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Letting everyone down would be my greatest unhappiness.

Greetings from Versailles.

Tonight, after our screening of Marie Antoinette, a female student who had worked with me before in an internship expressed reluctance to contact an alum who now works for a company where this student has applied for summer work. You see, said alum had worked in the same office, but, as I told her, not through our program. Even though this opportunity is something she really wants, she was hoping for that extra level of connection (which I was unable to provide) and felt shy about reaching out otherwise. I told her to do it anyway. She caviled.

So here is my unexpected "teachable moment," courtesy of Lynn Hirschberg's 2002 eye-rolling profile of Sofia Coppola, of all things. While we were talking, I had an epiphany. The other week I invited the students in my Anderson-Coppola class to close read Hirschberg's NYT piece with a jaundiced eye. We had fun noting how often the author used gendered language and invoked Coppola's girlishness and connectedness (read: nepotism) as essential to understanding the success of the director's then-nacent career. (Needless to say, no such thing came up when we were reading about Wes Anderson's career.) I told this student, essentially, What Would Sofia Coppola Do? "If Sofia Coppola wanted Bill Murray to star in her movie, she'd ask Wes Anderson to intervene if that's what it took. Then she'd call and call and call until she got what she wanted."

I hope this kid works her loose connection and lands the gig.

 

Paratextual Andersonalia

Teaching a course in part on the films on Wes Anderson in the lead-up to his latest release means a constant onslaught of online material, all of which I feel obligated to review with an eye toward passing it along to my students.

Above is the sort of thing I'd share. Although I wonder whether the maker was commissioned by Criterion or is providing free labor. [You know, for exposure!]

Below is an excerpt from the sort of thing that makes me gag. Never change, NYT!

For their 2011 wedding, at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs, Calif., William and Naomi Pisnieski wanted “to feel like we were inside the Royal Tenenbaums’ house,” said Mr. Pisnieski, 36, head of postproduction at Authentic Entertainment, a reality television company in Los Angeles. “We loved the aesthetic of the films, the bittersweet nostalgia, the tangible objects. We like the specificity, the connection to — something. Especially in this day and age, when things are not so tangible.”

And here is some safely middle-ground material, Vulture's conversation with music supervisor Randall Poster:

The Darjeeling Limited: Peter Sarstedt, "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?"
Jack Whitman (Jason Schwartzman) puts the 1969 song on when his ex (Natalie Portman) visits him in his hotel room in "Hotel Chevalier," the short film that acts as a prologue to Darjeeling. Jack then plays it again inDarjeeling when he's having a cigarette with train attendant Rita.

"It pretty much is the hotel. It defines the Hotel Chevalier, really. It’s connected to the legacy of [Max's love of French things in] Rushmore in the sense that there was this American-born boulevardier and the sort of French specificity — it’s just one of those things that somehow became ours. The thing about Peter Sarstedt that was interesting is that he was born in India, crazily enough. He was English, born in India. God knows if that had anything to do with it, but it was a happy coincidence. It allowed us a chance to make the connection between the short and the feature. It was also just a great way of using music where playing it was actually within the scene."

That's an example where it felt like it captured very closely what was going on inside the character's head. 
Sometimes you have these emotions in life and even though they’re painful, you want to feel them as deeply as possible. The pain validates the obsession or your commitment to your idea of a person. That's what the song ultimately does. It helps drive the obsession and is sort of a beautiful pain that we sometimes find ourselves yearning for. To feel pain is to feel alive. The song drives at the obsessive nature of romance. 

Or these Film4 Anderson intros The Playlist posted.

Good thing we're moving on to Sofia Coppola, who doesn't inspire slavish pop and academic writing as much as she does pieces on fashion or nepotism!