Right now in Los Angeles it’s Wes Week, with multiple tributes to the career of filmmaker Wes Anderson, known for his fastidious visual style, melancholy longing and nerd-chic aesthetic.

On Monday night there was a sold-out 30th anniversary screening of Anderson’s debut feature, “Bottle Rocket,” at the Academy Museum with the filmmaker making a rare in-person L.A. appearance. He sat for a warmly endearing Q&A with actor Luke Wilson and director James L. Brooks, an early champion who executive-produced.

Then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Hollywood Bowl will have three nights celebrating the music of Anderson’s films, hosted by the director’s 10-time fixture, Bill Murray. Among those scheduled to perform are Beck, Jenny Lewis, Karen O, Rufus Wainwright and Devo, among many more. Other surprise guests may appear as well, performing songs familiar from Anderson’s music-stuffed movies.

“I was surprised how many things we did have to leave out,” Anderson, 57, tells The Times in a recent interview conducted via voice notes (his personal preference) recorded from Paris, where he has long lived. “There’s so much music over all these movies because I’ve been doing them for so long. We could do a whole other round of this, but let’s see how it goes on this first one.”

Because of his unique use of music, combining left-field vintage pop songs with classical pieces and original scores by favored composers Alexandre Desplat and Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, there have been frequent requests over the years for live performances, but Anderson and his longtime music supervisor Randall Poster have always declined — up until now and this ambitious three-night event at the Bowl.

“From the moment that he said yes we’ve been on the phone talking about his vision and how to execute it,” says Johanna Rees, vice president of programming and creative partnerships at the L.A. Phil, during a recent call from San Diego. “It’s about exploring and celebrating so many styles of music. It’s been such a fun adventure.”

This will be more than a typical evening at the Bowl, with dedicated Anderson-branded merchandise and uniformed bicycle riders dispensing candy. “The plan is you walk into the Hollywood Bowl and you are immersed in the world of Wes Anderson,” Rees says.

Criterion, which has long put out high-end home video editions of Anderson’s work and recently issued a 20-disc box set, will also have a special presence at the Bowl. Alongside the popular Criterion Mobile Closet making another stop in L.A., there will also be a lounge, a listening booth and a screening room showing Anderson’s movies as well as ones curated by him, including “Yojimbo,” “Amarcord” and “Belle de Jour.”

“Wes is an amazing community-builder as a human being,” said Peter Becker, president of Criterion, in a video call from the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna, Italy. “If you look at his films and the people he’s been working with consistently, we’re not the only ones who’ve been part of the greater Wes Anderson family for the last 25-plus years. How could we not be a part of this?”

From left, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson in the movie “The Darjeeling Limited.”

(Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Music supervisor Poster met Anderson in 1996 at L.A.’s Original Farmers Market shortly after “Bottle Rocket” was finished and immediately began to assist in pulling together the soundtrack release. Though the CD at the time could not include some of the key songs from the movie, these Bowl events will finally offer a flexi-disc of the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Man” as well as a limited-edition yellow vinyl 12-inch record with two songs by the band Love.

The two have worked together on all of Anderson’s films since, with a process that is constantly developing.

“Sometimes we’ve been talking about it even before the film takes shape,” says Poster on a recent phone call from New York. “We get to that point where I feel informed to a certain degree, that we’ve identified an element or two, whether it’s a composer, a specific song, a specific band that allows us to sort of start weaving it together. Sometimes we have more details, and sometimes we’re in a little bit more of a process of discovery.”

As impeccably detailed as his movies can be, Anderson acknowledges that his method can still be a bit vague. “I really couldn’t tell you what it’s all about, where it came from or why,” he says. “It’s just totally instinctive.”

One of the most indelible moments in Anderson’s repertoire is Gwyneth Paltrow’s slow-motion exit from a bus in “The Royal Tenenbaums” to the sounds of Nico’s 1967 recording of the song “These Days,” perfectly capturing a tender, delicate rush of emotions.

“That music was part of the inspiration for the entire movie,” Anderson recalls. “There’s a Ravel string quartet in F Major and this song — those two things together, for whatever reason, suggested something to me that slowly became the whole movie. With Gwyneth Paltrow coming off of the bus, we played the music on the set. It was all a bit choreographed to that.”

“Everybody wanted to do ‘These Days,’ ” says Poster of the artists lined up for this weekend’s shows. “But Jackson Brown wrote ‘These Days’ and Jackson Brown is going to perform ‘These Days.’ Nobody could really argue with that one.” (The rest of the song choices and performers are being kept under wraps.)

Ben Stiller, left, Gwyneth Paltrow and Gene Hackman in the 2001 movie “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

(James Hamilton / Touchstone Pictures)

In choosing music for the movies, inspiration can strike from just about anywhere, as with the Johnny Duncan and the Blue Grass Boys’ recording of “Last Train From San Fernando,” memorable from the opening credits of 2023’s “Asteroid City.”

“I knew that song because my daughter used to listen to it,” says Anderson. “She had a CD of western swing from the ’50s and ’40s that she was listening to again and again. So I stole it from her.”

Poster mentions Anderson’s affinity for woodwinds and novelty instruments along with his tremendous sense of rhythm, which is why the music often has a strong percussive feel, from Gene Krupa’s “Drum Boogie” in last year’s “The Phoenician Scheme” to Japanese taiko drums and the work of composer Peter Jarvis.

“I would say that I think the biggest change is that Wes has taught himself how to read music,” says Poster. “He just really gets into the score’s DNA and really has a great insight into how to arrange thematic pieces that I think help make the movies more wholesome, just being a whole thing.”

Poster playfully refers to Anderson as “The Maestro” and remains struck by how fresh the music cues feel in the context of the films.

“When those clips come on — ‘Here Comes My Baby,’ ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away,’ ‘These Days,’ ‘Needle in the Hay,’ ‘Ooh La La’ — I mean, countless, countless, I always get a kick out of it.”

All of which should add up to a special alchemy at the Bowl.

“They won’t happen again,” says Rees of the three nights curated by Anderson. “Not knowing what he’s going to do in the future, but certainly this is a special event, a one-of-a-kind weekend. It won’t be happening like this again.”

For Anderson, putting together the Hollywood Bowl shows has been a reminder of how far his work has evolved.

“When we made ‘Bottle Rocket,’ I didn’t intend to have an original score at all,” he remembers. “We had some Ennio Morricone music. We put Bob Dylan’s ‘Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid’ in the movie originally — and that’s a score from somebody else’s movie. At a certain point everything sort of changed, and Mark Mothersbaugh came and saw the movie and he liked everything we had in there. And so he brought his own voice in, but from the point of view of somebody who was very sympathetic to what was already in place, and that led to more movies together.”

Showing a bit of his own trademark wistfulness, he adds, “It is quite an amazing thing to have Mark and Devo coming up on the stage to do this music that reflects back on all these years — this whole gathering.”

Arts

Supergirl
Director: Craig Gillespie
DC Studios, Troll Court Entertainment, The Sagan Company
In theaters: 06.26.2026

I was a pretty big fan of James Gunn’s Superman. Building up to the release of the film, I relapsed into my comic book obsession, which I had laid to rest many years prior. I read whatever you get recommended when you look up “Superman comic recommendations:” For All Seasons, All Star, Birthright — whatever, you don’t care. David Corenswet’s portrayal of Big Blue was loving, thorough and unbelievably human, which is what Superman is (he’s not Jesus). He is the best of us. He is what we aspire to be.

Supergirl was announced, and I picked up the comic it was based on: Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. The questionable morals and talent of author Tom King aside, the book is good! The fantastic art by Bilquis Evely makes King’s (sometimes preachy) prose this beautiful and somber story about trauma and war. It appears that I’m ahead of director Craig Gillespie, who reportedly didn’t read the book and, boy, does it show.

During a bender, Superman’s cousin Kara (Milly Alcock, House of The Dragon) meets Ruthye (Eve Ridley), a child whose family is murdered by Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts, Amsterdam, The Old Guard), the leader of a raider group. She enlists Kara to hunt and kill him, and on their way, they confront their traumas.

Every change made from the original comic was for the worse. Most notably, this film simplifies the depth of the comic’s characters. Kara is reduced to a loud, charming alcoholic, which is fine, but in the comic, she’s somber and reflective, making an effort to teach Ruthye how the greater universe works. The antagonist, Krem, is sort of a loser in the comic. He’s a coward who spends his time running away, while in the film he’s a tattooed, pierced, menacing psychopath who appears in almost every major action sequence. He’s almost indistinguishable from The Joker — this all boils down to shame. While they’re becoming increasingly popular, comics are still for losers. Hinting at depth with characters who fly and shoot lasers from their eyes in brightly colored underpants isn’t something that a general audience will accept. They will accept a comic film so long as it constantly flogs itself for being comic-inspired.

Another bastardization is the look of this film. Everly’s amazing use of color in the comic makes the story so engaging. How is this translated? Brown. Just brown. When characters clash, it looks like someone’s wiping their finger across their dirt-covered lens, which is a total departure from Gunn’s fantastic color palette in Superman. The visual effects appear to be rushed and often look horrible — laughably horrible, as a matter of fact. How do you spot a bad action director? Look at the editing. If they have to hide poor action choreography and bad visual effects behind dizzying amounts of cuts, they’re bad. Gillespie is a bad action director. James Gunn promised that the DCU would prioritize artist voice over universal coherence, but if these are the artists he’s hiring, I’m not sure how long this could last.

Performances here are whatever. Alcock could have been good if the script and direction were right, but they’re not. I couldn’t get into Krem due to character assassination, but even if I wasn’t into the comic, I would find his performance as a crazy guy to be a standard for bad superhero movies. Ridley is good, especially for a debut in feature films, but the standout is Jason Momoa (Aquaman, A Minecraft Movie) as Lobo. He is loving the character, absolutely chewing up the scene with thick cigars. He’s a little cheesy-edgy, but that’s just what he is in the comics, so I won’t knock him for it.

While I was watching the film, I was suffering from a discrepancy. Supergirl is as powerful as Superman, but throughout this film, she doesn’t use her powers to their full potential. Something I actually loved about Superman is how much he got his ass kicked. Gunn was out to prove that Superman fights can have stakes — that he’s not just undefeatable and therefore boring as everyone says. Gunn’s ability to create ways to kill the Man of Steel without Kryptonite is amazing! Kara, in this film, is fighting space pirates and constantly forgets to finish the fight. It’s frustrating because the remedy to this in the comic is that they don’t see Krem until the last couple of issues, but in this film, Krem keeps showing up to menace Supergirl, and most of the time she has her powers.

I could ramble about how bad the dialogue can be, how derivative and uninspired it is or whatever lame comic thing I can talk about, but I’ll spare you. Here’s the moral of all this: Comic books are a valid storytelling medium. I recall recommending Alan Moore’s Watchmen to someone and being told that they have more important things to read. Watchmen is one of my favorite works of fiction. I did end up falling out of love with comics because I was told they were childish and I had grown bored of having costumes thrust into my peripherals all the time, but I’m back now, and I love them so much more than ever. I loved Superman because, above all else, it was earnest. There wasn’t a self-deprecatory tone toward its own plot. It didn’t try to bog its drama down with one-liners. It was just proud to be a comic book movie, and I think more movies should.

If you want to see Supergirl, go ahead, but I’d advise you to just read the comic, which is more dramatic, more meaningful and more impactful. —B. Allan Johnson

Read more reviews from B. Allan Johnson below: 
Film Review: The Bride!
Film Review: Backrooms

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