A couple of weeks ago, I made the grave, grave mistake of going to see Wes Anderson's newest film, Asteroid City, on its opening night in Los Angeles. You may be wondering: how bad was this movie? Wes Anderson is one of the most respected directors of our generation, could it really have been a mistake? Did something bad happen at the theater? Did you leave your seat to go to the bathroom and then when you came back your friends and/or family abandoned you? Were the bathroom acoustics off? Did the movie offend your strongly-held personal beliefs? Was someone kicking your seat, but just light enough so it's kind of a soft, slow nudge, so you turn to see who it is, and it's someone you sort of knew from high school, but it's one of those kids who took a year off after graduating to "figure things out"? And now they have a bull ring and there's a small child next to them and you don't know if that's their kid or they’re babysitting right now? And then the kid from high school asks what you're up to this Summer so you have to figure out a lie that explains why you would see Asteroid City on opening night but also leave for the airport immediately after the credits?
Fortunately, no. I want to start by saying this: I love Wes Anderson. Symmetry. Tilda Swinton. Close up shots of food. In my childhood bedroom, I have the Rushmore Criterion Collection poster hanging above my bed. That's one of my favorite characters ever. Wes Anderson movies are fucking awesome.
So what was so bad about Asteroid City? Recently, Wes Anderson has been allergic to just making movies. That’s too easy. He’d rather make a series of vignettes that's a critique of a play based on a fictional, non-fiction book, until you're left with a visually breathtaking, confusing mess. And even worse, his recent methods of storytelling have boiled down the Wes Anderson crowd into some of the most insufferable people on the planet. Asteroid City appeals to this group more than anything he’s made before.
I think if I were to see this movie on a Tuesday afternoon with a small crowd, I wouldn't have cared this much. But having to sit through Asteroid City with what looked like a Bushwick City Council meeting made this viewing experience unbearable. I knew going to opening night of a Wes Anderson movie would bring a certain type of crowd, but I just wasn’t prepared mentally for what I was about to see. Three words: Craft Beer Flight. As I turned the corner into the theater, this guy was sitting front row with a flight of four freshly poured, locally-sourced IPAs. This was a fucking AMC. And a shitty one at that, beer flights are simply not possible. I sat in the aisle for maybe three minutes just watching him at work. He was sitting with a group of friends, so that means multiple people OK’d this operation. Did each of them sneak a cup? Maybe they drew sticks to see who would hide the wooden flight in their Dickies. But then he wasn’t sharing the cups so what do they have to gain from this? And what was his motive here? Can he only drink through a tasting process? Is this how he does everything, like is he going to watch the first fifteen minutes of this movie then hop over to the next theater?
Once the movie started, the audience just kicked into gear. Forget craft flights, this was pretentiousness at a scale I have never seen before and I just graduated from Art School (Please Buy Our Western Shirts). Immediately, the laughs began. It's not a normal kind of laugh. It's a weird, low-pitched, aggressively-high turtleneck kind of laugh. It's kind of slow, like, "mmm. Ha.. Ha!" The entire theater laughed identically. And the timing. They won't laugh on the punchline, only in the middle of a scene when Wes Anderson references their favorite French New Wave film or a character says they never understood their father. For the entire hour and 45 minute runtime, my viewing was interrupted by a self-indulgent chuckle every other line.
There was one scene where things got out of hand and I nearly walked out. In this scene, the “Brainiacs” sit in a circle and play a memorization game where they list famous people in order and the next person recites the previous list while adding an additional name. As you can expect, Wes Anderson doesn't have the Brainiacs list off your everyday celebrities. Instead, Wes turns this scene into a seven minute feat of how many obscure poets and Nobel Prize winners he can list. It was his version of “Losing My Edge.” The crowd went fucking insane. It was like an episode of Wild n’ Out for ugly white people.
Now, at this point you may be reading this and think: “You were there at the opening night, and now you’re writing an entire article about the film, aren’t you just as pretentious as everybody else, if not more?” I think there’s some merit to this thought. “And as someone who runs an alternative Westernwear brand, shouldn’t the entire Asteroid City vibe be right up your alley and a great opportunity for cross-promotion, so now you’re just taking out your frustrations because Wes Anderson did a better job than you??” I think you’d be right again. I came to this same conclusion when I left the theater. I realized that these were my people.
When we built 2001 Westernwear, we set out to make Western flair for ordinary squares. The crowd at Asteroid City were the exact definition of squares, but they haven’t been resonating with our messaging. They love Wes Anderson’s take on the West, but they have no time for ours – why is this? We’re thinking too simply. Wes Anderson, what does he do, he doesn’t just make a movie. He makes a movie that’s inside of a play inside of a television broadcast inside of a book that’s only available on a 35mm screening. Here at 2001 Westernwear, we’ve been thinking too narrow selling shirts like everybody else. We need to make something painfully complex so the cinephiles can post shit like this on Reddit:
This realization led me back to the studio to get to work. After viewing Asteroid City, I bunkered myself for nearly two weeks, trying to create something "spiritually, emotionally, and philosophically" deep. Finally, we have it: “La Chemise (The Shirt).” Our team was so excited we mocked it up this morning.
And you know what, we think we should strike while the iron is hot: it’s live in our store right now. For a limited time, if you use code “CHEMISE50” it’s twice as expensive. And we don't ship La Chemise (The Shirt). You have to call our supplier and figure out how to get it to your place of residence. It's a part of the work and if you don't understand it that's on you.
I’m so happy to be going into this next stage for our business and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on this. Thank you Wes.