"The way children decorate their rooms can be very telling," says 32-year-old director of "The Royal Tenenbaums", "Rushmore", and "Bottle Rocket". His own in Houston was covered in drawings he'd done of the room itself, "but made up versions. A lot of secret passageways and places to park a motorcycle".
A child-like view makes Anderson's style autobiographical: "Rushmore", the story of a precocious playwright who falls for his teacher, was filmed at his own school, and the fictional New York of "Tenenbaums" is as much drawn from Anderson's imagination as real life, so place names are gloriously fictional but Harlem's brownstone buildings are instantly recognisable.
It's ironic that this fairy tale New York was created by two Texans, as Anderson met his writing collaborator Owen Wilson (who plays a loopy family friend in "Tenenbaums") on a writing course at the University of Texas. For his new film Wilson suggested that Anderson should do something on his parents' divorce, and the result was "Tenenbaums", in which sibling child prodigies grow up (in what resembles a giant dolls house) to be played by Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Luke Wilson, having lost their lust for life when Royal, their feckless father (Gene Hackman) deserted their mother (Angelica Houston).
Anderson and Wilson don't divide responsibilities into plot versus character, and as Wilson reveals, "it's just the two of us sitting around, trying to come up with a character we both think is funny, and then trying to build a movie around it". Houston says "Wes reminds me more of fictional characters than anyone I know". Perhaps that's why the Tenenbaum family are such a believable bunch - Anderson inhabits the fictions he creates. As Ben Stiller observes, "I don't think there's any other movie where I'd ever get to play Gene Hackman's son". It's a testament to Anderson's talent that this paring is plausible, mixing fantasy with reality to create a recipe for cult movie success.
