If you’ve ever seen a Wes Anderson movie, you’ve probably noticed that he really, really loves the old-timey storybook aesthetic (so much so that he even writes like one). Part of the reason Royal Tenenbaums is regarded by many (mainly by me) as his best movie is that it gave him the perfect sandbox to play in, considering almost every character in it wrote a book.
Some clever Reddit user compiled them all:
What’s most impressive about them to me is that they all manage to capture that “seventies/eighties textbook” aesthetic, but in mostly different ways. It’s easy to imagine myself writing “Lindsay Olson has epic boobs” on the inside cover during social studies (what, dude, she totally did).
For me, the obvious stand out is “Dudley’s World.”
Can the boy tell time?
Oh, my Lord, no.
If you were wondering about the kid who played Dudley, his name is Stephen Lea Sheppard, and despite his name he did not go on to become an assassin. He’s 31 now and lives in his native Canada, where he writes video game reviews for Vice. He appeared in Freaks and Geeks before Tenenbaums, but aside from a commercial, hasn’t acted since.
The Canadian magazine Maclean’s recently checked in on him and found out that his early years weren’t easy — in addition to relentless bullying, he endured the cancer-related death of his father, a recovering alcoholic, and had to live with family friends while his mother went to school to become a midwife. After he impressed Paul Feig and Judd Apatow just by being himself, and they wrote the role of Harris just for him, Wes Anderson came calling. But while his Freaks and Geeks co-stars went on to A-list fame, Sheppard flubbed auditions and made just one commercial. These days, the 29-year-old moderates gaming forums and writes video game reviews for Vice. [Flavorwire]
I’m glad he quit acting and seems to have become a well-adjusted adult. I shudder to think what would’ve happened had he stayed in LA and become a Scientologist or something. A three-named, former child actor Scientologist is almost guaranteed to be a murderer. Maybe instead of doing away with child actors completely, as I’ve long advocated, we could just make a law that they have to be Canadian.