Wes Anderson feels inextricably linked to the festival where cinema is at its most venerated.
To date, Anderson has premiered three films at Cannes: Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023) — and will be back this year with his latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme.
The Phoenician Scheme, out May 30 by Focus Features, stars Benicio del Toro as European tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda, who has built globe-spanning empire using dubious business practices. After surviving the latest of assassination attempts, he appoints an heir to his estate, his estranged and only daughter, Liesl, a nun on the verge of taking her vows, played by Mia Threapleton.
The movie has regular Anderson players, like Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks, as well as new entrants, Michael Cera and Riz Ahmed.
Anderson, 56, talked about the anxiety of sitting through his own premiere, the familial inspiration of the film, his bold decision to arrive via coach: “It’s as discreet as a bus with a bunch of movie stars on it can be.”
I had probably seen movies that had a little card in front of them when I was in high school. I remember Wings of Desire and Sex, Lies and Videotape.
Was any advice given to you?
No, I don’t think so. But you don’t really have to do anything. When you show a movie in New York, or at Telluride, you introduce it and you do a Q&A. You’re there to bring it to the world. Well, when you show a movie in Cannes, you just walk in and sit. They take it from there. There’s no question that when you show a movie at a festival, you feel like you’re on display, and it’s terrifying a bit. The way they do it in Cannes — they make it big. There’s this giant staircase, and you’ve got your whole gang and your cast and you look out and you see all these people who are so excited about movies. It’s a French thing, too; it’s a national thing. This festival, they know it’s the most important one in the world. When you show a movie in a film festival, there’s the second screening that’s for the young people who can’t get into the first big screening. That one’s always more fun. At Cannes, that’s the mood outside the theater. The most fun is the walk in, because once the movie starts to unspool on the screen, then you’re auditioning for a room full of people. And that’s just nerve-racking.
Arriving by bus?
The French Dispatch was the first premiere where I just said, “Let’s do it this way.” Like so many things, the initial reaction was not tremendous enthusiasm. Not everybody is dying to go on a bus. But we did it and we liked it. What I am looking for is the thing that is going to make it the most fun, and that’s a fun way to come into this thing, together. The alternative is that you have 17 people in 17 cars, stuck in traffic that takes 45 minutes to get three blocks, so they can get out one at a time. If you see the bus, it’s discreet. It’s as discreet as a bus with a bunch of movie stars on it can be.
It never happens. If you are showing a movie there, then you are inevitably in the middle of busy time. But this year, I am going to see a restoration of Satyajit Ray film, Days and Nights in the Forest, by the Film Foundation, which I am on the board of, and it’s a movie I proposed to restore. It’s an ensemble about a group of men who go on this lost weekend together to a reserve outside Calcutta. The reason why I proposed it is because, along with being one of my favorite Satyajit Ray movies, nobody has been able to see it. I first saw it at a Hindi-language DVD shop.
What a specific store.
Why advocate for this movie?
I love his whole body of work, but this movie of 1970 I particularly love the story and characters. It’s an unusual, it’s quite novelistic.
Story for The Phoenician Scheme?
I had an idea that I brought up to Benicio at Cannes when we showed The French Dispatch. We talked about it briefly, and I didn’t really know what it was, but I had the image of Benicio playing a Euro business tycoon, like somebody in Antonioni movie. I could see him and his sunglasses. But one of the main inspirations — along with real European businessmen — but the more personal connection is my wife’s father Fouad Malouf. He’s Lebanese, and he was larger-than-life figure, and I really loved him. He was somebody wise and intelligent, but a bit scary. It was always good to walk into a restaurant with him because everything got taken care of immediately. There are many details of this character that draw on him.
Benicio was the right person to embody this character?
It wouldn’t have existed without him. I had Benicio in The French Dispatch because I’d been wanting to put him in something for years. Both Benicio and Jeffrey Wright were on this list I kept of actors I want to work with. The Benicio part was written for Benicio, and the Jeffrey part was written for Jeffrey. In this movie, it wasn’t a choice to cast Benicio. He was the only one I ever considered. There are some actors — if Anthony Quinn had been available, Orson Welles could play this part, and Toshiro Mifune, but he didn’t speak English.
Amazing casts in films?
Usually, the character comes first and the actor comes after. Not always, like when we did Asteroid City, the role that Jason Schwartzman plays was written for Jason. And in The Phoenician Scheme, the Benicio part was written for Benicio, but for [most of] the other roles, the casting came later.
When I feel certain about somebody for a part, even if it’s not fully written, I usually reach out to them immediately because I want them to block out the time. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, I try to get there early. We don’t always get who we have in mind, but in a movie like this, we got basically everybody. We had to find Mia Threapleton, who plays Liesl. We auditioned hundreds, but when she appeared, it was clear that she was going to work.
There are personal things that maybe have to do with it, but I don’t really know if they do. I have a daughter, who is 9, so there’s not much common territory. And also Fouad, I know his relationship with his daughter, my wife Juman Malouf, and that dynamic was somehow in there. Both have very little direct overlap with these characters. Usually, when you’re writing a movie, it’s sort of like the movie is this hidden thing that already exists rather than you’re trying to make it up. It’s more like you’re trying to uncover it and dig it. It’s like the movie tells you what it wants to be. I think that’s a metaphor, because you are making it up, but the experience is more like finding something that exists. It’s an odd thing, so it isn’t always possible to say, “Here’s why we did it.” Part of the answer is because that’s what it seemed to want to be.
Career retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française
The first film I made, Bottle Rocket, everything went to the studio, to their storage. And I went and I visited that storage and I saw that things either weren’t properly stored or protected, or they’d been sold. Some of them were things I’d made with my own hands. I was very offended that this was how this had been handled, and I started just archiving things myself. First, I would just take them, and later I put it in my contracts that I’m going to look after the costumes and I’m going to be the one who is responsible for them.
When we did The Life Aquatic, somebody came from the studio to Italy where we were filming to stop me. I took most of the stuff anyway, but the same thing happened — where there are objects in that movie that they took back and that were lost or sold. In doing the process of preparing this exhibition, we had to track down things that they gave away, or they sold. But the process of putting together the exhibition was fine because it wasn’t me. I kept the stuff and provided it, but other people, including a designer who’s a family friend who’s worked on other exhibitions, Abe Rogers, were really in charge.
Things that connect my movies to each other, which is whatever system I’ve developed and my own visual handwriting, the surface has become the thing people sometimes focus on. You can tell it’s me, I totally understand that. But, for me, each one is a different story, a different set of characters, and it’s whole undertaking. To me, what the movie is the new thing. I feel like so often people seem surprised that my movies are clearly mine. For me, the only thing I want is for people to look at the movie for what it is, not for what it’s like. Not for how it’s done, but what it is, in and of itself. And on that note, I would say, if you can see it twice, it’s always better.
I feel like my movies can be kind of dense, but I make a movie that’s usually not that long, that’s efficient. My whole way of making movies is about clarity and communicating quickly, and that’s what makes my movies like each other, in a way. Sometimes I feel like the best way to appreciate one of my movies is to have already seen it and to know what it’s going to be. So, anyway, if you don’t like it the first time, just try to see it again.
