‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Is Here, With Wes Anderson!

28:29It's probable the Knicks have been eliminated. By the time. And the Pacers are in the finals. If that's not the case, let this stand as a monument to greatness. Forevermore, this conversation. So we see the encounter between these two guys. That quickly then leads to, they don't quite get the financial compensation that they need. They get some of it. They get some of it. They get 15%. So that's another helpful signpost, right? It's some easy math also. You just got to get to 100. and they're just counting the percentages of how much they get to cover the gap. I still don't really understand what the gap is, but I guess it's how much they - I'll tell you what, I don't either.

29:06Okay, all right. Even though I've seen it twice. I think it's something about how the price of the rivets went up. And so then everything's going to cost more. But Borda doesn't want to put in more money, so he needs the other people too. Yeah, that's related to the kind of resolution of the movie, which I find to be, which is a little bit silly. But anyway, eventually they go to visit Marseille Bob, played by Matthew Almaric and then we meet Richard Ayoade's kind of revolutionary character who comes into the movie and we go on and on and eventually we get to Jeffrey Wright's character who's another industrialist who's building a great ship and a great port and eventually we get to Cousin Hilda Scarlett Johansson's character she is a second cousin of Zsa Zsa and maybe a prospective wife in an effort to draw out more funds but also maybe not and maybe there is some sort of romantic connections sort of not Scarlett Johansson you know you're always kind of a coin flip on Scar Jo what did you think about her in this she just wasn't in it very much I didn't really know what was going on with Hilda and her utopia which just seemed like a kibbutz or something yes I think that's right but we didn't spend a lot of time there and it didn't seem to materially affect how anyone turned out that ultimately leads to the big showdown yeah right sure well I'm forgetting the quicksand I mean there's a quicksand in this movie there's another plane crash there's a jungle adventure so many things happen which is why I think this overload of story is such a fascinating choice and eventually there's a big showdown with the long threatened brother Newbar who is Benicio del Toro's half brother portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch he may also be materially involved in the life and death of Liesel and Liesel's mother and there's a big showdown at the end of the movie Benedict Cumberbatch maybe only should be in Wes Anderson movies is one of my takes he's so great great in the final five minutes of this movie very very good I'm always a little bit I'm nervous about the roses you know they released that poster or something and I was like oh okay this is you guys thought you had something different does the War of the Roses have a big place in your heart not a big place but it's a very useful reference point in films and in life.

31:26And I enjoyed doing the rewatchables with Bill and Mallory on that. Divorced kids time. Anyway, that's Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman, two actors I like and circumstances I'm not sure about. And this is a circumstance I'm sure about. So I agree with you. He's wonderful. And then there's a dramatic conclusion to this movie as there are for all of them. And yeah, the first time I watched it, like I said, I had a little bit of a, I didn't have a hard time following the story, but I felt like I was only following the story. I wasn't thinking about the movie as much and kind of what it means and what it represents and kind of like vaguely subterranean ways he tries to throw ideas into it.

32:03I also felt like, I don't know how much you've been reading about the movie since you saw it last night, but I feel like one, he's been just doing more press and been talking about it more and because there's so many more themes, he's been sort of forced to answer questions about some of these things and he's usually a little bit circumspect about the intention of the movie. And while he's not locating it specifically, he cast his daughter in this movie. She has a small role in the movie. You know, the idea of the father-daughter relationship being so important, but then also wending that in with the way the power operates in the 21st century.

32:35Right. It's just an interesting stew, I would say, for him. Yes. All of the Bible stuff stuck out to me. And they say like biblical multiple times. Like they actually use that word as kind of like a chorus to draw your attention to those scenes and to some of what it's trying to explore, I think. And I think because of where, you know, the story is located, like the Phoenician scene, like being in the Middle East, being in that part of the world where a lot of those stories are born is also a factor there too. And sort of like locating, you know, the fact that Zsa Zsa is kind of obsessed with history and ancient civilizations and like all of the erotic texts that he is reading related to those times.

33:17and constantly thinking about like patrons and great businessmen, the people who sought power and gained power across the arc of history. He lives in like a Venetian palazzo in the UK. Yes. Yeah. Which had been converted and was built in 1545. You know, most of the music in the film, all of the Stravinsky music and the paintings are all 17th century paintings. You know, it's just a film that's like firmly rooted in real histories that is unmistakable. And I was like... I can barely like get two dumb pod episodes out a week. And this is now four movies in five years. And the movies are packed. Yeah.

33:57They're dense. And I know he's got his team and he's, you know, Adam Stockhausen, the production designers on all of these movies. This one is actually quite interesting because Bruno Delbanel is the cinematographer and it's his first time working on a West movie. I think it's the first West movie that Robert Yeoman didn't shoot. So Robert Yeoman is going to be 75 years old. He's been working on these movies forever. I think maybe he was just on another movie or something. But I didn't sense like a dramatic visual shift. No, there were a few shots that I thought were interesting that were just kind of not the one person center in the frame.

34:34And some use of the horizons in like different ways that were new and interesting. Yeah, yeah. You're right. I think that like a little bit less focus on the into into camera shot. There's plenty of it. But, you know, at this point in West, when you see a different composition, you're like, oh, I've never seen you do that before. Oh, you've, you know, tilted it like this. Yeah, I had the same experience. I asked him about that, too. I was kind of like, I feel like you were still trying to like experiment a little bit. Like the aspect ratio is changing a couple of times and it looks a little bit different than what you had done before.

35:08and I think also the fact that he's able to build all of this plot around story but not lose sight of the relationships is just it's just very rare there's just not a lot of filmmakers I think that are capable of consistently achieving that I don't know that this isn't the best Wes Anderson movie I think most people will regard this as kind of like mid-west or minor Wes but I would encourage everyone if they're a fan of his films just go back a second time the way that I did, the way I imagine you will, and keep discovering. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is all about choices.

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36:15Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. What I liked about this is that it is so dense, not just in terms of theme and story, but you know, just stuff references the West of it all. But there is a simplicity to it that I don't really think you got in Asteroid City because that has like eight different main characters. And this is the story of two people. So I think in some ways you can wrap your arms around it a bit more the first time and then you can go back and go into it. I don't know if the fact that it's like about two people's issues as opposed to 15 makes it like minor or whatever.

36:57I did this is a comedy and in as much as it is about everything that we just said in a way that Asteroid City is like one of the most deeply I guess it's not a tragedy but it's it's and it is can be funny but it is about matters of the heart in like a very very mournful film exactly yeah and French Dispatch is sort of like an intellectual exercise so I I put it more in the French Dispatch category in terms of like the Anderson canon. But I do think it's a neat trilogy that he has going on that I think is interesting. And it's fun to watch. Like this is an enjoyable movie. Yeah, I agree with you.

37:42I think so. He's apparently already at work on a new film that he's writing with Richard Aiawati and I think Roman Coppola. And he's got this unique thing where he's not the Russo brothers in so far as like that communicates like 300 million dollar budgets but he just sort of knows how to make these movies he has a kind of assembly line quality it's most of the same artisans and crafts people who work across all the same movies he has this production style where they write the movie he talks to the storyboard artist and then they start building the animatics so they know what the movie is going to look like and the way that it's going to like you know play out once they shoot it and so as long as he maintains that kernel of inspiration on every project like he could just do this for 30 more years you know like it like the person that he reminds me of is woody allen you know where woody allen every year and a half was like here's another thing it's kind of like the last thing but if it's a good version of it it's going to be deep and interesting right and obviously woody allen definitely a major influence on west in a variety of ways but maybe not as much visually and then the other thing too is like the sort of like Bergman and Fellini types that Wes has like celebrated the European masters over the years where they both made like 25 35 40 movies right and you're watching them and you know that it's like the same series of kind of setups and obsessions and they have this troop of actors that return over and over again but each one has like just tilted a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right in terms of what it's most interested in or what has happened in the artist's life that they're then filtering into the film these these kinds of careers are super rare did you read this movie at all as a movie about filmmaking did it a did it a well tell me what you mean no well it's about a guy um who has a impossible task and he's got to wrangle money and resources from a lot of different people who, and maybe he is not the most trustworthy, but neither are they.

39:46And then there is like a faceless set of bureaucrats who send a spy, aka producer, to watch over him. And then all he really needs is his little troop, his family, and then the nine boys, you know, just like, which, and then there's that line about - The grips and the electricians, yeah. Yeah, there's the line about why does he keep adopting? And it's like, I play the numbers, you know, one of them has to be on it, If you think about it in terms of filmmaking, it's very funny. I don't know. I mean, it was right there. I think it's a good reading. It doesn't really seem like filmmaking is that complicated to Wes Anderson.

40:20And it does also seem like he has figured out a series of partners and financing and everything. He can just kind of do what he wants. But, you know, like the unveiling of the model of the Phoenician scheme just being this like incredibly, like intricately designed thing on top of thing on top of thing. Look at my masterpiece. I was like, oh, OK. The actual representation of the Phoenician scheme at the end. Yes, there is a kind of self-knowledge in the way. It doesn't not look like the poster for Grand Poudapos Hotel or any other thing. Completely true. And I think he's just self-referential and self-aware, which is like a very powerful skill to have as a filmmaker.

41:02And I don't think it's by any means like the only text. But I just I was kind of like, oh, I wonder if you thought about this because I'm thinking about it. I'll bet he did, but not in a purposeful way. It was sort of like I am just pouring myself into something, which I believe in. You know, you mentioned like the financiers. He's in this unique position where he's got Stephen Rails, this producer and billionaire who's been backing all of his films for the last few years. and he's got this deal with Focus so Focus releases most of the movies and this dovetails neatly with our conversation because Stephen Rails recently became the 20 % owner of the Indiana Pacers.

41:34So this is a man who produces all the Wes Anderson movies which we cherish. He's also the owner of the Criterion Collection and Janice Films. So are you writing to him about your complaints about the Wes Anderson Collection? I don't have any, well I'll share my concerns. They're not complaints because I haven't even seen it yet but to Mr. Rails I say I wish you nothing but no success in the playoffs. Right. But I hope that you continue to support cinema in the profound way that you have forevermore because like this is one of those people who's like really kind of holding stuff up with his wealth which is also kind of a theme of the movie that artists need benefactors and so Criterion is releasing a 10 film collection from Wes Anderson in 4K for the first time these films and I think it goes all the way up to the French dispatch, right?

42:26Yes. So, you know, I'm going to fucking buy it, right? Like I'm going to buy it. Right. I want to have it on my shelf. How many of these films do you individually have on Blu-ray? All of them. I mean, no, on 4K. None of them because none of them are available. They've never been on 4K. Okay, so you have all of them on Blu-ray. Yes. I think maybe one or two of them in the criterion question. What happens to the Blu-rays when you get the 4Ks? It's a wonderful question. They go in a cabinet. Okay. And then I think about whether or not I should like either give them to someone or sell them. Okay. Because I don't really need them anymore.

42:55Okay. But I don't actually do anything about it. What's the Blu-ray resale market like? Oh, it's robust. It's tens of thousands of dollars per disc. No, no. There's not like an app? Like, is there a Poshmark? There are local video stores that you can sell stuff to. Okay, but there's no like the real real but for Blu-rays. No, but perhaps that can be the business for me to get me out of this fucking podcasting game. what is it? Is it Grail? It's like, just how can I get? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, there are many different sites. I started selling things on Poshmark this week, so I'll keep you updated.

43:31My wife sells Alice's old clothing on Poshmark. So, yeah, I could do that for, you know, old DVD copies of Danny Boyle movies that are just sitting in my house, rotting away. What will happen to those 10? I don't know. My thing with this set, which as I said, I will just like, I will spend$400 on it like a schmuck, is, first of all, Asteroid City is not even in it. Right. Which, the one thing, when I walked out of Phoenician Scheme, which is a movie I really enjoyed and wholeheartedly endorsed, I once again was like, wow, we did Asteroid City dirty. Like, you know, because it is every, it is on the same level as Asteroid City in terms of like the tools that he's using and the way he's telling the story.

44:17But we were both so moved by it and then like never talked about it. I mean, we did. We did one episode. And then we didn't put it on our top 10 lists. And we just kind of let it go by. I did. So I was thinking about this. Well, not in your top five. It was not in my top five. Correct. Which is all we're allowed in the bounds of this podcast, which is my reference. Not whatever's going on in Split Infinitives. Our opinions are... Thank you for acknowledging Split Infinitives, which we no longer publish to that platform.

44:462023. Yeah. I think we thought of as a good year, maybe not a truly great year. Right. But it was the Barbenheimer year in Killers of the Flower Moon, right? Oh, that was a really very good, that was a good year. So now I look at my top, I'll read you my top 10 where I left it in December of 2023. Number 10 was Anatomy of a Fall. Number nine was John Wick Chapter 4. Number eight was Asteroid City. Seven was The Killer. Six was Zone of Interest. Oh, wow. Five was The Taste of Things. Four was May, December. Three was Oppenheimer. Two was Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse and one was Killers of the Flower Moon.

45:19That's a fucking awesome top 10. That is. So it was just, it was a great year. I think it kind of got lost in the Barbenheimer shuffle a little bit. Yeah. And, you know, there's also tons of other stuff that we were, you know, past lives and had to blow up a pipeline. Like that was a good year showing up. I'm trying to remember my list showing up as a top five. Iron Claw, you know, tons of good stuff that year. But I think Asteroid City was like my number six. Yeah. I'm like, that's dumb, you know? Yeah, I think it's, it's so funny that he won this Academy Award for these shorts that he made. Even when we talked, he brought it up when we were talking and he was like, I don't even know what those were.

45:52It wasn't a film. It wasn't a, I don't know, he like is reluctant to define it. And it just was like your most classic makeup Oscar ever. It was like, Wes has got, depending on your mileage may vary, but at least three all-time classics. Maybe for me, like seven. Yes. So to award, you know, to give him a big prize for the shorts, which I thought the shorts were cool and I liked them, but they don't hold a candle to something like Asteroid City. It's a major achievement. And even Phoenician Scheme, which I just think is just a really good movie. So yeah, I'll buy that stupid box set. Of course I'll buy it.

46:29And then when they put Asteroid City in 4K, I'm going to buy that. I love Wes. So they don't, when they make a set, they don't leave room for extra things. That's a good idea. That's my thing is that Wes is in the middle of his career. I honestly, as you know, I think plastic's ugly. This is an incumbent plastic. Oh, steel case? It comes in a bound. It's almost like a book collection. Oh, that's cool. But how are you going to fit it on your shelf? We'll make it work. Okay. You haven't seen it? I mean, let's take a look at it. Okay. This is a physical object that you can appreciate, I think. Okay.

47:03I'm sure that I can. I love Wes Anderson, and I don't think he would be associated with ugly things. My point is just they really haven't. Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah, that looks nice. What do you think of that? Oh, and then they look like little books. They look like books. Yeah. Okay. That's nice. Okay. Great. There's still like a uniformity to it that stresses me out. Okay. You know? Sure. But I think that looks nice. I mean, it's criterion. Like nobody does. They haven't really, really juiced you guys marketing-wise yet. And like the time, do you know that they're getting. What do you mean juiced us marketing-wise?

47:33Like that they aren't already selling sets with like extra room for you to add it in. And you know, that there isn't a Poshmark for Blu-rays. Sounds like you should apply. for a position at the Criterion Collection. You have a lot of strong ideas. You don't know what's coming for you. The thing that my sickness is looking at my shelf, like looking at the Steven Soderbergh section of my shelf, right? I own every edition of a Soderbergh movie that exists. Right, but there are some that don't. So there's the stuff that doesn't exist, which is painful and may never exist, the HBO Max stuff that he's made in the last few years.

48:08But then four years ago, he was like, yeah, we're working on a set and it's going to be like, it's going to be Kafka and Schizopolis and the Limey and all my early stuff that isn't available like in 4K Blu-ray. And I was like, fucking A, Steven. That's the best thing I've ever heard. It's not here. I don't have it. He's busy making two films a year and coming on your podcast. He's great. And reading every novel published by a female author in the last 50 years. Okay? He has the, I'm watching tennis. I'm not, I'm behind on the French Open. How below deck is it? I don't know, but he does. Okay? I know.

48:46It's just a pain for me. And it was a pain for me not being able to have these movies in 4K. But now if I want to get them in 4K, I got to buy this box. But then this box is a finite lifespan. And then 20 years from now, they're going to be like, just kidding. It's the real Wes Anderson archive with all the movies. And then I'm going to be dying. And I'm going to have to think about what I'm giving to Alice. Will it be money or will it be the thing that I bought that's in plastic? These are the things that keep me up at night. This is the life of the mind. What is the shelf value of these things?

49:11What do you mean the shelf value? Well, like the long term. Do they appreciate or is it like a car? I mean, they're mass produced objects. They probably don't appreciate, right? I don't know, but if you're building a collection. I think my archive could ultimately have value. Yeah, okay. Because it's yours or just because you've amassed? I'm not in a position to answer that question. I'll let the public decide. Who will get the rights to your archive? Not you.

49:42I don't know. We're still working on that. I mean, this is the kind of thing that Zsa Zsa Korda is thinking about, you know? Who deserves to have access to the incredible wealth that I've accumulated over the years? And by wealth, I mean plastic. Anyway, anything else you want to say about this film or Wes or collecting? Oh, oh, there is, to this point, there is a tidbit in the Wes conversation that is the most like me grinning so fucking hard. About his collection? Sort of. You'll know exactly what it is when you hear it. So I would encourage people to wait for that. I did not remark upon it when he said it, but inside I was like, God damn it, yes, yes.

50:24I know Jack knows what I'm referring to. Okay, anything else? No, let's let Wes Anderson speak. Let's go to my conversation with Wes Anderson.

50:36It is a delight to be joined by the great Wes Anderson here on the show. Wes, I thought we could start with this. I found the choice to center a father-daughter relationship to be fascinating in this movie and a little bit unusual. I was wondering why that was right for the Phoenician scheme. Yeah, well, thanks, Sean. Happy to be here. And the yes, you know, with this story, the Phoenician scheme, it started as more as a story focused on this ruthless businessman, played by Benicio del Toro. And really our image, me and Roman Coppola, my co-writer of what this movie was going to be about, was this this unkillable, ruthless man on this business mission.

51:27and it sort of took us in another direction as we got into it. And, you know, it went from being a story focused on this guy appointing his daughter, his successor, and teaching her how to kind of fight on his behalf, and instead became about them coming together. And it became, you know, that became really what the whole movie's about. But that sort of surprised us. That happened sort of whatever organically means. It felt like it happened organically as we were writing the thing. Has having a family yourself changed the way you think about writing character? Well, it probably is the reason why it went this way.

52:14I think I have a daughter. She's nine. And Benicio has a daughter. A few years older. Roman Coppola has a daughter in between those two ages. So I think, you know, without these daughters, I don't think the movie would be the story we ended up telling. I also have a daughter, so I was touched, I think, in some way by that. How old is your daughter? She's going to be four shortly. You're going to be four, wow. Yeah. On the sort of flip side of that concept, I'm interested in the notion of violence in your movies. This might be the most violence that we've ever had. And it's playful and it's inventive and fun, but there are bombs and dynamite and guns.

52:58And can you talk about what role that played in working on this story? Yes. I think from the, for me, the movie really be, the movie begins for me with an image of this character. And the image of the character is he's got blood all, you know, he's being battered. He's surrounded by violence and he causes violence. And that was just a part of the mayhem of this guy. But I will say when we started to get into the specifics of the violence, there's some extreme violence. I mean, you know, there's like, you know, eviscerated people and things. But somehow, for whatever reason, right at the beginning of it, I had this feeling like the violence wanted to be, you know, as odd as this may sound.

53:49somehow I thought there needed to be some sort of delight to the violence. It shouldn't be any less horrible, but that somehow it should be shocking and maybe be sort of making you laugh a bit. And that there should be some device or idea behind every awful thing that happens in this movie. And just in the way we tell it, you know, in the way we get across that next little bit of the story. So it set a tone for it, I guess. Yeah, and it happens very early on in the film when you realize we're in a slightly different kind of Wes Anderson film, I think. Yes, that's probably true. It doesn't take long.

54:32Even more so, the violence is serving a story about corporately financed power games on a global stage. I mean, this is a very wide-ranging, globetrotting kind of a story. And even though it's a period piece, did you find that the world's contemporary politics or the kind of mania of the corporate power influencing how you and Roman were writing the story? You know, when you're making up a story, you know, when you're not adapting something, when you're just inventing a story from scratch, you have your ideas of your research and your inspirations that you're conscious of. and then you have your imagination and that you're not really in control of so much that's sort of where there's work happening in parts of your brain that uh that are hidden from you a bit and the way though the work of the that your brain is doing is revealed to you is when you say is when you say i have an idea um and so all that to say the world is always kind of going into it I mean, it finds its way into it.

55:44And as much as we were writing about tycoons of the middle of the 20th century, we were also inspired by people we know right now. And I think people who we all know from the front page of the newspaper. And it all kind of mixes together. I had a question about the art of the title sequence. I love the one in this film. I think it's mesmerizing. But what function do you see it serving? I think in the case of this, from the beginning, I thought maybe we want to see this guy. You know, there's something about this character who's, he's being harmed. You know, people are trying to hurt him and they do hurt him.

56:31And we have this sequence where he's being given medicine. He's being stitched up. He's got bandages all over him. He's soaking in a tub. But he's still reading. He's smoking a cigar. He opens a bottle of wine. And this is a guy who's just, he's not good for the world, but he is spectacularly resilient. And there was a musical aspect of this. There's, you know, he's gathering information. I mean, he is always reading this character. And he's gathering information like it's ammunition for him. And he wants to know about music and he wants to know about art. And he's gathering it. And, you know, we have this Stravinsky music that is a part of the story.

57:19And I think to me that's modernist music that he feels is valuable to him and something he wants to know about. for whatever reason. It's something I've seen in men of this, men like this. But that music itself has a haunting, strange, defiant, particular quality. This piece that we play from this ballet, this Stravinsky ballet, to me, says things about the character that words can't. And we made a sort of dance out. I mean, it is from a ballet and we made a sequence as sort of a dance and it's a dance about just him and he's surrounded by people tending to him and there's all this uh activity but he's this sort of vortex i think so that's sort of the various things that were in my mind i guess that's great it communicates so much about him without any dialogue whatsoever oh good good um it seems as though you're in a period of rapid creative outburst this is i noted four films in five years and prior to that it was three films across 12 years.

58:24So what, what, what accounts for the burst for you? Well, I don't know. You know, one thing is I have a lot of consistency in my group of collaborators and I have, um, a producer. I mean, I have my team of producers with Jeremy Dawson and John Pete, who've worked with me for years, but I have Steven Rails, who is our sort of supervising producer of our projects. And having that relationship has been tremendously helpful for me in so many ways. And his advice is so helpful. But it means when I start a movie, we can go right to it. We work very closely together. And we have a whole group of people behind the camera who we can start with when we like.

59:12We can start prepping a movie. Like, for instance, when I'm writing a script now, if I have 10 pages of the script, I start doing this. I have, you know, Jay Clark in England who starts drawing the storyboards. And I have Edward Bursch in Pennsylvania who starts editing the storyboards together. And I start showing that material to Adam Stockhausen, our production designer. And he starts to see, okay, here's what we need to be thinking about in terms of what's going to go in front of the camera. So everything happens at once. And it's a little bit more like we have our own tiny, small-scale studio system, we can work efficiently this way, and we get more done.

59:53Do you find that you have boundless ideas? Because a lot of times with great filmmakers, it has to be the right thing. And so this outburst that I think is so exciting that you're going through right now, it seems like you just are manifesting a whole new world very quickly. Does it feel that way? Well, I think for me, I've never had a thing like I've got eight scripts in a drawer somewhere or something. I don't have that. I mean, the first few movies I made, I did have the first four movies I made. By the time we started the first one, I had, you know, the general idea of four movies. And we made those four movies.

1:00:32But now, I mean, I do one at a time. You know, I mean, I did have these Roald Dahl ones that we did for Netflix that are a peculiar kind of thing. They're not, I don't know if they're, I wouldn't call them movies. Anyway, they're whatever they are. They're some sort of concoction. And those I had, you know, it's Roald Dahl's words that he essentially wrote the scripts. But mostly, you know, I mean, like right now, for instance, I have an idea of a thing. I'm working with Richard Ayoade and Roman Coppola, and we are starting this thing brewing, and we have things, we take it, And, you know, will it take us three months?

1:01:13Will it take us six months? Will it take us a year? I have no idea. But, you know, but it's brewing. And I figure when we're by the time we finish the script, we'll probably be situated to make the movie. You know, I don't think we're going to have to finish the script and say, now, where do we go? Well, we're going to when we finish the script, I think I'll already have a plan for how to go about making the movie. And that helps to helps to make it all happen quicker. That's great. Right. And I hope it continues apace. Speaking of those early films, I went back and looked at a couple and you sense this real kind of youthful frustration and even kind of rage in some of those stories.

1:01:53And I look at the more recent films and I sense like a wistfulness and maybe some regret. And I don't know how much consciousness you have of kind of blending in some of those feelings and how they reflect where you're at in your life. Or if it's just sort of, I've come up an idea and I'm writing a character and that character comes from a very pure place. I mean, I feel like when you're writing something new, you know, you're not adapting something, you're improvising, you know, you're either improvising with a pen or pencil, or if you're working with collaborators like I often do or always do, sometimes you're playing the scenes for each other and it is like, it's an improvisation.

1:02:33And the improvisation, you don't know where it's coming from. You know, it, it comes out of you. Um, but once it starts to go onto the page, then you can say, you know, I see what we're, I, I, I, I see the thing that's starting to take shape and I can, and then you can, you know, follow it more. And often I feel like it's, uh, we didn't set out to make a movie about a father and a daughter. We set out to make a movie about a businessman. But it just took over. I'm not sure I totally answered the question. No, no. I'm always curious how much intentionality goes into some of those feelings and how much it just kind of naturally occurs.

1:03:18At this stage of your career, how much do you feel that you're experimenting? I wasn't sure if I noticed something in the aspect ratio of this movie that looked a little bit different, and I was trying to figure out if that was the case. Do you find that you're still kind of trying to try smaller new things as you're going through each production what i want to do is make it fun to make the movie and and it's not fun uh to you know what i the fun thing to do is to is to find surprises to look for surprises you know to create situations where there are surprises my my way of making a movie is very planned and we have uh it's you know we build the sets to the shots.

1:03:57And so I kind of create a situation where we know what we're going to do on the day. And, but in that context, the excitement to me is when something, you know, we try to make a situation where the thing is going to work and I feel like I can reliably deliver a thing that's going to work. But then I look for whatever's unexpected and, and the detours that are going to be the surprise. And always I'm looking for what's another way to tell this part of the story that we haven't done before. Was there a particular version of that in this movie that you can think of? We mentioned the violence of it, and the way we articulate the violence in me was something different.

1:04:44There's a fight sequence at the end of the movie with Benicio del Toro and Benedict Cumberbatch. and to me that I had an approach to the way that we were we staged that scene that maybe was different from what I even saw in the script it became something like um magic tricks or something like that I don't know I mean we wanted to communicate the emotion of this conflict but I was sort of saying there's a is there a certain voice to how we go about it that's going to be a surprise. I'm curious if you think much about the lifespan of your films because they're often issued in these beautiful physical editions and you've got coffee table book companions and they're reviewed and they continue to exist.

1:05:31But I feel like your movies are under a constant re-evaluation. Like for me personally, I'm constantly re-evaluating Darjeeling Limited, thinking about how I responded to it, maybe some of the things I liked or didn't understand. And then as I get older, do you pay attention to the fact that your movies have this a continuing lifespan unlike other films? Well, you know, I like to hear that. And I think for whatever reason, I did always think of my movies as an ongoing, you know, kind of, I don't know what you would say, like an ongoing sort of project. I mean, they're individual stories, but even after I made three movies, I thought these should be able to sit on a shelf together and be connected somehow.

1:06:22And I, and I, and I feel like, you know, that's, that's not necessarily not, I mean, I think it would be just as reasonable for somebody to say, no, my movies are in different styles, different things. They're there. They have nothing to do there. The only connection is me. I don't think the only connection is me. There are, there's, there are too many connections between them, but, um, You know, like we have a new thing. This Criterion Collection is doing a box set of the first 10 films I made. And in the process of preparing this, working with them, I know them for years and years, and we've done all these things together.

1:06:58But in putting them together, I do feel like I can, what I see is, I mean, this is a very narcissistic way to look at it, but I can see the films and say, oh, I'm so different over the course of these. I can see my life, you know, playing out in these films. And I will say, when we talk about when was it we met so-and-so, it was between Fantastic Mr. Fox and Moonrise Kingdom. and remember we were here. The movies are how I can tell the passage of time in my life. You know, I have the birth of my daughter. I have, you know, when I met my wife, and I have the movies. Wes, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen.

1:07:43You are a tremendous advocate for film history. Is there anything that you've seen lately that you've dug? You know, it's funny. I'm here in a hotel in New York, but I often travel with a blu-ray player um and um so I so you know I bring I plug it in and you know I sometimes you have to do it you kind of hack the tv a bit to be able to uh to get it to work but um what I had uh what I brought with me you know little stack of movies some uh some Westerns, Anthony Mann, Westerns. But the one that I put in the machine, it was a movie I've seen many times, but love. That's St. Jack. Do you know St.

1:08:29Jack? I do. I love St. Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich. And, you know, Noah Baumbach was with me last night. We had our premiere here in New York. And Noah and I used to see Peter. We saw a lot of Peter for a long time. And that's one of my favorite of Peter's movies, maybe sort of less than more known now than it used to be. But it's such a good one. Peter loved it too, right? I feel like he thought it was a bit overlooked. He did. Yeah, he knew. He knew it was a good one. And it's the thing where he made something very good and he was like, what happened? The audience failed him. The audience failed him with that one.

1:09:13But that movie has aspects of it It feels like it could have been Humphrey Bogart playing that part as much as well as Ben Gazzara. And Ben Gazzara is great. It's one of, you know, it's one of his best performances. It's a wonderful recommendation. Wes Anderson, thank you for the time and for all the great films. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Sean. Thanks so much. So nice to talk with you.

1:09:39Okay, thank you to Wes Anderson. That was fun. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. We'll be back next week to break down full title from the world of colon. No, from the world of John Wick colon ballerina. You excited about this? I was honestly just Googling to make sure you got that right. I think I got it right. From the world of John. Yes. Good job. Why didn't they just make it John Wick presents ballerina? You'll have to ask John Wick's ballerina or ballerina semicolon John Wick stuff. What else could we have called this movie instead of from the world? You got to get John Wick before ballerina because sexism.

1:10:21So John Wick's obsession with ballerina. Okay, there you go. John Wick dances with ballerina. We're venturing into territory that I do not think is family appropriate. Let's make it active. You know, John Wick isn't a ballerina, but he could be one day. Like what else? We could do a lot here with this title. And I just feel like from the world of John Wick, colon, ballerina is not great. I think also we might finally be making a View-esque universe connection is one thing I'll tease. It's happening. That's beautiful. And I need to put CR at the table with us just so you can let us talk a little bit about those feelings, about those worlds.

1:11:00I'm just going to try to get Chris to tell all the stories about his personal life related to those films, of which there are many classics. There are a few good ones. Okay, well, stay tuned for that. And thanks for listening. We'll see you soon. Thank you.