The Inimitable Wes Anderson Tells It Like It Is
The Phoenician Scheme director chats about making his new movie around Benicio del Toro, and why he’s “not a meme.”
Wes Anderson is wearing the crispest all-white outfit I’d ever seen. It’s a stark white button-down and matching white slacks, with his signature long hair slicked back behind his ears, making him seem even ganglier than his naturally thin frame. He’s been drinking milk — evident only in an apology and a small stain on the table in front of me (“sorry for the spill”). That is the scene I get when I walk into the room of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York City. It feels so on brand it could be a setup. Still, it’s impossible not to be internally delighted that Wes Anderson really does dress and act like a Wes Anderson character in real life.
Anderson is keenly aware that people boil down his films to his signature style, one characterized by bright pastels, meticulous arrangements, and symmetrical compositions. He’s embraced it over the course of his 29-year career, leaning into the dollhouse aesthetic that has come to define his films like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City. But he admits that the recognition that his style has earned, and the copycats that he’s inspired, can sometimes put him “on the defensive.”
“It's almost like my handwriting, [the] visual thing,” Anderson tells Inverse. “It's the surface of the movie, but I get that it takes people about five seconds before they can say, ‘I know who directed this.’”
Wes Anderson directing Benicio del Toro on the set of The Phoenician Scheme.
But as he prepares for the release of his latest film, the Benicio del Toro-led The Phoenician Scheme — an espionage farce that follows a billionaire industrialist (del Toro) and his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) on a treacherous journey to implement his expensive, ambitious new enterprise — Anderson has made peace with his many imitators, because he knows that still, no one else is doing it like him.
“I like that people can be inspired to make their own things that way. I'm not imitating me. I am me,” Anderson says.
Ahead of the release of The Phoenician Scheme, playing in New York and LA now, Inverse spoke with Anderson about building a movie around Benicio del Toro, exploring new facets of spirituality, and what he really thinks about AI.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
“I was like, ‘There's some chemical thing happening here with Benicio.’”
The Phoenician Scheme is a movie formed around Benicio del Toro. Can you remember the moment when you were working with him for the first time during The French Dispatch that you decided to make a movie around him?
It was a bit of a thing where he was electric on the set. There were these moments on the set that were kind of spectacular, but they were better in the cutting room. And I was like, “There's some chemical thing happening here with Benicio.” He responds well to being filmed. And I just started feeling like I think we could do something where he's at the center of it. I wanted to do something like that. That only became concrete in this moment of thinking of this part and him together. And when that happened, I immediately suggested to him, "Would you like to do another thing together? Because I have something I think we could do." And he was up for it.
When did it start becoming more of a concrete story, more than just, "I want to do something with Benicio"?
What I had was a sort of image of this tycoon, this Euro, Italian, Greek, whatever type tycoon — turned out to be more Hungarian, I don't know what he is really — but I had this image. And I knew men like that. I knew some models for this. There was a moment when I had this kind of thought of this thing that had happened to my wife, where her father told her about all his businesses, and he had these shoeboxes that contained his life's work. And I thought, "I see the shape of this starting to emerge." So anyway, he had something in common with this character. He had some qualities like this character, and that was what got it moving, I guess.
After working with Benicio del Toro on The French Dispatch, Anderson knew he wanted to make his next movie centered on him.
Apart from Benicio, your two other leads are actors that you've never worked with before, Michael Cera and Mia Threapleton. As someone known for working with a certain stable of actors, what prompts you to cast someone new or bring someone new to the ensemble?
For Mia, we have a 20-year-old character, and anytime you're casting really young people, you're probably looking for somebody who's going to be a bit of a discovery one way or another. It's very likely not somebody who's done a lot of work. And I guess that my thought was there was nobody I knew who I thought that's [the] perfect person for this. So we searched. And when you search, you don't know what you'll find. You have no idea what you're going find. And she came out of just, "Let's see everybody."
Michael, on the other hand, I had met long before and I've loved him in so many things and had sort of just been waiting for the moment when we might have something together. And this part, who fits this, who could bring this to life? I like to have a lot of the same people. I like to have actors who I love, who I've worked with before. I think that's a positive thing in a lot of ways. But I like to have new people. I want a new mixture. I probably err on the side of too many people who I've worked with before, because then we say, "Well, surprise us with someone new." But I like to reunite people on these movies. But the new ones are a special thing.
“I like to reunite people on these movies. But the new ones are a special thing.”
And Michael Cera especially, I just really loved him in this movie, and I feel like he's particularly attuned to your style as well.
He's great.
He's got this really fun alchemy to him.
He was in the middle of a process when he arrived. He'd already kind of figured out a lot of it. And so for me it was just seeing where he's going. He's saying, "What do you think of this? What do you think of this?" It doesn't take much from me. I'm just essentially an audience member and seeing him do this and maybe I do a bit of choosing. "I like this more than that." But that's really the extent of it. It's his creation.
Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, and Mia Threapleton in The Phoenician Scheme.
This is also your first movie in a while to follow a smaller group of characters versus a massive ensemble like you've had with Asteroid City or The French Dispatch. It's namely about Zsa-Zsa and his daughter Liesl and that father-daughter dynamic. What made you focus on that narrative?
Well, I think it's really just each movie kind of tells you what it wants to be. This one began really with one guy. It was Benicio. And then these two characters sort of joined the company just in our imaginations, but there was never a moment when it was a big ensemble. It was always going to be these three. That was what we had. We started thinking there's a series of visits that they're going to have. Someone will enter, but then they'll exit. But it was never like Asteroid City, they're all trapped together and it's this whole kind of company of people. This one was different.
Both Asteroid City and The Phoenician Scheme deal with themes of death and mortality, but The Phoenician Scheme delves a little bit more into spirituality and religion. I'd like to ask about biblical visions that Zsa-Zsa experiences during his near-death experiences. Can you talk about those sequences, where they came from and what their intent is?
There's one version of a movie scene where you say the intention is to scare you, or the intention is for this to be funny. And then there's another kind of movie scene, or a type of movie even, where you say we're just going to create an experience and ... everybody's going to have their own response to it and it's not as clear. The reaction is not really what it's about. It's more about creating an experience. And I feel that a bit about these sort of visions that he has.
One of the “biblical” visions that Zsa Zsa experiences after his latest brush with mortality.
He's confronting his death again and again and again in the story. And the big changes in his perspective, I think, are happening in those scenes. He's coming back from these and he's shifting his priorities. He's kind of moving away from what he thinks are his goals in life and finding something else that's smaller and that's more really about his daughter and the biblical aspect of it. Well, there's a degree to which it is just sort of a motif, because I think what's happening is he's having these neurological events and they involve something spiritual, but whatever spiritual is, I don't know what ... Is it supernatural? Or is it otherworldly? Or is it simply what's happening in his brain, and his way of processing these vast questions, this vast uncertainty, the hugeness of this universe that he may be about to disappear from? And what does that mean to him? And what is the point of all the rest of these things that he's focusing on if that's the way it is? It's certainly a biblical imagery, but I don't know exactly how I feel about what exactly it is in terms of religion because it's all coming from him.
“I am not a meme. I am myself. I'm the actual me. I'm not an AI.”
At this point in your career, your name has become so synonymous with this particular directorial style that you have. What do you think it is about your style that makes it so often imitated, either by social media influencers or by AI?
What people think of as my style is really my methods of, I think, how I can communicate information quickly. My movies are an hour and 40 minutes, an hour and 45 minutes. I don't make a two-and-a-half-hour movie, but I tend to have a lot of information. Sometimes quite convoluted, complicated thing, and I want to do it quickly and you've got to make it clear enough. So a lot of my things are about how to communicate information very quickly and clearly. But then there's also things that are just my personality ... some visual thing.
Wes Anderson on the set of The Phoenician Scheme.
When I'm making a movie what I'm focusing on is the story, the characters, what's different about that movie. But what ties them together is something to do with me, and it's almost like my handwriting, [the] visual thing. It's the surface of the movie, but I get that it takes people about five seconds before they can say, "I know who directed this." I don't choose that so much as that's just what it's like when I do it. And I like that people can be inspired to make their own things that way. I'm not imitating me. I am me. So sometimes I feel a bit like I get put on the defensive because I am not a meme. I am myself. I'm the actual me. I'm not an AI.
