i want to write a book like a Wes Anderson movie

The films of Wes Anderson unfold like a book I'd love to write. Each has its own logic—stitched together with tiny details (not unlike Suzy’s house in Moonrise Kingdom. The opening scene is set to The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britton. “…a big piece of music, which is made up of smaller pieces…”

Anderson's stories include a cast of recurring actors or characters, a group of outsiders living in the same universe. This is similar to the way dreams sample and remix our memories. We might recognize a familiar face in a dream. Or snippets of dialogue cut and pasted from real life. In a way, the dream world feels “more real” than our waking lives.

My Anderson-esque book would come with its own soundtrack—classic Rolling Stones, British Invasion, ala the Kinks, the Who…and something familiar, remixed in a new way (like David Bowie in Portuguese)

And it needs at least one epic scene in slow motion (on the page, this moment reads as stream-of-consciousness).

Anderson’s newest film is a postmodern story about storytelling. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, life often seems bleak and futile. But the storyteller (and the hotel concierge) gives it logic and meaning. Not because it exists. But because they choose to make it so.

The storytellers are the true heroes in Wes Anderson’s beautiful films. They are forever optimists, escaping the drudgery of a world that will never keep up with their dreams.