Film 818: Moonrise Kingdom
Trivia: Though it was filmed
in part on Prudence Island, Rhode Island, the map of the island of New Penzance
is based on Fisher's Island, New York.
Before filming, neither Kara Hayward nor Jared Gilman had ever seen a
typewriter in person. Hayward later said, "Fran (Frances McDormand) had a lot of fun
with that. She couldn't believe it. She showed me that the keys are in the same
place as now (on computers)."
After filming was completed, Kara Hayward got to keep the
kitten owned in the film by her character Suzy, and Jared Gilman got to keep the
backpack used by his character Sam.
The film opened in only four
theaters, two in New York and two in Los Angeles, but earned $167,250 per
screen, the all-time record for highest per-theater box office average of a
non-animated film.
According to Wes Anderson, Suzy's discovery
of the "Coping with a Troubled Child" pamphlet was based on a similar
experience from his own childhood: "It wasn't anything terrible. It's just
something that at the time, when I found it, I was like, 'What is this!' I
immediately knew who that troubled child was even though hypothetically it
could have been someone else."
In the film, Laura Bishop
shouts at various family members through a bullhorn. The idea came from
co-writer Roman Coppola's childhood, as his mother Eleanor Coppola used a bullhorn in
a similar fashion.
During filming, Wes Anderson rented an old
mansion in Newport, Rhode Island for himself, editor Andrew Weisblum, and director of
cinematography Robert D. Yeoman, in which they had
a room set up for editing the film. It had been arranged for the cast to stay
in a nearby hotel, but eventually some of the actors also decided to stay at
the mansion, including Edward
Norton, Bill
Murray, and Jason
Schwartzman. Murray later joked that the theory was to have
everyone close by so that they could all work "ungodly art-movie
hours."
