CANNES, France — When Wes Anderson descends from Paris to attend the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, he and his actors won’t be staying in Cannes’ luxury hotel, but in the suburbs, more than an hour from the coast. bottom. festival frenzy.
“When we arrived here yesterday, we arrived at a quiet and peaceful hotel,” Ms. Anderson said in an interview. “It’s an hour away, but it’s a perfectly normal life.”
Ordinary life can mean something different in Wes Anderson’s films, and that may be doubly true in his latest film, Asteroid City. The production is one of Anderson’s most compelling jam-packed productions, featuring sci-fi, mid-century theatre, and nearly 100 others from Looney Tunes to “Bad Day at Black Rock.” It is a work set in the 1950s that fuses the influence of
“Asteroid City,” released by Focus Features on June 16th, premiered at Cannes on Tuesday. A stellar cast has arrived, including Anderson and Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Margot Robbie, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody. We will all get on the bus.
The film, which Anderson co-wrote with Roman Coppola, takes place in a desert town in the Southwest. There, a group of characters gather for various reasons, such as a stargazing competition or a broken-down car, some of whom have unspeakable grief. But even that story is part of Russian doll fiction. It is a play in action, itself filmed for television broadcast.
So, “Asteroid City” means every Tik Tok video made in Anderson’s distinctive diorama style will be fresh fodder for new social media replicas, both human- and AI-generated. That’s it. Anderson spoke of them on his Tik Tok. In an interview the day before Asteroid City premiered in Cannes, he also spoke about the style and inspiration behind Asteroid City, a melancholic, sun-dried version of vintage Anderson density. He also asked other questions.
“I feel like this movie might be worth seeing twice,” said Anderson. “Brian De Palma liked it the first time, but the second time he responded even more. You can’t say, ‘I think it’s the best’.”
___
AP: It’s a lot of fun reading “Jeff Goldblum as Alien” in the opening credits of a movie before you even know it exists. It seems to tell you something.
Anderson: Naturally, we were debating whether we wanted this for the opening credits. I said, “You know, that’s a good thing.” It’s a small omen. In our story, it’s not a large-scale role. But part of what this movie is to me, and to Roman, has to do with the actors and this weird thing they do. What does it mean to perform? Perhaps someone has written something that can be studied and learned to gain an interpretation. But essentially you take yourself and put it in the film. And a lot of people take pictures of themselves and put themselves in films. They have faces and voices and are more complex than even AI can conceive. For AI to invent them, it needs to know them. They do all the emotional things that are usually mysterious to me. I always stand behind and watch, and it’s always very moving.
AP: Aliens may be dooming the characters in “Asteroid City,” and the area is undergoing atomic bomb testing. Is this your version of the post-apocalyptic movie?
Anderson: All the apocalyptic stuff was there. Aliens probably never existed, but there was certainly a strong interest in them. The atomic bomb had certainly exploded. And I think it can be said that it is the worst war in the history of mankind. I remember saying to Roman. “I think one of these men is not only suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress that he is completely unaware of, but he shares it with his family. With Woodstock. But also.” , “They should all be armed, so they all have pistols.”
AP: It looks like you’ve been adding more and more frames within the frames of the Russian Doll movie, layering layers on top of each other, probably since The Grand Budapest Hotel. Your first movies, Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, are starting to look almost real. Do you think your films have become more elaborate as you’ve gotten older?
Anderson: At the end of the day, every time I make a movie, I’m just trying to figure out what I want to do and then find a way to make it happen. It’s usually an emotional choice and how it all ends is quite a mystery to me. The most improvisational aspect of filmmaking for me is writing films. I tend to stick to stage productions that aren’t in movies. “Grand Budapest” had multiple layers, and “French Dispatch” certainly did. This is actually he is split in two, but there are more layers of complexity. We know that the main part of the film is the play. But there’s also the making behind the scenes. Also, some guys are saying this is a telecast of a fictional play that doesn’t actually exist. I don’t mean to make it complicated. I’m the only one doing what I want.
AP: Have you seen all the TikTok videos made in your style? They’re everywhere.
Anderson: No, I haven’t seen one. Actually, I have never seen TikTok. I don’t see anything that concerns me or doesn’t concern me. And I haven’t seen anything AI related to me.
AP: You can also see that a new generation has discovered your film.
Anderson: The only reason I don’t see your work is probably because you’re repeating the same thing over and over again. When I make a movie, we have to accept that I have to make it. But all I can say is that whenever someone responds with enthusiasm to these films that I’ve made over the years, it’s great and I’m lucky. So I am happy to receive it. But I do feel like, “Oh, is that what I’m doing?” So I protect myself.
AP: Sometimes people miss how flawed and ludicrous the characters in your films are, operating in such a detailed world. Gorgeous pictures may be accurate, but people are all imperfect.
Anderson: Anyway, that’s what I want. At the end of the day, what it’s about is far more important to me. I spend more time writing movies than I do making them. Actors are the center of everything for me. They cannot be simulated. Or maybe you can. If you look at AI, you might find that it can.
AP: In Asteroid City, you combined your interest in very different ideas: Sam Shepard’s ’50s theater and automatons. How do you come up with such a combination?
Anderson: We had the idea of doing a ’50s setting, and there are these two aspects to it. One is a theater in New York. There’s a picture of Paul Newman sitting in a chair in the Actors Studio in a T-shirt with his feet on the floor. It was about the world of Summer Stock, its behind-the-scenes, and these towns that were built but never occupied. That’s the East Coast and Westcote, and theater and cinema. There is a set of dichotomy. And one of the core things was that we wanted the Jason Schwartzman character to be different. What it takes to make a movie eventually becomes too much to even pinpoint. So many things have been added to the mix and I love it. And part of what this movie is about is what you can’t control in life. In a way, the invention of cinema is one of them.
___
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP
