Before The Royal Tenenbaums came out in 2001, I was a freshman in college. I had a lot of free time on my hands in between classes and I would spend much of it in the library where I would browse photography books and film magazines; most likely Film Comment. The Royal Tenenbaums was one film in particular I remember reading about. I would ogle the screen caps with their wonderful pink and brown color palette. I'm a little infamous for my dislike of the color brown, but when it's placed next to pink, it's another story entirely. I was particularly amazed by the cast of character shots from the opening title sequence. And any image of Margo with her fur coat and cropped blonde hair. All of this before I'd even seen the film itself. I had never seen or even heard of Wes Anderson at that point and I was pretty new to the idea of 'film as art'. I looked up the trailer online and watched it over and over. I was still in a very small town at that point and had absolutely no exposure to that sort of film making. Several months after the film had been released and it seemed like everyone else in the country had seen the movie except for me, I was surprised to discover that the college would be having a mini film festival (I think only 4 films were shown) at the local theater and The Royal Tenenbaums would be one of those films. On opening night I coerced a friend into going that had no idea what I was making her see. It didn't disappoint. Some of the images I had been prepared for, but what completely took me by surprise was the music. I credit this film with introducing me to artists like Nico, The Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, and Elliott Smith. Subsequently, I credit music like Nick Drake and Elliott Smith with encouraging my minor depression in the next couple years after I was finally able to move away to the 'big city'. Needless to say, when the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom was released all of these memories of my experience with this film came back to me.
