CANNES – For someone who is notoriously media-shy, Wes Anderson was in a delightful mood at the press conference for his new film, “Asteroid City.” And considering the star power alongside him on the dias, he dominated the conversation. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise considering the power of his cinematic brand.
Releasing in theaters next month, the 1955-set drama centers on a bunch of strangers who, along with their teenage children, are quarantined in a remote desert town after an extraterrestrial visit. The alien is really only a MacGuffin for the rest of the story, but it spurred an obvious question: Does Anderson believe in aliens?
“Well, y’know, I wouldn’t really rely on my opinions about that,” Anderson says. “The research that went into this extra terrestrial as extensive as it was doesn’t compare to anything you would find in academia. I have read that Stephen Hawking insists that it’s numerically improbable that there would not be extraterrestrial life. And he certainly knew more than I do on numbers.”
And then Anderson zings, “But, I don’t really.”
Cue a round of laughter from the assembled world press. Again, as we said, Anderson was feeling it.
The movie isn’t just about what’s going on in Asteroid City, per se. It’s somewhat confusing and hidden in the movie’s trailer, but the entire endeavor is actually a television show chronicling the play Asteroid City. It makes sense in context (maybe). The structure of the movie means there is a whole separate Anderson “world” (in black and white, no less) created for the film. For Scarlett Johansson, who previously worked with Anderson on the stop-motion animated “Isle of Dogs,” it was an “intense” experience.
“This was my only experience as a live actor and not a dog,” Johansson jokes. “They very much create the whole environment and it’s a physical, tangible, useable space. In a way, it’s kind of more like doing theater. You have the whole. It’s not this familiar process of being on a sound stage and going back to your trailer and all this downtime. Y’know, all that stuff that eats up the momentum which is part of the process, there’s not much you can do about it. Somehow, Wes has avoided that. It feels very vibrant and very much like you are working in the theater. Very fulfilling and exciting.”
Bryan Cranston, who also worked on “Isle of Dogs,” calls “Asteroid City” a love letter from Anderson for performance art. With its play within a play structure, it also had many in the room wondering why Anderson hasn’t put on a theatrical production himself. He responded, “I think telling stories is so automatic for us and putting on a play, and I don’t put a play on a real stage, it’s always something [where] the excitement of it, of being backstage and having an audience out there waiting to see something you created…I’ve never actually done a play because I am afraid, I mean, you have to book the theater before you have started rehearsing. It’s going to open on a certain day whether you like it or not. That concerns me. I like to be able to go back to the cutting room for a little while and play with it for a little bit. And make sure we’ve got it all just right. That doesn’t exist.”
One thing Anderson didn’t seem to love was his actors discussing the now infamous animatics he creates for each of his films. The director voices every character and often appears in these “cartoons” which Jeffrey Wright refers to as a “blueprint” for everyone involved in the production.
“Maybe I’m overstepping in terms of my insight, but I think there is a specificity obviously to Wes’ frame and that can’t be improvised on set,” Wright says. “You just can’t just show up and say, ‘Maybe if we…’ It has to be a schematic that exists prior to that. I think the cartoons, as Wes refers to them, serve as that. It really is the blueprint and scaffolding that allows him to facilitate his vision on set.”
Wright continues, “I mean everything he does is super interesting. It creates, for example, the way we all gather together. It creates community. All these things, but everything has a purpose relative to the work. I think all else of what he achieves through this process is because we work in one of the most inefficient spaces that exist, but what he creates is efficiency and streamlines it in a way that I love because he also serves great meals at the end of the day. And you just want to get back to the wine.”
Again, more laughter from the press.
And while this may be Anderson’s 11th film, he’s still learning about himself and his art with each new production.
“The thing that I didn’t realize so much until we were making the movie is how much the movie just comes out of me liking being around actors,” Anderson says. “Every single character in this movie s an actor, and I think most of them are an actor playing an actor playing a role. If you really think about it. Which was why last night, watching the movie with our cast was such a good experience for me. I don’t usually like to watch one of my movies, but to watch it with the cast with this story, I felt like, ‘Hmm, I understand why we do this.”
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