Rushmore – Max Fischer

Rushmore (1998)

Directed by Wes Anderson

Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Brian Cox

Is Max a stereotypical teenager?

No, I wouldn’t say he is. He tries everything at school (isn’t lazy, teenagers are stereotypically lazy).
He almost always dresses formally; even when he is doing an active sport he still more or less wears
his school uniform. He always looks smart as well whereas the typical teenager looks scruffy.

During the mise en scene, he shows himself carrying out and leading out several activities. Max gets
involved with a surprising amount of activities than you would expect the average teenager to. He also
comes across as being very smart due to the fact he looks it (stereotypically) and he is involved in lots
of skilled based activities such as martial arts, yankee review publisher, Lacrosse team manager etc.

Throughout the montage, the song in the background is called Making Time by The Creation. There
are 2 lines in the song which stand out for Max Fischer, these are “pullin’ the wool” and “Actin’ the
fool”. This tells us that he doesn’t realise that he totally stands out because of what he looks like and
because he takes executive roles in all of these clubs and activities. This isn’t what you would see in a
stereotypical teenager.