While Wes Anderson has been busy tucked away in Paris making Fantastic Mr Fox (yes, we know Fantastic Mr Fox was largely filmed in Britain, but Anderson spent most of his time in France), he’s also been hard at work on scripting an adaptation of the French movie, My Best Friend.
News of his plans to remake the film have been around for just over a year, but now The Playlist has gotten hold of the first draft of the script, and discovered there are a few changes from the French version in Anderson’s screenplay – although that’s to be expected from the idiosyncratic director of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. For a start, the name has been changed to The Rosenthaler Suite, which is certainly a more Wes Anderson title, in that it’s fairly meaningless at a glance.
The original film is about a man who thinks he’s great, but gets a bit of a shock when someone bets him that he has no best friend. He soon discovers that not only is that true, but many of the people whohe considers buddies actually despise him, and so he enlists the help of a cab driver to help him find a best friend.
While much of Anderson’s first draft remake version stays faithful to that plot, he also adds in the subplot that gives the movie its name. The Rosenthaler Suite is a collection of paintings by a elderly ans overlooked artist who is dying of cancer. The main character smells the chance to make a few bucks when the old man keels over and so has been busy buying the paintings up, and it is ownership of these works of art the that becomes the wager of the bet the film is based around. The Playlist rates the script as good, but in need of a bit of a rewrite, as it feels too much like Anderson’s more recent work, rather than his fresher, earlier screenplays.
Although it’s presumed that The Rosenthaler Suite will be Anderson’s next film, he has mentioned recently that he’s also working on original material, so we’ll have to wait for an official announcement to see if The Rosnethaler Suite is the one he’s moving forward on.