Luke Wilson, Wes Anderson and elderly Oscar-winning director James L. Brooks trapped in Academy Museum's 'secret elevator used for celebrities'

Luke Wilson and Wes Anderson were among a group of people trapped in an elevator at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles this week. 

The actor, 54, and director, 57, along with producer James L. Brooks, 86, and three others, had to be freed by firefighters.

The incident occurred on Monday after the 30th anniversary screening of Anderson's debut film Bottle Rocket.

Carolyn Dunn shared an Instagram video of the crew being released from the lift, writing in the caption: 'Director Wes Anderson and writer/producer James L. Brooks saved by the Los Angeles Fire Department from a broken elevator!'

The snippet shows Anderson asking a firefighter what the suspected problem was, to which he replied, 'Probably too much weight in there.'

According to TMZ, the group was set free from the elevator within an hour, after the fire department responded to the call at 7:49PM.

Daily Mail has reached out to reps for Luke and Anderson for comment.

Per Save Your Cinema, the men were using 'a secret passageway/elevator so celebrities can enter and exit without public interference.'

Bottle Rocket starred Luke alongside his brother Owen Wilson, 57, who was also at Monday's anniversary event.

Anderson and Owen co-wrote the late 90s comedy/crime movie, which also starred Andrew Wilson, Robert Musgrave, Ned Dowd and Shea Fowler.

The R-rated production follows three friends who orchestrate a robbery and go on the run. 

Speaking with IndieWire in 2023, Anderson reflected on sharing his first film with the world. 

'For me, I was more confident before. When we were making Bottle Rocket, I felt like I really knew what I wanted it to be. And it helped that I had a partner. I had Owen Wilson, we’d written it together, the two of us were a team, so that goes a long way in that situation,' he said.

The Academy Award-winning recalled, 'But then when we screened the movie publicly, we didn’t screen it in an encouraging environment. 

'We blamed the audience. The confidence I had was too much, and it was quite shaken by this experience. It was a terrible way to first screen a movie.'

He explained, 'We had 86 people in the audience, I think, and by halfway through about 20 were left, and I watched them leave. You watch somebody get up and you say, "Maybe this one’s just going to the bathroom. But they’re taking all their bags with them…"'

Luke has a verified Instagram account, where he rarely posts to his 11,000 followers.

The entertainer's latest upload was in October 2025 – a photo of a book titled Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening.

He captioned the post, 'Great book by the writer Jim Newton.'

Ahead of his 50th birthday in 2021, the actor said he was beginning to understand the term 'midlife crisis.'

'Thirty didn't matter to me. Forty didn't matter to me,' he told People magazine. 'I just steamrolled right through it, but 50 – I don't know if it's getting to me because I am sore when I wake up in the middle of the night, and I am forgetting the names of people I know.

'It's definitely one of those things that has had me thinking, oh, okay. So this is where the phrase midlife crisis comes from. I'm definitely starting to feel panicky about some stuff.'