It may not have been as polished as his later works Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, but Wes Anderson's film debut, Bottle Rocket, brimmed with a beautiful brand of naivete not concentrated as strongly in his later films.
One reason for this is the film's excellent soundtrack. Anderson's movies tend to feature top-notch tunage, but there's something about those Bottle Rocket songs and Mark Mothersbaugh instrumentals that gives us that "so fresh" feeling.
But before Bottle Rocket was a feature-length film, it was a 13-minute short film (trailer), with completely different music that Anderson had hoped to use in the feature, only to be told by the studio that the film should not feature jazz.
To coincide the release of the Bottle Rocket Criterion Edition, which includes the original short film version, Fantasy Records collected the songs from its soundtrack and will release them digitally on December 9, when the Criterion edition of the film will be released.
"I was listening to a lot of jazz at the time, especially Coltrane's albums on Blue Note and Sonny Rollins' A Night at the Village Vanguard," stated Anderson. "I was inspired by the use of American jazz in French new wave movies like Breathless. I still love this music... The studio didn't want us to use jazz in the feature version. We didn't license a lot of this music at the time because we couldn't afford it."
Time heals all wounds. Here are two songs from that soundtrack, courtesy of Fantasy Records, available here as QuickTime streams:
Vince Guaraldi Trio - "Skating" (from Peanuts, aka Charlie Brown)
Other songs included on the short film soundtrack include Artie Shaw's "The Chant," Sonny Rollins' "Old Devil Moon," Chet Baker & Art Pepper's "The Route," Duke Ellington & John Coltrane's "Stevie," Art Blakey covering Horace Silver Trio's "Nothing but the Soul" and the Vince Guaraldi Trio's "Happiness Is."
