With a few lines of wryly composed yet painfully sincere words, Wes Anderson has launched speculation that he’s looking to build his own theme park. Frequent Anderson collaborator Mark Mothersbaugh (who provided the scores for Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou) recently released a book of his visual art entitled Myopia. Wes Anderson provided the foreword for the once and future king of Devo, and in it he states:
I hope to soon secure the means to commission the construction of an important and sizeable theme park to be conceived and designed entirely by Mark Mothersbaugh. For 40 years he has set about creating a body of work which amounts to his own Magic Kingdom, where the visitor is amused and frightened, often simultaneously.
More than likely this is Anderson being drily facetious, or it’s simple wishful thinking on the beloved director’s part. There’s certainly been no other indications outside of these few sentences to suggest that any plans are genuinely underway for a rigidly constructed, yet whimsically melancholic theme park. Sadly, until any other word comes along, it has to be assumed this is just a mere flight of fancy.
But then, who could have predicted the filmmaker would helm his own cruise? And, to be honest, it would be a far better world if such a collaboration between Mothersbaugh and Anderson could come into being. Imagine a place where visitors could enjoy the delights of Dead Parents’ Pavilion, before being entertained by the never-ending chorus of It’s A Twee World After All, then thrilled by the mescaline-influenced Eli Cash’s Wild Ride, and finishing their day with a trip to The Hall Of Animatronic Bill Murrays.