Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier at a theater near you

It was intended as a narrative prequel for Jason Schwartzman’s character in The Darjeeling Limited but has instead become a hopeful companion to the theatrical release of the feature length project. The Wes Anderson short called Hotel Chevalier will do what Mike Nichols’ Closer didn’t: show Natalie Portman in her birthday suit.

If it were up to Anderson, the short would be featured before the feature film in theaters but that plan might not go as planned – there is a deal with Apple that will first show the short in Apples stores (only the 4 major U.S city hubs) and then will show up for download on the Apple site.

Portman sports a short hair-do (very Jean Seberg look a la À Bout de Souffle) and coincidently this is the second time she appears in a prominent U.S filmmaker short film – she was a muse in the Coen. Bros’ Paris, je t'aime segment.

The LATimes reveals that Anderson shot “Chevalier” in late 2005 — around the time he had begun drafting the “Darjeeling” screenplay with Jason Schwartzman and his cousin Roman Coppola and nearly a year before that movie went into production — making the shorter film a kind of working draft for the feature. In both, Schwartzman plays the same lovelorn American abroad character, Jack Whitman. He is the youngest of three estranged brothers who set off on a familial bonding odyssey through India in “Darjeeling” (in which his celluloid siblings are played by Adrien Brody and Owen Wilson). And in “Chevalier,” whose action takes place in Paris two weeks before “Darjeeling” unfolds, the character is working through some relationship rough spots with his on-again, off-again girlfriend — namely, her sexual infidelity and mysterious bruises.