©Courtesy of Focus Features
Q : So, Wes, you said that part of this starts with you talking to Benicio as The French Dispatch was at Cannes, and having this image of him just standing there in a suit. And then you also talked about how so much of this is based off your father-in-law and how he had lived this very mysterious, very kind of international man of mystery life. So, how did those two things kind of come together to give us the story that we’ve got here?
WES ANDERSON: Well, I wouldn’t say, he wasn’t an international man of mystery. I’ll give a quick portrait. I don’t mean to contradict what you’re saying, by the way. I’ll just clarify.
Q : Thanks.
WES ANDERSON : Yes. When we had The French Dispatch coming out in Cannes, I brought up to Benicio, I have this thing brewing, maybe. Which was, I had a sort of idea of a tycoon, a Euro tycoon, like somebody who would’ve been in an Antonioni movie or something, that visual. I did have this idea that he was probably hurting, that he was going to be in physical distress.
Somehow, that was the image of this guy who you sort of can’t kill. And he has a very expensive watch, you know, something like that. But in the course of time, it started mixing with my father-in-law, my wife’s father, Fuad [phonetic], who was an engineer and a businessman and he had all these different projects and different places.
And he was a kind, warm person, but very intimidating. And he had all his business in these shoeboxes. He walked her through his work at a certain point, because he thought if he is not able to see everything through, she needs to know what he’s got. And her reaction was what you say in the movie, this is —
MIA THEAPLETON : This is just crazy.
WES Anderson: Yes. So, yeah, it was a mixture of those two things, Fuad and whatever the first thing I said was.
Q : Right. The man in pain in a suit.
WES ANDERSON: Right. Exactly.
Q : Speaking of which, so I know you got involved with this very early on, Benicio, when this was still in the writing stage, I think, with you and Roman Coppola, right?
WES ANDERSON: That’s right.
Q : Okay, so can you talk a little bit about how, as you’re sort of figuring out who this character might be, you were contributing stuff to the script that was complementary to what they were already putting on the page. And I’m also wondering if there was something that helped you kind of crack who this guy was, if there was a key, a small thing, a gesture, just something.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, we had many conversations, you know, about the story, about the character. But a lot of it comes from Wes’s writing. You know, it’s layered, it’s full of contradictions, which makes it really yummy for an actor to try to bring to life. You know, there was elements of collaboration. I think one that I remember was that at some point, my character, Zsa-Zsa Korda, is meeting his daughter for the first time, played by Mia Threapleton.
And the tutor, played by Michael Cera, is in the room. And I remember telling Wes, “Well, I’m giving a lot of private information to my daughter. And there is this stranger sitting right there. And you know, I don’t know. I feel uncomfortable as the character, giving all this information in front of a stranger. I’m telling her about my bank accounts and my everything, deals with like secrecy.” And Wes said to me, “Well, we’ll polygraph him.” And I went, “Well, okay.” And you know, very quickly, he came up with this idea of a lie detector, which is a portable pocket polygraph.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah, there you go. And in 1950 it was probably the size of this building, but he made it into the pocket version. And he called it the lie detector. And so that’s kinda like, you know, I’m kinda like looking at it like being in the place in the moment. And you know, but, you know, the character is on the page. The backstory of the character is on the page.
Q: Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: You know, so many movies we do, we create backstory if we have to, right?
Q : Right.
BENICIO DEL TORO: This was on the page, so.
Q : Especially because that opening preamble is like so visceral and kind of shocking in a lot of ways. And then this sort of just kind of glides you into the rest of the film. So, they’d like to know about how you conceived that and what it was like to act that scene and how long you were stuck in that bath?
WES ANDERSON: Okay, most of that, Benicio can do most of that. And I don’t know the answer to the first part of it. I know I had the music. I thought this music is right for this character. I mean, in the script, I think I had put he’s in a bathtub being attended by all these people. But the sequence in the movie evolved from something or another and I think his experience of it is interesting.
BENICIO DEL TORO: The real experience was I sat in the bathtub and Wes walked up to me and he said, “We’re gonna shoot this in slow motion.” And I said, “Oh, cool.” So, I’ll read, I think, I’ll drink, you know. Get my medicine. And then he said, “But I need everyone to act really fast.”
And now I went like, “Wait a second, if we’re gonna act fast and you’re gonna be doing it in slow motion, doesn’t that cancel the slow motion? Let’s do it in normal speed.” And he said, “No, no, no, no, it’s gonna be different.” And then I got to see it, you know, after he put it together. We were there for a long time ’cause it was all done in one take. So, we did it, I don’t know, like, 30 times or 20 time?
WES ANDERSON: Probably, yeah.
Q : 30 times?
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, it was a lot of moving pieces. There’s a lot of nurses, I think six or seven, they’re doing different things.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: I think one of them had to run around ’cause we were doing it on a set, and come in from a different door and doorway. And it was quite a thing to see and, you know, I turned into a prune. But basically, I think that when you see it, it’s unique. It’s different. It’s not just slow motion, you know? It has this other thing.
WES ANDERSON : Well, the music is a big part of it, too. You know, you’re playing with the music. But you know, a thing with movies, would you say this is normally the case. When you’re doing a movie, the rehearsal and the shooting is kind of all mixed together, right?
And with a thing like this, the music is a dance, you know, it’s a ballet. And so, there’s choreography, but you’re kind of choreographing and shooting it all in one thing. So, the whole experience, you know, it all happens at once.
BRYAN CRANSTON : Did you play the music back while they were shooting?
WES ANDERSON : Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: I think he did, yeah.
WES ANDERSON: We played the music, but the thing is, we were shooting.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Fast?
WES ANDERSON : What?
BENICIO DEL TORO: No, the music was moving at normal speed. The only thing that was moving at normal speed.
WES ANDERESON: But Scarlett makes a good point, which is we’re playing the music to choreograph it, but we’re shooting it at whatever it was, 90 frames per second. So, it’s not actually relating to it. And so that’s just confusing.
©Courtesy of Focus Features
Q : Then you had him acting faster than he normally would?
WES ANDERSON : Well, everything had to happen fast, otherwise it gets too slow, the slow motion gets boring.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Mishaps? Any big mishaps?
MIA THREAPLETON : Oh, yeah.
WES ANDERSON : Mishaps.
BENICIO DEL TORO : You know, maybe I missed my mouth when I was eating, you know.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON : Yeah. Mm-hmm.
BENICIO DEL TORO: I bit my cheek. [indiscernible] Yeah, exactly.
WES ANDERSON: We just go again.
BENICIO DEL TORO: We would just go.
Q : Look, 30 takes is a lot, but it was Kubrick, it would’ve been 50, so you gotta count your blessings there.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Oh, we all wanted to get it right. We really did. It was one of those challenges that as an actor, you just wanna get to the finish line. You wanna do it right, you know? So, it was fun.
Q : You know, this is very much an ensemble movie and there’s a really wonderful cast kind of swirling in and out of these stories, you know, like, these set pieces and the story. But so much of this is really down to two characters. I mean, technically, it’s a three-hander because your character plays such a big part when they go on that trip, but it’s really about Zsa-Zsa and Liesl. And that’s why you need a good Liesl, which brings us to Mia.
I’ve gone on record about how much I think this is a wonderful performance. Can you talk a little bit about kind of finding the right balance of less is more? Because so much of this is just small little gestures, like you’re moving your eyes one way or, you know, there’s a little discernible shrug.
MIA THREAPLETON: We’ve spoken before and you go, I wanna talk about —
Q : Yes. The shrug.
MIA THEAPLETON : little shrug that is so small.
Q : It’s so small, and yet it tells you about this character and it’s this beautiful little beat that happens. And to me, like, that’s so much of that performance are all these beautiful little beats. We could talk about the holy water with the assassin in the elevator. It’s little things like that. So, I’m just curious as you’re kind of figuring out who Liesl is, how you’re being like, okay, I could do probably a little bit more here. I should maybe scale a little bit back here so that it’s all consistent.
MIA THREAPLETON : Well, I had, I think, three months from the time of finding out that I had been offered the job and from when I landed into Berlin. So, that felt like a very good amount of time to just go, okay, get claws deep into this as much as I can. Which included but was not limited to talking to a deacon of a Catholic church.
Going to Rome, because I had to go there for a fitting so of course, absorbing as much Catholic that was there, Catholicism that was there. And reading the Bible, chatting with Wes about portions of the Bible, going though, going down. I did send you my little to-do list of things that I was doing and he said, “Yes, this all looks very, very good.”
WES ANDERSON: Very good?
MIA THREAPLETON: Yeah, very good. “So, carry on,” was what he said. And recording, I sort of went though my script. I think I read it about five times in the first week that I had it. Just because, like, you know, overwhelming excitedness and just wanting to absorb as much information as I possibly could. And through doing that, many notes of just, okay, well that’s what that means and then this is probably what subliminally is going on there.
And then there’s this, this, this, this, and this. And it kind of just all meshed together into this thing. And then we did virtual rehearsals as well. I had a little system where I would record my lines, record other characters lines, change the pitch and tone of the other people’s lines.
Block out my own, and then record the whole thing live and then send it through to Wes, who mistakenly thought that I had five other people in the room doing it with me.
WES ANDERSON: I tried to cast her family members. I was like, “Are those your brothers or your sisters?”
MIA THREAPLETON: There was no one else in the room, it was just me.
WES ANDERSON: They’re all so good?.
MIA THREAPLETON: It was just me. And he said, “I now want video proof of this,” which I provided.
WES ANDERSON : We needed more kids, so I thought, these guys are great.
MIA THREAPLETON : Who are these children that I [overlap].
WES ANDERSON: It didn’t exist.
WES ANDERSON: It’s so weird to be told these people don’t exist. They just don’t exist at all.
MIA THREAPLETON: I’m sorry to disappoint you.
Q : Right.
MIA THREAPLETON: They were just me. And then we got to Berlin. And during the rehearsal and combined with the three months that I had sort of just doing it on my own and making props for you ’cause you wanted me to make the dossier, my murder dossier. That came out of many trial and error standing on countertops and taking photos of something that looked like a murder investigation on my kitchen floor. And it just, but the smallness, the humanisms were things that we sort of found out as we went. And in rehearsals and on the day, and there was that one instance where I had my hands on my hips. That literally happened because you poked your head out and went, “Don’t move! Do it again, same line reading, just keep your hands like that.” And that’s what ended up it being in the film.
So, you picked up on humanisms. You wanted the humanness, humanity thing.
Q : Like humanness, yeah. Let’s go with that.
MIA THREAPLETON: Along with very short question, but yes.
Q : There was a rehearsal period with just the three of you before filming, right?
MIA THREAPLETON:It was the four of us. Michael, Benicio, Wes, and myself.
Q: Right. And so, as the four of you were just kind of figuring these relationships out, what did you discover in this process?
MIA THREAPLETON : Many things. We did a lot of blocking. I think the thing that we worked on first was scene six, which is that big opening scene where we meet all of us all together.
And through that and over the course of many lunches and cups of coffee and just conversation, and much more blocking of sort of scenes that were just with the three of us. We did the railway in the desert, and Wes would sort of come in going like that and kind of work out, okay, actually where does, no, that doesn’t match with the animatic walls and that’s physically not possible ’cause you’re not animated. Okay, so hang on, scratch that. We’ll do something else. So, kind of just playing around. It was play. For a lot of it, it was kind of just having fun and also talking.
MICHAEL CERA: Well, I mean, yeah, it was really the first time we’d all met. And it kind of was just like developing a sense of our little team, our little unit. And, like, I remember mostly, I mean, we did rehearse and we read the scenes, but I mostly remember like the lunches together. And just getting our little rhythm going together. And for me, it was sort of the first time saying the lines out loud and, you know, trying the accent. So, oh yes, the accent. That was, I mean, yeah. Kind of like, you know, lightly getting in, dipping into it slowly. And then, but it didn’t kind of get up to speed until we started, I feel like.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, you had two guys to do. You had two characters to make, kind of.
MICHAEL CERA : Yeah. That’s true.
BENICIO DEL TORO : But you had them. When you arrived, you already had sort of the whole thing figured out. And then you refined it a bit as we played it.
MICHAEL CERA: And then we just picked our lane.
BENICIO DEL TORO : Yeah. That’s it.
MICHAEL CERA : Yeah.
©Courtesy of Focus Features
Q : I’ve got a question for you from one of the participants. But this is actually a good excuse to open this up to everybody here, because they’re asking about how Bjorn’s costume, like, what he wore kind of helped inform the character as you were putting him together.
MICHAEL CERA : Yeah.
Q : But I feel like the costumes for each of these characters, it’s like, even if they’re only on screen for like five minutes, like, what they’re wearing says so much about who they are and how they kind of fit into this world that we’re in. So, I would love it if all of you would talk about, you know, putting the costumes on, working with the costume designer, kind of getting the look of these characters and how that informed how you played them.
WES ANDERSON: Just don’t make Scarlett answer that, because I don’t think she liked the costume.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Why do you think that?
WES ANDERSON: Did you like the costume?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Well, why do you think I didn’t like it?
WES ANDERSON: I thought you said you didn’t like the costume.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Which costume? The wedding dress?
BENICIO DEL TORO: Oh, here it comes.
WES ANDERSON: No, no, the wedding dress was great. The wedding dress was great. I mean, we could do this privately. But I thought you didn’t like the outdoor one, the gingham thing, yeah. Am I wrong about that?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I don’t know that I really thought.
MIA THREAPLETON: I think, no, Milena wanted it to be open on the top.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON : There was a lot of conversation about the, yeah, the buttons.
MIA THREAPLETON: The buttons on the top.
WES ANDERSON : The buttons, uh-huh.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I don’t care. You know, I’m not really that particular about.
WES ANDERSON: No, no. I thought it was kind of great because I thought you were happy to wear a costume you didn’t like. And made it look good. But I remembered it wrong.
WES ANDERSON: It’s a, I mean, really not right what I say.
Q : So, we’ll get back to Scarlett at the end of this. In terms of everybody else’s costume.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yeah.
WES ANDERSON: You can ask her about the costume if you like, because she’s fine with it.
MIA THREAPLETON: It looked amazing.
BRYAN CRANSTON: That was just the beginning of all her complaints.
MICHAEL CERA : Yeah, I remember the string?
WES ANDERSON: Okay, yeah, yeah. The sandals.
MICHAEL CERA: The sandals on a string.
Q: Michael, we’ll start with you. Your costume.
WES ANDERSON: I said just hold it like this, yeah. And it was better. That’s improv.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: That’s when you said somebody bring in. I had these, it’s not even worth it.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Go, go, go.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: No, it was ridiculous.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Go, go, go.
BENICIODEL TORO: I’ll back you up.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: It’s not even worth it. No, just because what’s amazing, I will say, is that when you’re on set and you need an, like, ’cause like oh, shouldn’t you be holding these shoes by a string? I don’t know why. Nobody does that, but I was like I don’t think so. I’ve never seen anybody hold shoes by a string. But if that’s like what you imagined, and then somebody came over with like the most perfect string. It was like unbelievable. I’m like where did you find this? We’re in a, like a sand quarry in the middle of nowhere, and this perfect string came out of a prop.
WES ANDERSON: Out of a top notch props department.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: It was.
MIA THREAPLETON: Yeah.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Great, great props department.
MICHAEL Cera: We’ve got it all.
WES Anderson: Some of the best string. All manner of string.
SCARLETT Johansson: Amazing what [indiscernible].
BENICIO Del Toro: I have to say that watching Scarlett and Wes working was like an episode of I Love Lucy. And it was one hell of an episode. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
SCARLETT Johansson: Thank you.
WES ANDERSON: It was very, you know, it was very nice that day too, because the weather was nice. We had that room we were working in that had the funny light and everything. There was all kinds of wonderful memories.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: It must have been very different. So amazing because we’re shooting in, I guess it’s supposed to be, I don’t know if we’re supposed to be in like Israel or somewhere in that general.
BRYAN CRANSTON: A version of that. Yeah.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON : Yeah, a version of that. But, of course, we were not. We were in Babelsberg Studio.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: And I was thinking, well, you know, I don’t know where this is going to be. Obviously it won’t be green screen ’cause that’s never a thing.
MIA THREAPLETON: On a film, no.
WES ANDERSON : When you’ve got Adam Stockhausen.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON : Shoot that because it was in the middle of the forest. And Wes, unbelievable, he found this sand quarry, which was like as far as the eye could see was sand. Like, beautiful.
MIA THREAPLETON : Amazing sand.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yeah, like beautiful, fine sand. And it looked like you were in, like, the middle of the, you know, that you could be.
BENICIO DEL TORO: The Sahara.
MIA THREAPLETON : Yeah.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: It was just incredible, and then they built this beautiful structure.
MIA THREAPLETON: The dam.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON : And it was a really, yeah, and the dam. And it was such warm day, like you were saying. It was so sunny out that it felt like you were in, you know, somewhere in.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah.
MIA THREAPLETON: You weren’t pretending you were there.
BENICIO DEL TORO : Yeah.
BRYAN CRANSTON: A little of it, you have to.
WES ANDERSON: Often sand is mined. And a sand mine, if you need a lot of sand, there’s no better place.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: But it was just 20 minutes away from the Babelsberg Studio in the middle of the, yeah.
MIA THREAPLETON: German forest.
WES ANDERSON: The only thing I’ll say is it limits your number of angles when you shoot in the sand mine.
BRYAN CRANSTON: ‘Cause it’s all sand.
WES ANDERSON: It’s all sand, but also it’s not all sand. I mean, if you point the camera the wrong direction, you’re back in Germany.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Oh, yeah.
WES ANDERSON: So, that was the only thing. But we made a very good set.
Q : You did.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: It was a great set.
MIA THREAPLETON: A very good [indiscernible] and a very good tunnel.
Q : So costumes and sand were the two key ingredients to this film.
MIA THREAPLETON: Yes.
Q : And since we’ve talked about sand, how did your costume affect how you kind of pick-up with your character?
MICHAEL CERA: The sand or the costume?
Q : Let’s start with the costume. We’ll rotate back to the sand.
MICHAEL CERA: The costume informs the character more than the sand, I think. The costumes are huge. I mean, Wes and, you know, Wes is working with Milena Canonero who designed the costumes for this.
Q : Yeah.
MICHAEL CERA: And they’re all basically figured out by the time we arrive and you see a board on the wall of what you’re gonna look like. And it is huge. I mean, at least I would speak for myself as an actor, like putting on those clothes and seeing yourself, you get a really strong sense of how you’re gonna look in the movie and who this person is. It kinda constructs like half of the character for you, really.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Yeah.
MICHAEL CERA: It, yeah.
©Courtesy of Focus Features
Q: And you came up with the impromptu habit for the nun, right? The headpiece?
MIA THREAPLETON: This is about the napkin? Yeah.
Q : Yeah.
MIA THREAPLETON: Yes. On day two of screentest, and meeting Wes and Benicio for the first time, second day was trying things on. And Benicio had his very amazing pinstripe Zsa-Zsa suit pretty sorted. I think they were just doing some tailoring. But then there was some sort of mock nun habit, sort of white skirt things.
And some polite little plimsoll shoes and it was, yeah, very nice. But the one thing that was missing was a proper veil. We had, I think it was nurse’s caps that we had. I think it was something like that and you just were like, nah, it’s not quite right.
And it was reaching the end of the day, and we were trying to figure out how to make this work. And I looked over to the coffee table and there was a napkin from lunch that was not stained with anything.
And so I said, oh my god, does anybody have any hair pins? And I quickly pinned this thing to my head. And Wes came over and you know how he does that sort of adjustment of thing, and he did that, and took a photo of it, and then that’s apparently what happened with the veil. That’s where that came from.
WES ANDERSON: Well, I know that when we did this rehearsal in London, when the two of you sort of looked like your characters, I mean the costumes, they’re important to a degree. They’re something that actors work with. They’re part of what you see in the movie.
They’re not the, it’s not like the, you know, the movie’s not about the costumes. But when these two people were in their costumes together, I felt like they were the characters. It was the moment I said okay, so that’s what the movie’s gonna be like. This is good. These guys are gonna be good together.
MIA THREAPLETON: It was the napkin on my head.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah. Well,I mean, but you put it the right way. I mean, a napkin is a piece of fabric. It’s any piece of fabric. It’s just a matter of how do you tailor it.
Q : I’ve got a question from one of the participants here. And this is in terms of casting. So, I know, I think other than Mia and Michael, most of the people in this, and maybe Hope Davis, I think most of, you’ve worked with most of these actors before. And I’m wondering as you and Roman Coppola are kind of writing this, if you’re already thinking about, you know, who you might want to cast as a character? So, if you’re writing somebody like Cousin Hilda and you’re like you know who would be great in like a utopian commune in a very itchy gingham dress that is probably gonna make them complain a lot. You know who we should get is Scarlett Johansson. Or is it the kind of thing where it’s like as you’re writing about stuff?
WES ANDERSON: I do think that I should chime in in Scarlett’s defense.
Q : Sure.
WES ANDERSON: People think that she was complaining.
Q: No, this is something I just invented to be the whole plot, right.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah, people get this idea that she was complaining about a lot, and it’s really not the case.
MICHAEL CERA: Really [indiscernible] the screen.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Oh my god.
BRYAN CRANSTON: I don’t know where that came from.
Q: But in terms of casting, are you already thinking about stuff as you’re writing and being like?
WES ANDERSON: Yes. I mean, you know, the part for Scarlett we did think, okay, if Scarlett will do this, then that, you know, we had her in mind for that. Bryan and Tom Hanks together, I think the characters partly came out of imagining them as much as it was the other way around. And Benicio’s, obviously, too. So, yeah, a lot, yeah. Many of the roles we sort of cast ’em as we go, and I tend to also, as soon as we have the idea, I tend to send the email.
And say, you know, this could be like maybe October or something like that and try to kind of get on the books if they’ll have me. I mean, you know, Isle of Dogs we had you in mind very early in the writing process of that. And did we talk about it before there was a script? Do you remember? It’s too long ago.
BRYAN CRANSTON: We did. Yeah, you, yeah. You sent me an email and said this is coming.
WES ANDERSON: This is coming. Yeah, yeah.
BRYAN CRANSTON: And this is what we’d be working with and the same thing here. I mean, it was, you did actually say we were thinking of calling it the Sacrament Consortium. And I thought, well, then it’s about us, but then you quickly switched over.
You know, Tom and I arrived at the same time in Berlin, at Babelsberg, and, you know, until you see the cartoon, as Wes puts it, the animatic, the full animatic, film that he voices all the characters on, until you actually see that, it’s not always clear where he’s going, when he’s going, because the scripts are very dense in detail. And so there is no skimming in a Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola script.
And oftentimes, I have my fingers back and I go, wait, what was that? What was that? What was that? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. If you miss one little bit, it’s not gonna track, so you have to really read them carefully to understand. That’s probably why you read it three or four times.
MIA THREAPLETON: I read it far more than that.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Yeah.
WES ANDERSSON: In fact, my agent, Jim — is Jim still here? Yes. I mean, Jim even says, he’s, “I know if I get one of your scripts, I gotta set aside like six hours.” It takes several instant reads? You’ve gotta drag yourself through it page by page, and yeah. But he’s told me that.
BRYAN CRANSTON: And then also with the costuming, it was so specific. Milena had these ideas. We had mock ups given to us earlier, before we arrived. And so, you know, as Michael said, you put this on and all of a sudden your shoulders go back and you have a certain sense of proprietary.
Q : Since we’re talking about this scene, can you talk about filming it with Tom and how you guys kind of got that sort of rapport between the two guys together?
I mean, it’s a really wonderful scene. Even though it’s like just a brief appearance for the two of you together, it kind of makes you want a Sacramento consortium movie, Mr. Anderson.
BRYAN CRANSTON: Well, we’ve known each other for a long time, and we’ve been friends, so that was the easy part. Basically, the most conversation that was going on with Tom and I on the set was, oh my God, Benicio. Oh my God, what can we do for him? And he’s like, he’s got reams and reams and reams of dialogue and everything in a Wes Anderson movie is very specific.
WES: Right.
BRYAN CRANSTON: I mean, you might stumble on a happy accident. But it’s really like, bam? And so we were just like —
BENICIO DEL TORO: No, thank you, brother. I thank you, thank you. Thank you.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Like, mouthing his dialogue to him while he was saying it.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yes. They at least stood there while I fell all over the place, you know?
WES ANDERSON: Hey man, I would put the all your dialogue in the–
BENICIO DEL TORO: Thank you. But it’s exactly what he’s saying also about the dialogue, ’cause there were a couple moments where I went up to Wes and I said, well, maybe we can take this dialogue out. And then I went back to it, and it wasn’t as good. And I had to go up to him and go like, I think you need to put it back, ’cause we’re passing information that I think you need. But that’s why I couldn’t join these people every day for dinner. I had to go up into my room and –Yeah, talk to myself, you know?
WES ANDERSON : But you had a lot to say, but you took the time to absorb everything.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, I had a lot of help. I had a lot of help.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah. But, yes, yes. You try to do, you know, but, you know, working on it with Wes on a movie like this, with the cast like this, you’re motivated.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: You know, you can go that extra lap. You know, so you can push yourself a little bit harder.
Q : You know, you brought up the word specific, and I think as a viewer when you watch one of Wes’s movies, you think that as actors, like, it must be very precise what you have to do. You have to make sure you’re right here in this mark and you have to look this way and it’s gotta be timed. You know, it’s kind of like clockwork, in terms of things.
And yet I know that at the press conference at Cannes, Benedict Cumberbatch had said that there was something very kind of freeing about how restricted and restrained it was. And then you had said, I think this was really interesting how you were like, actually, it’s a lot of play and it kind of made me feel like it got me in touch with, like, my inner child and playing as I was doing this.
So talk a little bit about acting in a Wes Anderson movie and the kind of having to balance those two things, because you have to be right where you need to be in that shot that he’s composed, and yet it feels like there’s a lot of room for surprise. There’s a lot of room for improvisation in a way. There’s a lot of room for discovering things and kind of playing, as you said.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, I think you know, I think the approach is the same approach that I do on any movie I do. Just I think Wes wants you to be in the moment. He wants you to tell the truth, whatever that means. But we try as actors to do that, and I think he expects that, you know? So from there, he can block it and you have all this dialogue, but you can still bring a piece of yourself into it. And there’s room for the imagination, too, to run amok. And you gotta have fun, even if you’re, like, drowning. You gotta have fun.
WES ANDEROSN: Reading reams of dialogue?
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah, yes. You know, and we did.
WES ANDEROSN: Yeah, it’s not like I’m saying pause here, turn here, do a thing here. I feel that doesn’t — does that happen?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: No.
WES ANDERSON: Like, Scarlett has to do a thing where she comes down from the top thing, down these stairs, that then comes all the way to the camera. A long, long take with a lot of dialogue, and I don’t think I said anything about how to do that or anything. That’s just, you know, it’s —
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: We could do the blocking, of course.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
SCARLETT JOHNASSON: But I also think ’cause you’re enjoying it so much. I mean, you can hear Wes enjoying it, and that’s helpful because you — actually, I think it’s really motivating to try new things. Even though the blocking may be, you know, specific to what it is, and the camera moves are specifically what they need to be, and, you know, there’s sometimes a timing element to it, which is a little bit more, I don’t want to say restrictive, but it’s just particular, I guess. But then the performance pieces, I think you’re very playful within that, because you’re just enjoying it and encouraging variety, you know?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: I’ve gotten some questions when we’ve done press for Wes’s films, and it seems that it comes across that everything is so calculated.
MIA THREAPLETON: Yeah.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: But I think the actual process of it, it doesn’t feel that way at all. I mean, the physicality, maybe again because the camera moves are very calculated, and sometimes there’s specific propage and all of that stuff, and the edit is very sharp, so it gives it a feeling that it’s so calculated, but I don’t think the performances are. I think if it becomes so calculated it doesn’t work, because then it feels like it’s a schtick or something.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah, it gets trapped in amber, and then it just feels cold and chilly and that doesn’t quite work with what you called the humanness.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Right.
MIA THREAPLETON: Yeah.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
MIA : Yeah, ’cause I think it also has a lot to do with the fact that it is very planned, because you know what you want, you know what you’re looking for, and you have that full plan, and you have the animatic. And then because we have all of those things, we know what we’re doing the next day. We know what we’re gonna be doing, you know, for blocking and stuff like that. Maybe we’ve rehearsed it, maybe, you know, maybe we’re finding out something on the day. And yeah, you have to hit your marks, not just for what you want, but for camera movement, for the grip team.
MIA THREAPLETON : And, you know, it’s, like, it’s all important, but because we know the plan and because it’s so clear and because Wes is so clear and clearly having so much fun doing this, you kind of just don’t think about the plan, ’cause it’s happening around you.
You’re just in the thing, in the moment that’s happening with you. And you’re not leaping your imagination somewhere else because you’re also actually in that world. Adam Stockhausen and his entire team of amazing people are so — I don’t know how they did it.
MIA THREAPLETON: But, like, you’re walking into a dam, or you’re walking into a train or a very good tunnel or somewhere. You’re just there, and you’re playing and you’re having fun while you’re doing it. And you’re being told what to do by somebody who knows exactly what they want and how to do it.
Q : We got time for one last question. I’m gonna take a big philosophical swing with this one, because, you know, you can watch this film, I feel, and just enjoy what’s going on. It’s funny, it’s very moving. It looks beautiful. It’s all the stuff that you kind of expect from one of your movies. And yet, there is this really what I feel is a really kind of wonderful undertow of a story about a father and a daughter. Basically, when you boil it down, that’s really what it’s about. And so this is mostly a question for you and Benicio, since you mentioned having daughters at the press conference at Cannes, but anybody is welcome to chime in for our last few minutes here, just about what you feel this film says about family and family bonds, and the idea of trying to parent a kid, when maybe you sometimes feel like you don’t have time to parent the way you want to.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Well, I’ll jump in quickly. I think that there is an element of my character wanting a second chance at mending a broken relationship. And I think that in the process, in order to achieve that, he has to change and he does change. And I like to think that people can change. Not everyone changes, but I think some people can, and for the better. I think that there is an element to that, and thanks to the relationship with his daughter, I think that’s something that the movie has. I think it moves me when I see it, you know?
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
BENICIO DEL TORO: I don’t know if we were thinking about that, or I wasn’t thinking about that. But when I see it, I see, wow, you know, there’s this. And I’ve seen people change for the better, you know?
WES ANDERSON: In life.
BENICIO DEL TORO: In life.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah.
MICHAEL CERA: Well, that last shot, I mean, really tells you, you know, not that that just that they’ve changed for the better, but that there actually is a way to kind of find his version of what I think is domestic bliss.
WES ANDERSON: Yeah, I mean, I had thought sort of after doing, after making the movie, maybe seeing the movie when we had it all put together, that I think sometimes you sort of realize what you had in mind, but you’re not totally conscious of it. I mean, I told somebody this, my agent, my theory, but he was like, that’s obvious. Of course that’s what the movie is. But I don’t understand, how could you not know that? But my thought was that I didn’t realize it was obvious, was that I think the whole story of the movie, this whole mission that he goes on in our movie, you know, he’s being confronted with the possibility of his death again and again.
He’s dying again and again, in fact. And what he thinks he has is a business plan that he wants to make sure goes through. But I think maybe from the beginning, in a way, his whole business plan is really a mechanism for him to get back together with her. He’s acting like he’s making her his successor, and really, it’s more about what’s gonna happen between the two of them right now. And the business plan almost becomes like a ritual for him to be reunited with his daughter, and whatever happens to the business — and in that sense, his plan goes great. So that —
BENICIO DEL TORO: He wins.
WES ANDERSOSN: Yeah, he does well.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah.
WES ANDERSON: And, you know, at the end, and also it’s better for the world if someone like our character, Zsa-zsa Korda, operates on a smaller, more local scale, I think. We can say that about a lot of people. Some people who do big things, it would be better if they did smaller things.
WES ANDERSON: Sure, yes. Contained would be one word. Yeah. You don’t have to do it to all of us. You can just do it to a little group, and sometimes that’s good.
Q : Zsa-zsa wins and I feel like we all won today. So thank you guys so much for being here. My apologies to everybody whose questions I didn’t get to today, but the good news is we’re all gonna meet back here one week from now, gonna do this all over again.
A whole new batch of questions. It’s gonna be all seven of us [overlap] — Every week now until Doomsday, we’re just gonna come back and keep talking about The Phoenician Scheme, as well we should. Thank you guys so much for participating —
BENICIO DEL TORO: We’re all going to come back, right?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: Yes, yes.
Q : You know, you heard it here first.
BENICIO DEL TORO: Yeah, okay.
WES ANDERSON: Thank you.
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