Slow news, fast thoughts – Thursday came and went. A good highlight of an in-depth article from Consequence on the One of a Kind director Wes Anderson, followed by thoughts on what it means to quit. Music and more fairy dust to finish the day.

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We started to take notice of Wes Anderson after The Grand Budapest Hotel. It wasn't the first Wes Anderson movie we had seen, but this was the one that made us take notice and start to pull up and watch his back catalog. After Budapest Hotel, we returned to Moonrise Kingdom and rewatched Tenenbaums and Rushmore. Similar to going back and listening to a band you just discovered, there is a different appreciation for Rushmore after you have seen Jason Schwartzman in several other Wes Anderson movies. 

Movie critics, writers, and other artists try to create categories for Anderson; descriptions like quirky and off-beat are obvious, but we avoid them because Anderson is unique. A creator who may have pulled his brand of creativity from other known places but who puts characters, scenes, and timing together in ways we can't compare to anything we've seen before. We will call it special.

Consequence Film wrote up a great ranking of all 11 Wes Anderson films. The ranking is up for debate, but the depth of the writing and review of all 11 movies is impressive. This article could be a book primer for all of Anderson's movies. This summer, Anderson's 11th movie Asteroid City hits theaters this month; here is a list of Anderson's movies in chronological order by release:

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I read an email about quitting, which made me think about some of my thoughts on the subject. The primary theme throughout my life has been determination and persistence. Determination gets me started, and persistence keeps me in the game as long as I need to be. The only way to fail is to quit, but for that to work, the definition of quitting needs some exploration. To link quitting to failure, quitting would have to be extreme, meaning all the previous work and energy went to waste, and you stopped all things associated with the thing. For example, you want to be a writer, and writing and publishing a book is your ultimate goal. You decide to quit before you accomplish the goal and never write another word for anything. That would be a failure in my primitive view. If you put the unfinished book on the shelf but continued to write and read and improve at the craft in several ways, you didn't quit.

Entrepreneurs do it all the time; if something isn't working and all the signs point to a black hole of time, resources, and especially cash flow, then bury it. After a short mourning period, get back up, take what you've learned, and do it again. That's a strategic adjustment and not quitting. The movies and some of our favorite stories show the underdog moving mountains to succeed with mantras like ”never give up, "and the teams that cut Michael Jordan or elections Lincoln lost. All good stories, but real life isn't read in a week or seen on a screen. Real life is a daily slough through the trenches to find your place, your gift, and your ability to arrive means you can't quit.

Breezy Tunes!

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

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Thank you for spending a few minutes with us. Here’s one for the road!

With A Shout newsletter is written by Johnny Christian with the support of a thousand idea bits and the help of many people.

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