A little head’s up. It probably going to turn into “Bottle Rocket” week here at The Playlist. The Criterion Collection was kind enough to give us an advance of the DVD last week and we watched Wes Anderson’s debut feature all weekend long and took extensive notes. They’re incredibly long and hopefully definitive, but rather than put it all in out in one gigantic post, we’ll try and spread it out around the week. “Bottle Rocket” the Criterion Collection edition comes out tomorrow, November 25, and man, we’ve got to tell you, this new version is pristine and makes for a whole new viewing experience, we’re not kidding. The colors and visual detail are incredibly rich and the soundtrack and new overall sound is incredibly sharp you can hear jokes and mumbling asides like never before (Dignan: “How does an asshole like Bob get such a nice kitchen?”).
You’ll recall that “Bottle Rocket” the film was based off a 12-minute short that Wes Anderson directed and co-wrote with Owen Wilson and that’s featured on the disc too. Below we have one deleted scene from the film that centers on Bob Mapplethorpe (Robert Musgrave) Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony Adams (Luke Wilson) washing and accessing Bob’s BMW as potential get-away vehicle. You can see why this scene was cut, the dialogue about Futureman (Andrew Wilson) and how he got his name is way too expository.
Below that is the original short that premiered at Sundance 1994 if you’ve never seen it. The version below is not from the disc and we’ll say on the DVD, it looks pretty mint too. Ok, so this is the first of many posts on this subtle, dead-pan and extremely underachieving, but winning film. The pictures in this post are taken from the 11 deleted scenes on the DVD. Edit: Scatch that, you can’t seem to embed the short from YouTube anymore, so link here.