Image via Complex Original
Wes Anderson's eighth film in the director's chair, The Grand Budapest Hotel, hits theaters this Friday, and we're excited. Yes, it's sometimes easy to joke that his films are the hot chick in the front row of English class for every sensitive dude with a literary degree. We can also rib that his precise, curated filmmaking borders on the intensification of that kid in grade school who wouldn't share his toys.
But Anderson's greatness is undeniable. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums were the more captivating movies of the late 90s and early 2000s that retain timeless appeal. Their influence on independent filmmaking in its wake is also not to be ignored (Richard Ayoade's 2010 film, Submarine, being the most recent example). Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Limited were more flawed but equally engaging pieces. He even directed a stop-motion picture in The Fantastic Mr. Fox to show off his animation skills.
Despite making films that beg for contentious discussion, Anderson is gifted with the ability to consistently craft memorable characters that you can't help but relate to. Even if you don't want to admit it. Face it: here is what your favorite Wes Anderson character says about you.
RELATED: The Most Anticipated Movies of 2014
RELATED: What Your Favorite Coen Bros. Character Says About You
Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
Played by: George Clooney
You're so smooth you almost got away with calling a girl "toots" in the 21st century, until you found out the hard way. Your face stung, but you quickly ordered another drink to deflect further humiliation. You like to stroke your own ego by watching heist movies and reruns of American Greed precisely to pause them at crucial moments and confidently declare "where they went wrong" and offer your own alternative cunning plan to successfully make off with millions of dollars of other peoples' money. Since you're watching these shows alone, no one is there to poke holes into your 30-second flashes of criminal mastermind brilliance. In which case, your fantasy of successfully becoming a career criminal—if you wanted to—continues to flourish undisturbed.
Chas Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Played by: Ben Stiller
You are equal parts intellectual prodigy and exposed nerve endings. You're very successful at a high-paying job you have a hard time explaining to people, because it entails the word "derivatives," and you'd like to avoid the unwanted, searching questions that come with it.
Unlike your colleagues, however, you are a bit more neurotic and obsessive about certain rituals, including taking your shoes off before entering your apartment and doing everything, like locking your doors, in threes. Your date was a bit weirded out by the process but you let her know, sternly, that it's important to keep out the bad juju.
Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
Played by: Bill Murray
Appearance-wise, in certain parts of Brooklyn, you are one of a thousand Steve Zissous. Unlike the others, however, you don't want people to know you actually have a comfortable, executive position at a consulting firm in Manhattan. You live there, too, in a spacious modern apartment you got to keep in a nasty divorce.
But that doesn't define you, not spiritually. Hence, why you ditch the suit, fetch out your bright tube-sock beanie, and venture down to Bushwick or Williamsburg where you hope to slip in anonymously and drink your Belgian beer wedged between couples making out on either side of you in a music hall packed twice its capacity. But you like this band, damn it, and yes, you will buy a CD after the show.
Francis Whitman in Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Played by: Owen Wilson
Though you are the oldest and most mature of your siblings, you have vulnerabilities and secrets of your own that you rather keep to yourself, except for the unpleasant fact that you don't hide your physical scars.
You do, however, have a bad tendency to take control and think you know what is best for everyone. Your date will return from the restroom to find out that you have already ordered for her. You know what she likes, and frankly, she should appreciate that most dudes won't pay enough attention to her tastes to attempt such a gesture.
Really, it's an aggressive behavioral tic (among others) you picked up from your mother, which you only admit to her one night when she threatens that she's had enough. You also confess that your ex-girlfriend is responsible for your broken nose and scarred cheek—you thought it was a "loving remark" by "honestly" suggesting she wear more makeup. Your days of musing on the couch searching for inspiration while she goes to work are likely over soon, too.
Herman Blume in Bottle Rocket (1998)
Played by: Bill Murray
No amount of Miracle Gro in the world can convince you that the grass on your side of the fence is as green as it is on the other side—though you're not exactly sure what you think it's like there. All you know is that you've grown bored.
You got tired of watching re-runs of Divorce Court at 2 p.m. in your big house (making for terrifying echoes) and your collection of muscle cars only highlights your feeling of emptiness Now that your kids all have families of their own and you no longer have to go to work, you start frequenting the town's community college, often driving the 20 minutes to buy coffee as an excuse to flirt with the hot student barista.
Or you're young and already identify with a complete feeling of disillusionment. At which point, taking a walk could do wonders.
Dignan in Bottle Rocket (1996)
Played by: Owen Wilson
An idea man, you are frenetic and always pulsating with ideas. However, your lack of impulse control makes your ambitions a bubbling cocktail of bad decisions. Lucky for you, you're a talker so you will never go it alone on any of your genius schemes. You convinced some of your friends to go streaking in college, on the first day of classes. Those are some Jackass-sized cojones you own.
You're so crazy that it's almost disarming. You also tend to give countless people remarkably fantastic stories they can tell for the rest of their lives. But as grateful as they'd like to be for that, they'll never forgive you for that grand larceny charge permanently on their records. Turns out, your school's dean did notice the founder's statue was gone and you forgot the little detail of not getting caught on camera.
Sam Shakusky in Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Played by: Jared Gilman
Sam Shakusky is a boy scout. You were also once a boy scout. And that's where the comparison should end. But no, you'd like to believe you were also a highly intelligent, adventurous, quick-quipping romantic at 12 years old.
The truth is, you're far from it. With all your might that Freud would admire, you suppress the realistic events of your childhood: hanging up Stone Cold Steve Austin posters in your room, watching Power Rangers in your Power Rangers onesie, and reading Captain Underpants.
On the other hand, you know it's not too late and you're making up for lost time. Heck, you wear thick, horn-rimmed glasses now, and you do write letters you're never going to send to that girl you met and fell in love with your junior year abroad.
Margot Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Played by: Gwyneth Paltrow
You're the dark, deeply thoughtful type. Your room is strewn with Sylvia Plath poems and Criterion Collection's entire catalogue of Swedish New Wave. Contemporary anything makes you overwhemingly nostalgic for an earlier era you wish you were born in. You dismiss chain bookstores, Forever 21, and any piece of music that isn't Marianne Faithfull with a pretentious snort and disdainful drag of your cigarette.
Somehow, you are vulnerable enough to fall in love with surprising frequency, and when those relationships fail, you are the Taylor Swift of the literary world. But before you set down to work on your typewriter, you proudly walk around your Park Slope neighborhood in your fur coat in an August heat wave to gather your thoughts.
Suzy Bishop in Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Played by: Kara Hayward
You like to dress like you you're perpetually en route to a Catholic prepatory school in Paris, but you take yourself very seriously. As a child, the Madeline books were your favorite, though not for the story—you hoped your elementary school would adopt the more stylish uniforms Madeline wore in the illustrations.
Your version of a perfect childhood consisted of you eating Gruyere sandwiches, with the voice of 1960s French singer Francoise Hardy's voice floating from your records as you overlooked the Seine.
Even today, overtly commercial food does not appeal to you and you go out of your way to frequent boutique markets for authentic french baguettes, expensive cheeses, and imported meats. You spend $500 a month on food, while your rent is $400. But that's OK—your three roommates are more than happy to cover the difference because they haven't eaten this well since, um, ever.>
Richie Tenenbaum in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Played by: Luke Wilson
Bjorn Borg is your style icon, though you've never seen him play a single set of tennis. You don't even like sports. You think they're contrived, overly simple, and childish. In fact, all hobbies don't measure up in the "scheme of things."
You wear your heart on your sleeve, preferably the sleeve of a very expensive blazer. On the sadness scale, you hover around somewhere between Elliot Smith and Beck—the sensitivity sweet spot—day after day, month after month.
The women you eyeball as you conspicuously scribble in your moleskin notebook at your favorite uptown brunch spot find your act mysterious and alluring. That is, until they find out you have one setting: oppressively emotional. For you, every day feels like a break-up day.
Gustave H. in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Played by: Ralph Fiennes
I mean, look at this guy. You can feel the charm coming off that haircut and cigarette-handhold like heat making the blacktop wavy in summer. He's as cool as they come, swimming in elderly women, always with the right joke and/or compliment. He is, as The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson's latest, makes quite plain, an illusion of a bygone era. An era that maybe never existed in the first place.
Like so many of Anderson's great characters, Gustave H. has a compass that the rest of us don't have. Like Max or Steve, he cuts a particular path through the world. In Gustave H.'s case, his code is politeness and decorum. That's a fine and dandy policy, but the Nazis aren't hearing it.
All of this is to say: If you're into Gustave H., you're probably a pansexual nymph of a person who loves stiff drinks, stiff upper lips that break into nice smiles, and old ladies. Definitely old ladies.
Max Fischer in Rushmore (1998)
Played by: Jason Schwartzman
You were the know-it-all at your prestigious prep school and years later, you have remained relatively unchanged. Like Max, you consider yourself more of an instinctual thinker. You're convinced you can talk circles around someone with a PhD in Psychology because you think your gift of gab matches another's tangible credentials in legitimacy on any number of topics.
Unfortunately, no unsuspecting stranger is free of your insufferable knowledge. You will grill Starbucks baristas on their grasp of the Fair Trade Movement. Whole Foods employees cower in fear when they see you approaching with a product raised in your hand and an indignant finger pressed against the ingredients label. This is all because you like to make people sweat only to bolster your significant ego.
Oh, and the older ladies still catch your eye. Married older ladies, especially. You're not genuinely interested, you just like the challenge.