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Wes Anderson: How TikTokers Are Giving Their Lives The US Director's Film Treatment
By Paul GlynnEntertainment reporter
Homemade Wes Anderson-style videos have had millions of views on TikTokLife has been imitating art online, after TikTokers started a trend for posting snippets of their everyday routines in the style of Wes Anderson.
The US director is known for his quirky style and pastel-coloured aesthetic, as seen in films like the Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch.
Now, people have been adopting his idiosyncratic approach to show themselves at work, shopping or eating.
Ava Williams claimed she started the trend at the end of a family holiday.
Ava Williams started the trend, posting a video of a sad-looking train journey at the end of a family holiday"I was inspired to make the video after watching The French Dispatch with my parents the night before," the 26-year-old TikTok user told Newsweek.
"I was going back to New York after a very short visit with my family and I was sad that I was leaving so soon."
She added: "I didn't want to really end my trip on such a sad note so I was hoping to make the most out of a situation that wasn't totally ideal."
Her video, posted on 8 April, contained Anderson-esque cinematography and storytelling, including mainly still, straight-on camera shots and on-screen scene descriptions, as well as his signature use of jaunty music - namely Alexandre Desplat's track Obituary.
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It has received more than 12 million views and inspired many others to follow suit by posting similar videos detailing the location, date and time, before stylishly showing themselves in a range of of situations.
They have included Keith Afadi's lunch date at a central London burger restaurant, filmed through an Anderson-like lens, which also proved popular with the masses.
Ukranian-born Valeria Shashenok used the same format to draw attention to the destruction caused by the war in her country.
"Inspired by a girl on TikTok who made a video about her train trip, I decided to make something like she, but about war consequences that happen everyday," she wrote.
In the UK, in the past seven days alone, there have been nine million searches and 46,000 posts using a Wes Anderson hashtag.
The trend, which Williams labelled "You better not be acting like you're in a Wes Anderson film", has now made its way around the world and on to BBC Two's Newsnight on Tuesday.
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Kirsty Walk, who presents the current affairs show, appeared in a sketch titled The Life Journalistic - a nod to another Anderson title, The Life Aquatic - which showed her going about her reporting business but with added eccentricity.
Former TV presenter Michael Barrymore also got in on the act, showing himself in west London "with nothing to do" - in other words, making a cup of tea and a fry-up before visiting the laundrette and an art gallery.
While most people seem to be having fun with it, more stern critics have been irked by how many have been getting Wes wrong.
Articles have popped up advising have-a-go auteurs to use more earthy tones and vintage clothing, for example.
Esquire's Tom Nicholson noted that while the newly popular exercise in "romanticising an afternoon of your life into an arch, cute, immaculately production designed fantasy" could be a nice way to spread the word about his work, for the most part they "don't look very much at all like a Wes Anderson film".
"The colours don't have that vivid strangeness, while at the same time making you think it might be nice to have the bathroom redone like that," he wrote.
Director Wes Anderson (second left) with French Dispatch stars Timothee Chalamet, Tilda Swinton and Bill MurrayHe added: "The cuts are way too quick. There's nowhere near enough use of [the font] Futura. And they're not much of a laugh either.
"Whether you like Anderson or not, you've got to admit the guy can write a script and has spot-on comic timing. His characters don't just stand there looking artfully miserable."
Many other attempts have been made by the official TikTok accounts of the likes of Manchester United Football Club, on their recent trip to Wembley, singer Tom Grennan and the BBC's Eurovision team; as well as British Airways and the British Red Cross.
And while Anderson, whose latest film Asteroid City will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next month, has not yet publicly commented on the matter, imitation is, after all, the most sincere form of flattery.
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Travis Kelce Jokes About His 'Cheesecake Factory Bag' Outfit: 'This Is My Pitch To Get In A Wes Anderson Film'
Travis Kelce is breaking down his latest pre-game outfit, which people were quick to say shared similarities to The Cheesecake Factory's takeout bag.
On Wednesday's episode of his New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce podcast, Travis, 34, tells his brother, Jason, 36, more about where he got the inspiration for the outfit. He explained how the look started with a custom suit by Teddy von Ranson.
"It fit like a glove, baby," the Kansas City Chiefs tight end tells his brother on the episode. "I matched it with this shirt and hat and boot combo that I just had laying around."
"Just wanted to make sure everybody knew that we were going into Buffalo business attire," Travis, who's dating singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, continued, noting that he wasn't sure what type of fabric his clothes were made of. "This is about as business as we get."
Travis Kelce #87 of the Kansas City Chiefs seen arriving and warming up for the AFC Divisional Playoff game against the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium on January 21, 2024 in Orchard Park, New York.Selhurst Park Pix /London Entertainment / SplashNews.Com
During the episode, Jason added how, while he saw the similarities to the restaurant takeout bag, he felt his brother's outfit — a mustard yellow suit, brightly colored striped sweater and burgundy beanie — could be out of Wes Anderson's comedy movie The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
"I thought it reminded me of something. To me, I got more vibes that this was a Wes Anderson style," Jason said, calling Anderson a beast. "The beanie and everything, it felt like it could be out of 'Life Aquatic,' I think is probably what gave me that idea," he added.
"That's what I'm saying. If I was in a Wes Anderson film… I'm just going to go ahead and say it, this is my pitch to get in a Wes Anderson film," Travis responded.
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Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce attend a game before the game against the Boston Celtics against the Philadelphia 76ers during Game 6 of the 2023 NBA Playoffs Eastern Conference semi-finals.Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
Following Travis' debut of the outfit ahead of the Kansas City Chiefs vs. The Buffalo Bills game over the weekend, users on X (formerly known as Twitter) chimed in with their takes on his colorful look. "I knew there was something about his outfit that made it supremely appealing. It's cheesecake," one person wrote.
"Match made in heaven," agreed another user, who was joined by a third that wrote, "This is incredible!! 10 out of 10!!! No notes."
Travis' outfit even elicited a reaction from the company.
"😎 Fashion Icons," The Cheesecake Factory wrote on X alongside a shots of Kelce in the sweater next to their signature takeout bag.
Swift's fans also drew a connection between Travis' clothing choice ahead of the game and the look that the singer sported in her music video for "Anti-Hero."
The outfit in question, visible from the 1:19 to 1:52 mark of the video, sees Swift dressed in a striped collared shirt and yellow pants, a similar aesthetic to her boyfriend's pregame garms.
Jokes surrounding his outfit choice aside, Travis and the Chiefs defeated the Bills 27-24 on Sunday.
From Their Mouths To God's Ears: Seven Directors Who Brought Out The Best In Willem Dafoe
In "Poor Things," Willem Dafoe plays God, bringing his devilish grin to the role of an ethically unbound surgeon who grafts body parts from one creature onto another, blending ducks and geese with dogs and goats — and, in the case of Emma Stone's Bella Baxter, implanting a spare brain in the corpse of a drowned woman.
The Dr. Frankenstein-like character is just the latest leap of faith for an actor who spoke to Variety, apropos of receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. With more than 100 screen credits to his name, Dafoe — who hails from conservative, small-town Wisconsin — finds himself drawn to roles that would intimidate his peers, from "The Last Temptation of Christ" to "Antichrist."
"I may live in Italy now, but I'm still that unsophisticated kid from Wisconsin," he insists, distancing himself from his transgressive characters: "My father probably never had alcohol touch his lips. My parents didn't drink coffee." Dafoe's parents were Eisenhower Republicans who instilled their work ethic in Willem, who's been acting nonstop for nearly four decades.
"I'm always driven by directors," Dafoe explains, crediting a handful of bold filmmakers for his most memorable roles. "I'm not an interpreter. I don't have an idea about what I want to convey to you," he insists. "I like to have an experience and then apply that experience to a fiction that hopefully is transparent enough that people go along on the ride with me. I feel like I'm freest when I'm given a set of circumstances."
In the end, Dafoe may be the one to deliver a unique and unforgettable performance, but he relies on directors to steer him to that place. Here, the four-time Oscar nominee describes how his collaborations with several visionary auteurs helped shape such a remarkable filmography.
"Billy was restless and deeply iconoclastic," recalls Dafoe. "He was a huge, successful director, but this was a period where he'd had some movies that didn't do so well," so Friedkin scaled down and took a risk on several unknown actors, casting Dafoe as the counterfeiter. "I had this beautiful character of an artist criminal," Dafoe says. "What a beautiful thing that is: a guy that makes things that he destroys. And Billy gave me lots of resources, you know, like he gave me some people and a studio just to make some art things, and I learned to paint, and it was a great adventure."
In his first of seven films for Schrader (who wrote "Last Temptation"), Dafoe played a lowlife who delivers drugs to posh New York clients. "When I was playing that character, I felt like that could have been me if my life was different," Dafoe says of one of his most introspective roles, the polar opposite from parts he played in "Auto Focus" or "Dog Eat Dog." "God knows I've done some big performances, but I've only done it because that's what it feels like it needs."
Dafoe lists Pier Paolo Pasolini among the directors for whom he wishes he could have worked — though he did get to play the Italian auteur in Ferrara's 2014 biopic. That collaboration was a dry run for a revealing piece of autofiction that came five years later. "We did a movie called 'Tommaso' that was totally improvised," Dafoe says. "It was also specific, because there were elements of biography in that — of his biography, and I suppose some of mine as well. Basically, he would tell me about something that happened and then we'd set it up with a very fluid camera, and I would try to imagine being him in that situation. And I was performing with his wife and his child in his house in real places that we both know, so it was very fluid."
"That was a real collaboration because it wasn't much of a scripted role and he kept on folding me in," says Dafoe, who enjoyed the "call and response" aspect as Anderson kept suggesting new things for Dafoe to do on screen. "He's evolved. He's much more precise now, but 'Life Aquatic' felt more loose, as far as the text and everything that we did. He'd do a scene, and he'd say, 'Willem, why don't you go over near Bill [Murray]?' and then, 'Why don't you guys do this?' We were inventing stuff."
"When I'm under the spell of the seduction of the proposition going somewhere, I don't think about the work in terms of risk." On working with the Danish provocateur, Dafoe says, "There's a part of him that kicks the hornet's nest, but it comes from some deep pain. He's trying to sort things out, and 'Antichrist' stems so much from his therapy and his relationship with women: insanity, sex, grief. All that plays out in 'Antichrist' in a way that I think is really challenging. The prologue and the epilogue are high cinema."
Dafoe was nominated a fourth time for his role in "The Florida Project." "Sean Baker sets up the situation. He embeds himself in these people's worlds, and then he makes a story based on his experience of being with them," Dafoe says. "All his work made it possible for me to be the best hotel manager I could be." Baker's sister, who goes by Stephonik, served as the production designer on that film, as well as "Gonzo Girl," where she surrounded Dafoe with details that aided his performance as a Hunter S. Thompson-type writer. "When I wasn't shooting, I would just walk around, and there would be piles and piles of notebooks full of stuff. It was fantastic, and it really had a sense of place."
Dafoe has made two films with the Greek director (the second, called "Kinds of Kindness," is expected later this year). "He sets you up and tells you what he wants to see, and you do it," explains Dafoe, who would sometimes work a scene more than it needed, at which point, Lanthimos would gently rein him in. "Anytime I'd get too clever with something, he'd bust me playfully. He'd say, 'Oh, you did a Willem,' which meant, 'Come on, do it again. But don't do that thing that you thought you needed to do but you don't need to do,'" Dafoe recalls with a laugh.
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