Times Anderson directed the film from a remote location via email.
Oliver was quoted saying, “I’ve never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!” While Gustafson added, “Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable.” Bloggers caught wind of this and “Wes Anderson Directed ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ by Email?” headlines were all the rage.
“If true, it’s hard not to assume that this is why the footage and photos we’ve seen from the movie so far have felt a little lacking in quality. How can a director truly convey his vision via soulless electronic messages?” wrote Tim Gomez at Cinema Blend. Did he do it? Yes. Is it as simple as the headline suggests? No.
From an interview with Anderson at Wired.com:
“Because there are so many people working at once, and because there’s so much detail, the system of communicating everything was crucial,” says Anderson, who was able to supervise production from a “virtual command center.” He could weigh in instantly on QuickTime clips sent straight to his iPhone or watch dailies that were emailed to him at all hours. “I could even pull up a unit’s live feed and see how things were shaping up,” he says. If a prop or character didn’t suit his famously fastidious eye, he would ask individual set designers and animators for an immediate fix. When a character’s mannerisms were off, Anderson would whip out his Flip videocam and record himself acting out the part.
Anderson’s response to Chris Lee at the L.A. Times was to say, “”It’s not the most pleasant thing to force somebody to do it the way they don’t want to do it,” Anderson said. “In Tristan’s case, what I was telling him was, ‘You can’t use the techniques that you’ve learned to use. I’m going to make your life more difficult by demanding a certain approach.’
“The simple reality is,” Anderson continued, “the movie would not be the way I wanted it if I just did it the way people were accustomed to doing it. I realized this is an opportunity to do something nobody’s ever seen before. I want to see it. I don’t want afterward to say, ‘I could have gone further with this.'”
In an interview with Jeff Wells (visible to the right) Anderson says the “L.A. Times” interview was from earlier in the year and that Oliver told him had been misquoted when he said, “I think [Wes is] a little sociopathic.”
Either way, these are details bloggers and movie critics were clinging to and passing on to their readers as the film made its way to its November 13 release. Strangely enough none of them were judging the final product. And after all the negativity, rumors and speculation the film earned a 93% rating from critics at RottenTomatoes and an 83 at MetaCritic. It’s gone on to earn Best Animated Film of the Year awards from the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics groups and two days ago Brooks Barnes at the New York Times wrote an article headlined “Look Out, Pixar, Here Comes Fantastic Mr. Fox” as the film is now considered by some as being poised to potentially upset Up at the 2010 Oscars. Funny how things work out eh? Bloggers love to take credit for a film’s success, but how about a film’s box-office demise?
Unfortunately, the film only earned $19.6 million at the domestic box-office, $173 million less than Up (you know, the film everyone loved sight unseen?).
I mention all of this because today I received the video featured below of Anderson accepting his special achievement award from the National Board of Review via a stop-motion animated vignette in honor of the film he was awarded for. Right now I still believe Up will take Oscar’s Best Animated Feature award, but I will be cheering hard for Fantastic Mr. Fox, the film you will find ahead of Up on many critical top ten lists.
Now excuse me… I’m going to go play a little Whackbat.
