Rushmore (1998)

The extracurricular king of Rushmore Preparatory School is put on academic probation.

Director:

Wes Anderson

Writers:

Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson

Stars:

Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe. Another 16 wins & 15 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Jason Schwartzman	...	Max Fischer
Bill Murray	...	Herman Blume
Olivia Williams	...	Rosemary Cross
Seymour Cassel	...	Bert Fischer
Brian Cox	...	Dr. Nelson Guggenheim
Mason Gamble	...	Dirk Calloway
Sara Tanaka	...	Margaret Yang
Stephen McCole	...	Magnus Buchan
Connie Nielsen	...	Mrs. Calloway
Luke Wilson	...	Dr. Peter Flynn
Dipak Pallana	...	Mr. Adams (as Deepak Pallana)
Andrew Wilson	...	Coach Beck
Marietta Marich	...	Mrs. Guggenheim
Ronnie McCawley	...	Ronny Blume
Keith McCawley	...	Donny Blume

Storyline

Max Fischer is a precocious 15-year-old whose reason for living is his attendance at Rushmore, a private school where he's not doing well in any of his classes, but where he's the king of extracurricular activities - from being in the beekeeping society to writing and producing plays, there's very little after school he doesn't do. His life begins to change, however, when he finds out he's on academic probation, and when he stumbles into love with Miss Cross, a pretty teacher of the elementary school at Rushmore. Added to the mix is his friendship with Herman Blume, wealthy industrialist and father to boys who attend the school, and who also finds himself attracted to Miss Cross. Max's fate becomes inextricably tied to this odd love triangle, and how he sets about resolving it is the story in the film.

---

Plot Keywords:

love triangle | high school | vietnam war veteran | national film registry | coming of age film | 

---

Taglines:

All's fair when love is war.

---

Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Romance

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language and brief nudity

Did You Know?

Trivia

The speech about privilege that Herman Blume (Bill Murray) gives at the beginning of the film was inspired by an actual speech once given by Robert Wilson, father of Andrew Wilson, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson.

---

Goofs

When Blume's sons lock him out of his Bentley, the shot of his hand on the door handle shows a car with different paintwork - two-tone black and grey rather than all-black.

---

Quotes

[first lines]
Student: If, and only if, both sides of the numerator is divisible by the inverse of he square root of the two unassigned variable.
School Professor: Good. Except when the value of the "X" coordinate is equal to or less than the value of one. Yes Isaac?
Student: What about *that* problem?
School Professor: Oh, that? Don't worry about that.
Student: Wait. Why?
School Professor: I just put that up as a joke. That's probably the hardest geometry equation in the world.
Student: Well, how much extra credit is it worth?
School Professor: Well, considering I've never seen anyone get it right, ...

---

Connections

Featured in The Movies: The Nineties (2019)

---

Soundtracks

Ooh La La
Written by Ronnie Wood and Ronnie Lane (as Ron Lane)
Published by WB Music Corp (ASCAP)
Performed by Faces (as The Faces)
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
By Arrangement with Warner Special Products

User Reviews

WAY over-rated

There were a few times when I laughed during this film. But not nearly enough, and not very loudly either. I kept glancing at the timer on the DVD-player to see how much longer it would be before the end credits rolled. And then when they did, I felt like I'd been robbed of 90 minutes of my life.

And what is up with people saying that Bill Murray is so great in this movie? It's just the same old-same old from him, his usual understated shtick - which is great in the right context, but also about all he seems to be able to do, just a refinement of what he's been honing since his SNL days. The only person giving a semblance of performance that resembled an actual human being was Olivia Williams. Everyone else seemed like vague caricatures, like smudged cartoon characters. (Actually the girl who played Margaret Yang, Ms. Tanaka - isn't it weird how Hollywood always casts Japanese as Chinese and vice versa? - she was pretty good too. Hmm. Maybe Wes Anderson should only write women's roles, do some kind of a George Cukor-style project.)

I was so uninvolved for most of this film that it was very easy to step out of it and over-analyze it (like noticing how in so many ways it resembles "Bottle Rocket" - another grossly over-praised film - thematically and plot arc-wise). I wish I could have been more involved so that I wouldn't have been watching that little counter on the DVD-player so much of the time. But the filmmakers didn't really give me that chance. They seem to have misunderstood the whole concept of Brechtian 'distancing' and they ended up making their characters - as eccentric as some of them are - so muted and schematic that there's no longer any texture left for a viewer to gain an emotional foothold. (At least not this viewer.)

I think that twenty years from now people will dismiss this film as "pretentious '90s indy junk" the same way that any honest viewer now will look back at films from the '60s - like "Blow Up" or "Easy Rider" - and say the same.

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish Latin French

Release Date:

19 February 1999 (USA)

Also Known As:

Rushmore

Filming Locations:

Forest Club - 9950 Memorial Drive, Houston, Texas, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$9,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$43,666, 13 December 1998

Gross USA:

$17,105,219

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$17,196,103

Company Credits

Production Co:

American Empirical Pictures, Touchstone Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

93 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.39 : 1