The Royal Tenenbaums

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The Royal Tenenbaums
The Royal Tenenbaums
Directed by	Wes Anderson
Produced by	Wes Anderson Barry Mendel Scott Rudin
Written by	Wes Anderson Owen Wilson
Starring	Gene Hackman Anjelica Huston Gwyneth Paltrow Ben Stiller Luke Wilson Owen Wilson Danny Glover Bill Murray
Distributed by	Buena Vista Pictures
Release date(s)	December 4, 2001 December 28, 2001 March 14, 2002 March 15, 2002 May 7, 2002
Running time	109 min
Language	English
Budget	$28,000,000 (estimated)
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The Royal Tenenbaums is the 2001 black comedy about three genius siblings who experience great success in youth, and even greater disappointment and failure after their eccentric father leaves them in their adolescent years. A rather off-beat, ironic, absurdist sense of humor pervades the entire film, as with all of director Wes Anderson's work, manifest as a tone of hilarious tragedy and as pleasure taken in the small joys of conversation and camaraderie.

The film features a large number of successful actors in its cast, including Anjelica Huston as Etheline Tenenbaum, Owen Wilson as Eli Cash, Luke Wilson as Richie Tenenbaum, Ben Stiller as Chas Tenenbaum, Gwyneth Paltrow as Margot Tenenbaum, Danny Glover as Henry Sherman, Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum and Bill Murray as Raleigh St. Clair. Alec Baldwin narrates.

Gene Hackman won a Golden Globe for his performance and the screenplay by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson was nominated for an Academy Award.

1 Plot
2 Characters
3 Soundtrack
4 Trivia
5 Taglines
6 External links

[edit] Plot

The estranged father, Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman), returns to his family more than a decade later, faking a case of stomach cancer, after he is evicted from his room at the Lindbergh Palace Hotel and disbarred from practicing law. The film is the story of how Royal attempts to come back and maintain his place, whatever is left of it, within the family.

The siblings of the Tenenbaum family are all highly intelligent and disillusioned, struggling with their own identities. They are loosely based on a rabble of similarly disillusioned siblings from the later books of famed author J.D. Salinger. The Glass family, comprised of seven child-prodigy-turned-adult-misanthrope characters, is the central subject of three of Salinger's five published books, and form the basis for the quirky and unhappy Tenenbaum family, as director Wes Anderson revealed in an interview with Premiere magazine conducted in January 2001.

[edit] Characters

Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) - A shamelessly selfish lawyer (briefly imprisoned) and a failure as a father. Intentionally, he shot one of his sons with a BB gun during a game, and consistently and irrelevantly feels he must point out that Margot is his "adopted daughter." He often took his favorite son Richie to dog fights and excluded his other children.
Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) - A noted archeologist, and the mother of the Tenenbaum children, who "makes their education her top priority" and helps them climb to fame. Later on, Ethel finds love in Henry Sherman, her accountant, the complete opposite of her estranged husband Royal.
Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) - A genius in international finance, Chas sued his father twice and had him disbarred because of the bonds his father stole from his safety deposit box when he was fourteen. His wife died in a plane crash and he has since become obsessed with the safety of Ari and Uzi, his sons. They have a dog named Buckley.
Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) - A playwrighting prodigy, Margot once ran away from home for two weeks and came back with half of one of her fingers missing. In the film, spent much of her time moping in her bathtub, watching television. She smokes, unbeknownst to anyone else in her family.
Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) - A tennis prodigy, Richie is secretly in love with his adopted sister, Margot. While successful in his tennis career, Richie has a nervous breakdown on court in front of thousands of fans and loses his desire to play tennis soon after. At the beginning of the film, he has been living on an ocean liner for several months. He drinks Bloody Marys with pepper throughout the movie.
Eli Cash (Owen Wilson) - A "friend of the family" since the Tenenbaum children were very young, considered Richie's best friend, Eli has a burning desire to "be a Tenenbaum." He gained success as an author of Western novels; his latest work presupposes the outcome if Custer didn't die at Little Bighorn. Cash is attracted to Margot Tenenbaum and has a drug problem. Wes Anderson has stated that Eli Cash actually is based on two authors; Cormac McCarthy and Jay McInerney.
Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) - Ethel Tenenbaum's accountant and romantic interest.
Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) - Husband of Margot Tenenbaum and a famed (and strange) neurologist in his own right. Anderson has mentioned that St. Clair was based on Oliver Sacks.
Pagoda (Kumar Pallana) - Friend and servant to the Tenenbaum Family. He also acts as an informant working for Royal to update him on his family. They met after Pagoda, an assassin in Calcutta, stabbed Royal; he earned his trust however when he then carried him on his back to the hospital.

[edit] Soundtrack

Main article: The Royal Tenenbaums (soundtrack)

The soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums contains a style typical of other Wes Anderson films. Mark Mothersbaugh, a member of Devo, composed the score for the soundtrack as well as for many of Anderson's other films. The film also features many rock songs from the 1960s-'80s.

There have been two soundtrack album releases for The Royal Tenenbaums. The first, in 2001, was well-received by most critics, though some songs were omitted; notably, Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard", Van Morrison's "Everyone", John Lennon's "Look At Me", The Mutato Muzika Orchestra's version of The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and two Rolling Stones tracks.

In 2002, the soundtrack was re-released with four songs not found on the 2001 release, but the two songs found in the film by The Rolling Stones ("She Smiled Sweetly", "Ruby Tuesday") were still not on the soundtrack. This is because while The Rolling Stones allow their music to be used in film, they do not allow their material to appear on any soundtracks. The soundtrack was also still missing the Van Morrison track, which served as the closing credits song in the film.

[edit] Trivia

Some members of the Tenenbaum family are actually modeled after members of Cinematographer Robert Yeoman's brother-in-law Walter Karnas' family. Certain small points of family members were exaggerated to make the character its own. The part of Royal Tenenbaum was written for Gene Hackman, but written after Walter Karnas himself. The same goes for the three Tenenbaum children, partially written after three of the Karnas children.
Etheline Tenenbaum, played by Anjelica Huston, was modeled after Wes Anderson's own mother. Anderson's mother similarly adopted archeology after divorcing her husband. The glasses Etheline wears are actually Mrs. Anderson's. At one point during filming, Anjelica Huston asked Wes Anderson if she was, in fact, supposed to be playing his mother.
Two of the film's characters are thought to be modeled after popular culture icon Nico. The blonde hair and dark mascara of Nico is reflected in the styling of Margot Tenenbaum; additionally, Chas's son Ari shares a name with Nico's son with Alain Delon. The film soundtrack features two songs by Nico: "The Fairest of the Seasons" and "These Days."
The name Buckley for the dog came from singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley. He's a beagle, which is another tribute to Snoopy from Peanuts.
The narration and the way the film follows each family member is similar to Fox's acclaimed television sitcom Arrested Development. Jason Bateman, one of the show's stars, described the show as "The Royal Tenenbaums shot like COPS". Arrested Development's creator and head writer Mitchell Hurwitz said that when he saw The Royal Tenenbaums he already had the idea for AD in mind and thought "Well, I guess I won't be doing that" but subsequently changed his mind.
For several locations, Anderson used run-down neighborhoods in upper Manhattan. All the exterior shots--and most of the interior ones--of the Tenenbaum house are of a residential building at the corner of 144th Street and Convent Avenue, just north of City College. The cemetery scenes were filmed at Trinity Cemetery between 153rd and 155th Streets, near Riverside Drive.
The actual name for the movie was inspired in part, by longtime friend of Wes Anderson, Brian Tenenbaum who has appeared in several of Anderson's movies in bit parts. In the Royal Tenenbaums he is one of the paramedics seen at the end of the film.
The paintings in Eli Cash's apartment are "Bad Route" and "Attack" by Miguel Calderón. They were actually from photographs taken by Calderón and reproduced in oil by a portrait artist.
In one scene, Etheline Tenenbaum urges her daughter Margot Tenenbaum to get out of the bathroom. A similar scene takes up a large part of J.D. Salinger's book Franny and Zooey, when Bessie Glass spends quite a bit of time bothering her son Zooey Glass.
Every time Eli Cash makes a drug deal, The Clash is playing.
Henry Sherman is the name of Wes Anderson's former landlord. When the character of Henry Sherman is introduced in the film, he is standing in front of an apartment with a sign that says "H. Sherman - Landlord".
During the suicide scene, "Needle In The Hay" plays, a song by Elliott Smith. Smith committed suicide in 2003 by stabbing himself.

[edit] Taglines

Family Isn't A Word... It's A Sentence.

You Are Invited To A Remarkable Family Gathering.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Royal Tenenbaums

The films of Wes Anderson
Features: Bottle Rocket (1996) \| Rushmore \| The Royal Tenenbaums \| The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou \| Fantastic Mr. Fox \| The Darjeeling Limited
Shorts: Bottle Rocket (1994)