Ah, Moonrise Kingdom. Just the sheer mention of Wes Anderson’s attractively eccentric 2012 coming-of-age tale is enough to conjure images of pastel-hued nostalgia, whimsical boy scouts, and Jason Schwartzman.
Earlier this week, Focus Features live streamed a screening of Anderson’s twee pubescent love story, followed by a Q&A with the director himself, where he revealed that Suzy Bishop, Moonrise Kingdom’s troubled yet exceedingly cool 12-year-old protagonist, is his most personal character, ever.
“Well, I suppose the girl in that movie might use quite a bit of my own personal experiences,” he said of the character, played by Kara Hayward. “She finds a little booklet called Coping with the Troubled Child, and she knows which child it has to be.”
The director also revealed that the movie’s filming location fell into place after discovering and securing Rhode Island’s Conanicut Island Light for the Bishop family’s home. “We found a house where Suzy Bishop in the story and her family are meant to live. Once we had this house, we started looking all around it, and we found more and more and more of what we needed,” he said.
“We always wander our way into the place and then once we settle in, we look around every nook and cranny to see how we can make it work for as much of the thing as possible. To keep it all close together,” he added.
Released in 2012, Moonrise Kingdom takes place in the summer of 1965, on an island off the coast of New England, where two 12-year-olds fall in love and make a secret pact to run away together into the wilderness. Co-written by Roman Coppola, the film was nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars, losing out to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.
Earlier this year, Anderson finally dropped the trailer for this highly-anticipated The French Dispatch – and it features Timothée Chalamet being intellectual in a bath. Sadly, the film’s release date has been pushed back to October, but in the meantime, here’s the director’s favourite films to watch in isolation.
Watch the trailer for The French Dispatch below.