Back in 1992 Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson — who had met the University of Texas in Dallas and were roomies — decided to make a movie. But after spending $10,000 and shooting 13 minutes of the crime caper comedy “Bottle Rocket,” they ran out of money. Eventually, the short and the full script made its way to Oscar-winning writer/director/producer James L. Brooks. It just so happened that Columbia had a deal with Brooks to finance a low-budget film selected by the filmmaker. And in 1996, the feature-length version of “Bottle Rocket” was released with Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson and James Caan. Though the film didn’t set the box office on fire, critics realized Anderson was a new and exciting cinematic voice.
Anderson has made 11 feature films — his latest “Asteroid City” came out earlier this year — and has been nominated seven times for an Oscar including three for screenplay, two for animated features, one for directing and another for producing 2014’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel’, But he’s always returned to the short form. And he’s earning strong review for four short films based on Roald Dahl stories currently on Netflix: “The Swan,” “Poison,” “The Rat Catcher” and the lovely “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” In the latter, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a wealthy n’er-do-well who learns about a man (Ben Kingsley) who taught himself how to see without using his eyes. Ralph Fiennes plays Dahl who narrates the tale and plays a policeman.
The L.A. Times’ Justin Chang noted that “Henry Sugar” excels because “in a film about the limitations of one’s vision, Anderson is careful not to show us everything, certain that our imaginations should do some of the visual lifting, and in s story about fantastical possibilities he and his longtime collaborators including the cinematographer Robert Yeoman and the production designer Adam Stockhausen, employ a beguilingly primitive form of movie magic. Anderson’s delight in all things analog and antiquarian is in full flower, as his belief that real enchantment demands a measure of winkingly oblivious artifice. The more we can see the seams, the grander the illusion.”
Several top filmmakers honed their craft in short films, which often became their steppingstones to features, including Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
Looking back at the Golden Age of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin made countless short comedies before he made the leap to a feature film in 1921 with the classic “The Kid.”
George Stevens, who won Oscars for directing 1951’s “A Place in the Sun” and 1956’s “Giant,” cut his directing teeth doing comedy shorts including 1930’s “Ladies Last” and 1934’s “Cracked Shots.”
Austrian-born Fred Zinnemann was one of the most successful filmmakers of the 20th century winning best director Oscars for 1953’s “From Here to Eternity” and 1966’s “A Man for All Seasons.” He was an assistant director on such films as 1936’s “Camille” before he started doing short films at MGM in 1937 with “A Friend Indeed,” a Pete Smith specialty about a German shepherd seeing-eye dog of a country doctor. Zinnemann continue to make shorts for the studio until he got his first feature, 1942’s “The Kid Glove Killer.” He returned to the short films in 1951 for “Benjy,” about a young boy suffering from scoliosis whom a doctor wants to help but must convince his parents. Though the film narrated by Henry Fonda has many dramatized sequences — Lee Aaker plays the boy — it won best documentary short.
Don Siegel, who directed the 1956 sci-fi masterpiece “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and such Clint Eastwood classics as 1971’s “Dirty Harry” and 1979’s ‘Escape from Alcatraz,” was an assistant director and even created montages for such films as 1942’s “Yankee Doodle Dandy” before he made his first short, 1945’s “Star in the Night.” The sentimental holiday drama won the Oscar for best short subject, two-reeler. Though uncredited, he also directed the 1945 documentary short “Hitler Lives,” which also won the Academy Award for best documentary, short subjects. Siegel made his feature debut the following year in the entertaining 1946 crime drama “The Verdict,’ with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard were architects of the New Wave of French Cinema. But before they made their feature debuts-1959’’s The 400 Blows” for Truffaut and 1960’s “Breathless” for Goddard-they tested the cinematic waters with shorts. Truffaut’s most notable short was 1957’s “Les Mistons,” aka “The Mischief Makers.” Truffaut, who made several films involving children such as “The 400 Blows” and 1970’s “The Wild Child,” first explored the subject in “Les Mistons,’ which revolves around a group of bratty boys who harass a beautiful young woman and her boyfriend all summer. And two years before “Breathless” made a star out of Jean-Paul Belmondo, the heartthrob and Goddard worked together on the short “Charlotte and Her Boyfriend.”
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