Wes Anderson’s cult classic 1998 film Rushmore tells the story of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), a 10th grader at Rushmore Academy who is currently: editor of the school newspaper and yearbook; president of the French Club, German Club, Chess Club, Astronomy Club; captain of the fencing and debate teams; founder of the Double-team Dodgeball Society; and director of the Max Fischer Players; for whom he writes and produces plays about police corruption, inner-city violence, war, etc. He is applying for early admission to Oxford. (Harvard is his safety.) He is also one of the worst students in the school and has been placed on sudden-death academic probation.

The songs featured in Rushmore come from the British Invasion of the ’60s. Music supervisor Randy Poster explains, “Wes started talking with me about the music for the movie a couple of years before we started shooting.” Anderson says, “We used the British Invasion music because it gets at the other side of Max. He presents himself as being very sophisticated, and he wears a blazer and a tie; but, really, he’s a teenager, and he’s kind of going crazy.” Anderson choreographed the filming of some of the scenes to the music which he had already selected before filming began.

In working with songs from this era, Poster expressed how Anderson was “trying to harken back to a music that expresses an emerging post-adolescent energy and vigor. Something I related to in the script corresponds with the England of the ‘Angry Young Man’ period. In a sense there is a certain stylistic parallel that we’re illuminating, though clearly the times and realities are very different. But I think the emotional charge of some of these songs really adhere to the film and will reverberate with the audience in terms of the energy and emotional content. I think Wes has a singular and refreshing view of the things. And I think that the music will help stamp his identity on the brow of filmgoers throughout the world.”