The Big Picture - Top Five Wes Anderson Movies and ‘The French Dispatch’

Episode Date: October 22, 2021

After being delayed more than a year by COVID, Wes Anderson’s ‘The French Dispatch’ has finally hit theaters in limited release. We gather to discuss the film and rank Wes Anderson’s unique world of film (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Mia Hansen-Løve to discuss ‘Bergman Island’ (1:09:12). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mia Hansen-Løve Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

60 songs that explain the 90s are back and in their final stretch. The Ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs from the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Davins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Wes Anderson. Today we're talking about The French Dispatch, which is out this weekend in limited release,

and our top five Wes Anderson movies. He's one of our favorite filmmakers. Later in the show, I'll be talking to Mia Hansen-Love about Bergman Island, her beguiling new movie about a pair of filmmakers who traveled to Faro, the island where Ingmar Bergman lived and worked. Great film. Hope you'll stick around for that conversation. Right now, we are joined by Chris Ryan, who may be on the B-Squad, but he's the B-Squad leader. CR, don't you know Amanda and I thought of you as our baby brother? It's nice to be here, guys. Thank you for having me on the big picture. Here we are in the big picture. I think Wes is important to the three of us in many ways. I thought we would start

with a brief conversation about French Dispatch because not very many people are gonna be able to see it this weekend, though it has been much anticipated and long awaited over the last couple of years through the pandemic. It's opening and limited release. I'm not sure when it's going wide and when it will be at VOD, but it's a fascinating document. It's Wes's first omnibus feature. It's opening in limited release. I'm not sure when it's going wide and when it will be at VOD, but it's a fascinating document. It's Wes's first omnibus feature. It's modeled closely after a sort of New Yorker-esque issue of a magazine, an imaginary magazine that is published by Arthur Howitzer, who is played by Bill Murray in this movie, is a Harold-esque figure. And the film structurally and stylistically is like an issue of The New Yorker. It's got four to five stories told throughout. It's got a little short piece at the middle. It's got three big feature stories. It's got a little kicker piece at the end. Amanda, I'll start with you. What did you make of The French Dispatch? I enjoyed it very much, obviously, because I am just in the tank for all things Wes Anderson. And in a lot of ways, this is at least intellectually

and detail-wise kind of really like peak, peak Wes Anderson instead of like one canvas, he has five or six. And also explores a lot of the maybe themes, but like certainly like subject matters and worlds that have drawn me to him like being a nerd and really liking uh bookish things and also you know really loving the new yorker i was recently at a dinner with my wonderful in-laws that after several bottles of wine devolved into primarily my in-laws just yelling about the new yorker and it like now versus then and what's good and, you know, how Trump sort of ruined it and how sometimes you just want to read 10,000 words about lavender farming or whatever. So definitely to my specific interest, but it's amazing what this guy can do. Just like just the breadth and but like the specificity of this movie is pretty astonishing.

Chris, what about you? What'd you think of The French Dispatch? You know, I just love how he makes me passionate about his passions. So I won't necessarily be like, what I need in my life is a tribute to The New Yorker. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm so glad I have this tribute to The New Yorker in my life. Same thing about hotels. Same thing about foxes. Same thing about Jacques Cousteau. It's just he has this incredibly contagious enthusiasm for life and for culture specifically. And his ability to communicate those things in a very mannered and very cute and very fussy way, which we can get into, has kind of now come all the way back around

from me being mildly disappointed with Wes Anderson's trajectory as a filmmaker. We're being like, oh, I wish... Does he not have other tenenbaums in him? Is there not another really searing family drama to... I'm all in. Just keep making these movies every two to three years. Whatever dollhouse you want to play in,

I'm always going to just find something of value in it. And with this movie particularly, every time I felt myself, my mind wandering, something would happen in the movie that would draw me back in really quickly. And each one of these short stories that are in the film

have the power of a novel. And if anything, I kind of was a little melancholy that we didn't get three movies about these three separate stories or even some of the shorter digressions. Yeah, I would say the framing device of all the framing devices in his movies was probably ultimately the least involving for me. The idea of sort of like the grand old man overseeing this hallowed publication and his very important relationship between him and his writers and constructing a magazine, even though,

you know, the three of us have participated in the construction of magazines and we've been at work, been working in the media for 15 plus years. I think I, I clung to the same things that you might have, Chris, which is like the little pieces inside of the stories.

And I agree, Amanda, it's kind of overwhelming. His mastery at this point of fitting 20 things to look at in any frame or moving quickly from moment to moment or segment to segment. I mean, it does seem like he has all of the tools at his disposal of like a world-class once-in-a-generation filmmaker. It's interesting what he's choosing to spend his time on now. Chris and I were texting a little bit this week about some of his movies, Amanda,

and it felt like the first half of his career was very, even though they were sort of dollhouse-esque, were very emotional movies. Movies really driven by a kind of like trauma and maybe even like a personal trauma. It seemed like he's kind of working his way through his feelings about certain aspects of his life and his relationships. And now his movies feel much more about his kind of fascinations and his curiosities. Do you agree with that? Yeah. With the kind of exception of, you know, he makes Tenenbaums, then he goes into like, like Foucault and Jarjeeling and Fantastic Mr. Foxland is kind of like seeing what he can do. And then I think we all agree, like comes back um I would say emotionally as well as like epically and stylistically with Grand Budapest Hotel and then it seems like he's a true artist in the sense of being like oh I'm gonna go try this for a while

I'm interesting and interested in this thing and you know maybe like the the execution and and this project is how I want to spend these two years before I go back and give you like another heart-wrenching opus or at least that's kind of what I'm hoping for that like maybe every decade we'll get like one you know major just like bloodletting of sorts and then and then and then back to I don't know here's here's two hours on a 50s magazine just because I felt like it yeah it's pretty fascinating so let's talk about some of the stories inside of them without spoiling those stories. So the film opens with a kind of talk of the town.

So we're not going to talk about the post-credit sequence then, right? And what happens to Icarus, right? Chris, I mean, I think you have plenty of podcasts that you appear on where if you want to talk about those things and spoil them for the listeners, you can, but let's save it here.

Let's protect people, okay? This is about the sanctity of storytelling. I'll wait for the Wes Anderson fandom experience to talk about those things. Honestly, this is as close as you're going to get. So the movie opens with a talk of the town-esque story centered around Herb St. Sazerac, one of the high-key quality namings of a Wes Anderson movie. He's one of the great namers namings of a Wes Anderson movie he's one of the great namers of characters this is a Joe Mitchell-esque character he's played by Owen Wilson

he writes about hobos and pimps and junkies then we go to the Concrete Masterpiece I hate flower shops or I hate flowers it was good I laughed then we go quickly to the Concrete Masterpiece this was my favorite of the bunch.

This is the Benicio del Toro Lea Seydu about a prisoner who is also an artist who is effectively managed by his prison guard and also his lover. Then revisions to a manifesto, which is a sort of late 60s Parisian story based on true events about a journalist covering student protesters in France.

This is the Francis McDormand, Timothee Chalamet fanfic episode of this film. And then the final long film is the private dining room of the police commissioner, which is loosely based on a James Baldwin-esque figure played by Jeffrey Wright. And he tells through the lens of a Dick Cavett-esque TV show, the story of a kind of gang infiltration abduction story inside of a police

headquarters it's kind of a complicated movie um and then closes with a sort of obituary a sort of epigraph an end cap with uh about howitzer in the magazine so of all of these amanda which of which worked the best for you it's hard to turn down down, spoiler alert, Frances McDormand and Timothee Chalamet in bed together. Personally, I, you know, and this does raise some questions about female journalists and how they're often portrayed in films. And if you could go down that road if you want to,

and I'm choosing to go down the road of Frances McDormand and Timothee Chalamet having a torrid but not torrid at all in typically Anderson Fair love affair Francis McDormand and Timothy Chalamet having a torrid, but not torrid at all, uh, in, in typically Anderson fair love affair in the midst of the studio student protests in Paris in the sixties. Um, I just, it's Wes Anderson can get anyone in his movies and this, another kind of overwhelming thing, you know, we won't spoil that Harry Styles is in it, but like people keep showing

up in this movie and you're so excited. And there is just like a whole Wes Anderson world that people want to be a part of. So I thought this was I just like seeing these people together. um or at least kind of like the most self-mocking of the three even as you know i don't know whether it's thoughts on the the student revolution of the late 60s or like fully baked but that's okay neither are mine so respectfully i i was not there so that's probably my favorite i think the one that i probably would have liked to see as a full feature was the first, the artist one with Benicio Del Toro and Lea Seydoux, just because there's a lot there to unpack and also a lot more that you could do visually with the art. Chris, what about you? Which one do you like? one i i uh i really loved the uh love letter to food first of all and like the very specific kind of cooking that he's eating which is um it's police station cooking which i don't know if

that's a real thing or not but it's essentially like there's all these rules to what you can and can't cook and what ingredients you can and can't use and everybody has these like swiss army knives that have their their kitchen utensils inside of them, but you bring your own, you use your own. And then on top of that, there's this Edward Norton gangster. I mean, this is like each one of these segments is basically a rushing nesting doll of framing devices where it's being told up on top as like these stories from this New Yorker magazine called, what's it called again?

The French Dispatch. The French Dispatch, right. I mean, I'm sorry. I forgot what like the kansas like all the liberty kansas stuff was about like the what it used to be is it called picnic right or something like that picnic exactly yeah um title yeah so and then there's the framing dice inside which is that talk show you were referring to and then there is like this sort of crime movie that's playing out while people are also eating and then inside of that

there's a an animated segment so i thought that was the one where every five minutes, the entire thing would change. But I found Jeffrey Wright's performance pretty deeply affecting. And I really, really thought he was the closest thing to that Richie Tenenbaum kind of pathos that I think often his movies are crying out for. Yeah, I like that we all liked three different of the big stories. I feel like any of the three that we picked could have been feature films. So they might have been 82-minute feature films, but I found myself wanting more, but also waiting very much so for the next one to start. And that's kind of the challenge, I think, of an anthology movie like this. You know, you have this expectation that, like, we're moving on at some point.

So what happens next? Well, it's hard to keep up with at some point. His mind works really fast. And this is jam-packed. And to Chris's point about the last, the Jeffrey Wright segment, when it keeps changing every five minutes, like your mind can't wander for a second. Cause you gotta be like, okay, now we're doing, now they're here. Now this there's a disquisition on radishes. Like now it's animated. I loved the radish part, you know, but it's, you really just have to be locked in to be able to keep up with like the expanse of his references and everything that he's

trying to do at once and I feel like you know in when there's just one story it's sort of like more focusing for Wes Anderson as much as it is for the viewer in terms of like knowing where to go so I like I I would say that my mind also not like necessarily wandered but I found myself being like okay I'm missing stuff like I really have to lock in here in a way that some of the the other movies the features like can wash over you yeah yeah but I think that that's also an interesting thing about Wes in general is that his movies maybe that maybe they're not as active as this movie which is jam-packed, as you say, Amanda. But if you just look at what's going on

in the background of The Life Aquatic or Rushmore, there's always something happening in the background of sequences. He's always dotting every moment. Certainly, you want to look at Bill Murray and see what he's saying to Olivia Williams, for example. But Dirk is back there doing something behind them. You know what I mean?

There's always a little something. So all of his movies sort of reward you on return and I think this is another one that'll probably reward us on return I do feel like he is in a little bit of a slight phase like if I'm being really really honest I think I love dogs and this movie in a row it's two in a row where I'm like that was fun I like that movie you know like I will never turn down one of his movies and I'm happy to have them. But Moonrise, Kingdom, and Grand Budapest Hotel, I felt like was a real beating of the chest. I'm back. I'm back as one of the most important filmmakers on the planet. And so it's interesting. Now he's at work. He just finished production on a movie called Asteroid City, which was shot in Spain and I guess set in the American West. And all we know about it is that it's his biggest

movie of all time. I think it's his biggest movie of all time. I think it's his biggest budget and it's got an extraordinary cast. As pretty much all of his movies do now. So I'm really curious where Wes is going. Who pays for Wes Anderson movies? Well, Indian Paintbrush has produced many of them over the years. He's had a handful of financiers. He's also, I mean, this is a film set in Paris.

And Wes is the toast of the town in Europe. Yeah, he's been living in Paris for many years and he just seems to be living in a world outside of our world you know yeah that's the thing I gotta get I gotta be a part of it that's that's my thing is like I need to get into his economy where somehow like you get to do exactly what you want to do with the best people in the world and like seems like he lives a pretty cool life you know he's always wearing a suit but i i don't even remember like i mean budapest did quite well financially right yeah that was his biggest hit right um but i i it's not like you it's not like he's in the tarantino zone

where it's like yes i make i get to have final cut and do these incredibly creative projects and i am like a blockbuster box office sensation. One of the things I wonder with Sean, with your reaction to Dispatch is the fact that we've been waiting for it for nearly two years or whatever it is. It's like this was supposed to come out and then it was delayed by COVID. So I don't think his films do well with a long lead up. They're just like, here, a perfectly wrapped package. Take that. And then I'll go get another one while you're watching it, you know? Well, another thing that struck me,

and I mentioned this to Amanda when I came back from Telluride, but I saw it there with an audience that I would have thought would have been completely enchanted by this movie, but an older audience,

an audience that has a relationship to Wes's movies. And I walked out and I felt like I was a crazy person because I was the only person I was talking to that was like, I really liked that. And everyone else was like,

eh, it's okay. Minor Anderson. And that's a tough crowd at times because there's a lot of cinephiles there. But I think you can't look at just the component parts of what he does in any of his movies. Even like you guys are not huge animation fans, but you can't watch Isle of Dogs and be like, that sucks. He's never made anything that is bad. He's incapable of giving less than 180 on every movie you can feel and sometimes the effort feeling the effort in a movie doesn't always a good thing but i i like feeling every hand-touched experience in his movies i mean i love dogs has the one two of animation and dogs which we can get into. But no, I mean, it's interesting.

I think this probably minor is unfair, even though that is how we talk about, you know, auteurs and great artists. But it's not Tenenbaums and it's not Grand Budapest. And I don't even, I think he's trying to do something different. But sometimes our conversation doesn't allow for like really accomplished people just trying something out for the hell of it, which honestly I think is the coolest thing in the world. I mean, I agree to Chris's point of just let's just if we could all be Wes Anderson and, you know, live a great life. And did I ever tell you guys about the time that the one time I've seen Wes Anderson? No.

For my honeymoon, my husband and I went to Paris like everybody else. And, um, it was like that first night, you know, I mean, that's incredibly cliche, but it was awesome. And it was like that first night and you're super jet lagged. And we were like walking around trying to figure out where to go to eat. And then like, you know, just like out of the mist or not the mist, but like the perfect Parisian light is Wes Anderson in the brown corduroy suit. I swear to God, it was not a hallucination. It was him. And how can I say this in the most like respectful, less least creepy way possible. I was like, we must just follow us Anderson. Like we must just like, I was just like, wherever he's going is where we need to go. And I like, we did our best, like spy a block and a

half back and just followed him like sprightly, like walking along great pace for like three blocks. And then he went to a lovely restaurant that we tried to go to like two days later. Um, but he's, he's living great and doing great stuff. And also I think this idea of, I feel like spending two years making this like beautifully wrought like fun like intricate tribute to this old thing that I like with a bunch of people that I like is a cool way to spend your like mid-period career or at least part of it while you're recharging for other stuff even if it is like quote minor I don know. I like that he's doing it. All these people seem to have a ton of fun

working on these movies. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, this is what he spends his life doing and he's really good at it and doesn't seem to have a lot of complaints. So it'll be interesting to see what happens to his legacy when he's done making films

or after five or ten more movies and like what he is sort of regarded as I do think that he is almost now in his own like almost by design Wes Anderson box and people don't really talk about like him in the way that people talk about like PTA or even like a Jane Campion like you know it's just like he

does this thing it's over here I find his movies so rewatchable I find I find like it's so and that I think is a testament to something. I don't know what it is. But I watched bits and chunks or most of all of the movies over the last couple of weeks.

I could do it again starting tomorrow. It's just... They're a lovely world to spend time in. I agree. I rewatched every single one this week. And so I'm geared up and ready to go to talk about my favorites. I mean, I agree with all of you guys. It's funny, you following Wes through Paris, Amanda. As I was watching these movies, I've been watching some of the bonus material

on all the Blu-rays. And you can chart Wes's progression basically into becoming Eustace Tilly, the sort of main character of The New Yorker. Like he has really transformed his look and become quite a fashionable man of the world lately. Let's talk just quickly about what makes Wes Wes and his movies, his movies. I think there are signatures

that have become almost cliches at this point. And I think now we underrate how much skill and vision they require. I think obviously the first thing people think of when they think of Wes is this kind of visual symmetry and color

and these close-ups and the way that the camera moves in his movies and these huge pops of color and the production design and the costumes and this little, you know, what has been, I think in a degrading way, described as sort of like dollhouse cinema, but I think kind of like upends that

because based on the material, based on the dialogue, based on the dialogue, based on the characters. But when you just look at one of his movies with the sound off, it feels like, you know, almost like one of those boxes that opens in a ballerina dances inside of, you know?

And then all of his movies. You got a lot of those boxes. You got really nervous. Yeah. Like trying to explain my murder dungeon. Yeah, exactly. Pretending like,

I don't know what that is. It's like, if people could see the zoom, it's like sean's got all these beautifully curated movies behind him but on the other side of the shot it's just like tons of bric-a-brac it's the creepiest funniest thing that yeah porcelain cats and you know all my little knickknacks um what else is what else is in his? All of his movies are about families. They're either about biological families or adopted families. This movie too, The French Dispatch,

is very much clearly about an adopted family, a big family that the Bill Murray character is building for himself to make himself feel whole. And maybe this movie doesn't have that pathos that you're talking about, Chris, but you can still read into that every single one of the M. Gustave

building out the family of the hotel and adopting a young boy, Royal Tenenbaums being about a true family, Moonrise Kingdom about being an orphan looking for companionship in a family. Like it's kind of amazing how he returns to this over and over and over again. You can feel the J.D. Salinger influence pretty heavily on him here. You know, that's that was a huge talking point in the early days of wes and it's never really escaped him he's always returning to this over and over again and then we've already talked about actors and performance i mean just his ability to bring in the most talented people every film features multiple oscar winners at this point which is really something special there's not a

lot of people who can say that um and a lot of people who are repeat in all of his movies there is like a kind of a wes anderson world and troop that lends itself to that idea of family also that there is this group of people bound together in this project. Do you guys have favorite Wes Anderson performers? Well, I feel like Bill Murray is in a hall all his own. You know, he occupies a very special space because I think many people attribute Rushmore to changing the way we think about bill murray right yeah i i do uh luke wilson for me was a real i just i have to be honest and not to be superficial we don't talk enough about um buzz cut luke wilson and just how handsome he is you know he also shows up in rushmore um to to devastate jason schwartzman so luke wil, and obviously the Tenenbaums

hangs on him in that performance. Gwyneth Paltrow's only in one, but that's really one important one to me. I don't know, who are yours? I've come to really enjoy Adrian Brody in these movies. Me too. I mean, I really like him in Darjeeling, which we'll talk about later,

but his art dealer prick, who seems to be in every one of these movies. His performance in French Dispatch and Grand Budapest are hilarious. Yeah. Hilarious. Wes is the only person who knows how to use Adrian Brody anymore. It's tough. I know. We'll see what happens on Succession this year, I guess.

Yeah. And I also love the Edward Norton character that seems to be in Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest. And he's in French Dispatch very briefly, which is usually a cop or some sort of figure of authority, but is also wound too tight

and following all the right or wrong rules. So I think Brody and Norton are my two favorite recent ones. It's interesting to watch Tilda Swinton, even by Tilda Swinton standards, let her freak flag fly in West movies.

You know, every movie she's like, what I need is six hours in the makeup chair. And also, I mean, Owen Wilson is the star of the first film in the French Dispatch. And he is, to me,

he's the signature figure yes of course he is the antoine donyale you know he is the like the the pov character in a lot of ways for the early west movies even if he's not the star of them you know as a co-writer and then circling back into life aquatic as like this the the heart of life aquatic in a lot of ways. I miss Wes and Owen as a tandem. I feel like something changed with Wes's movies when Owen became a big movie star and they stopped collaborating on these more personal stories. And I don't know what they each bring to the movies. We should say The French Dispatch is written by Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman and Hugo Guinness along with Wes. And he has mixed and matched his collaborators over the years. Roman has written a couple of movies with him.

Noah Baumbach has written movies with him. He's always kind of teaming up with someone that he's very close to to tell these stories. But I want an Owen-Wes standalone movie. I long for that. And then the other thing I think that is undeniable about his movies is music. I think one thing that many of the the filmmakers that the three of us talk about on the show all the time you know pta sofia coppola tarantino those like the big tent poles of the big picture they all are obsessed with music and the

use of music in movies and wes blends all three disciplines He blends classical music that we've all heard before. He blends original score with two signature composers, Mark Mothersbaugh and Alexander Desplat. And he's up there in the Scorsese conversation in terms of using pop music in his movies. Chris, what do you think about Wes as a sonic filmmaker? I think he might be, with no disrespect, probably the most influential user of music outside.

I think he kind of surpasses Tarantino. Just as speaking from the front lines of the record stores, we sold a lot of Kinks records around the time that these movies were really popping off. And that revival of Bowie, Tropicalia from Life Aquatic, I feel like he has a pretty profound impact on people's tastes, at least of our generation.

Did you discover a lot of music watching his movies, Amanda? Yeah. I discovered a whole world of references from his movies, which I mean and I did like I discovered a whole like world of references from his movies which again we always talk about when we see these movies and sort of the you know generational impact they have and all the filmmakers you just made mentioned are like late 90s early 2000s when I was you know 14 to 18 I didn't see any Wes Anderson movies until I went to college and I like definitely heard a

lot of music for the first time, saw a lot of cool styles for the first time, you know, like just like fashion for the first time. I had seen these before I had seen a lot of like French films and a lot of the references. But the other thing about the music is, Chris, you and I listened, I re-listened to the royal tenenbaums rewatchables which is which you did with annie greenwald which was great and you said something about um this being a very music video generation which i think all of those people are but especially wes anderson and some of that rewatchability that you were talking about where you can just watch snippets of it yeah Yeah. Because it really is so, he creates these moments, right?

Where it's the music and the frame is just so and the colors are just so and it really is, he communicates emotion through it, but it is like just a specific visual, like musical experience that's meant to stand on its own

and he's pretty singular at it. Should we do our top fives? Sure. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to say about how Wes crafts his movies? You know, I came across an interview with him. I think it was attached to Grand Budapest, where he talked about his early childhood passions. And he was like, when I was growing up, I wanted to be an architect. And then I wanted to be a writer. And even though he's like a filmmaker of prodigious gifts, I wanted to be an architect and then I wanted to be a writer.

And even though he's like a filmmaker of prodigious gifts, I kind of did think that's a really useful way of thinking about him is essentially like somebody with deep literary influences and deep design influences that get manifested in films. And maybe that is a little bit of the barrier people have sometimes to loving his work the way they may love something that seems, I don't know, more deeply humanistic or obviously about flawed people or a flawed world. The hardships are a little bit more front and center. If you go back through Wes Anderson's movies, a lot of the characters in the movies are actually broke all the time. They're just kind of living on credit or trying to string string something together waiting for that next check to come in but they're always bouncing checks they're always like experiencing hardship but it doesn't feel bad you know it looks like it's a lot of fun to to be them and so anyway i was just thinking like

that's like a really good way of um thinking about him as sort of an architect and a novelist who wound up being a filmmaker. Yeah, he's, you know, it seems like he comes from not lower class means necessarily. His father was a realtor and an architect and his parents worked in advertising.

But he's a Texas kid who I think lived in a world that he felt seemed very small to him. And so he had to use his imagination to build out all of these worlds. Also, Amanda Child of Divorce, Wes, you can certainly feel that rippling through all of his movies. And somebody who I think one thing that I also really like about him is I think like us, he likes to work with his friends. I think the idea of building a community around your projects and your art and your career is nice. A lot of times we talk about Hollywood and the machinations and did Godzilla versus Kong work at the box office? Ultimately, that's not

really what I care about. What I care about is movies that feel like humans made them. No movie feels more like a human making it than the several dozen artisans that are building out Wes Anderson's imagination onto the screen. So he's just a good one. And it's funny that we've been doing the show for almost four years, and this is our first real opportunity to kind of go through all of his works and our favorites. So let's do that right now. Let's do our top fives. Amanda, why don't you start us off? Oh, that's exciting. So Chris, I don't need to see your face while I do this. You are my brother in arms and I'm not a member of the CR army because frankly, it seems like

they're breaking federal and local laws at this point but in spirit i support everything total exoneration right that said my number five is fantastic mr fox which is this is a stop motion animated film and if you're surprised that i'm picking it i am too but i vividly remember seeing this movie with my mother, I believe at the Atlantic Station AMC in Atlanta, Georgia, over one of the holidays when it came out. And my mother's not really a movie person. It's not, you know, pop culture is not our shared area. And I like basically took a chance being like, whatever, you have to come see this movie

with me because I'm tired of talking to you. And- Like a true Wes Anderson character. Sure, yeah. And it like, it worked out and we both walked away like delighted by what we had seen. And I think we were probably delighted

by very different things. I was moved by this wistful, ultimately pretty grown-up take on a Roald Dahl children's story. This movie is currently available to stream on Disney+, which, since for me, the average age of Disney Plus users is four, is, I think, pretty hilarious. I don't know if four-year-olds are going to get all of the jokes. It's about family. It's about thwarted ambition. It's about capitalism, sort of, or at least greedy farmers. And I don't know, if you want to have an agribusiness fight, cue up Fantastic Mr. Fox.

But it's also a story about family. And it's, I think, yes, I guess I will use the whimsical word. We a story about family. And it's, I think, yes, I guess I will use the whimsical word. We can talk about it. I like, I find it more charming and which is sort of like an ineffable quality that keeps popping up and things that I really like.

And that seemed to be very polarizing in the world. And I think it also just communicated characters and story and stakes in a way that my mother, who like mostly just is like really up on law and order, also found very charming. So I think it's one of those also like kind of Wes Anderson experiments, like you decided to spend two or like four years making a stop motion movie of like a children's book. But it pays off and actually people can connect to it

in different ways. So I'm a fan. Also fun to see like George Clooney and Meryl Streep in the Wes Anderson universe. Or hear them, I should say.

For Amanda's purposes, George Clooney's vocals recorded at his Lake Como house. Yeah. Just teaching us how to work. Yes. If you own the Criterion Blu-ray of Fantastic Mr. Fox, there is making of material that you have to watch,

which is lots and lots of video of West filming his actors, recording the dialogue while acting out the dialogue in open fields. It is amazing stuff to watch George Clooney running around Lake Como acting like a fox. Truly fascinating stuff. This movie is actually my number four on my list. You know, it's one of the best animated movies of the 21st century.

I think it's honestly one of Wes's most mature movies, and that might sound a little bit ridiculous, but I think thwarted ambition, you said, Amanda. I think that's really well put. That is what the Mr. Fox character is tangling with. And certainly you can see the movie through the eyes of Jason Schwartzman's young son character, but it's really a story about middlees and badgers and wolves. But that's what it's about. And it's in some ways like this is maybe the only way he felt he could have told that story through the lens of Roald Dahl. You know, I was thinking about this, too, the other day because Netflix recently acquired all of the works of Roald Dahl to be made into films and TV series, which is so weird because there are already so many good films based on the works of Roald Dahl. They've made almost every one of his signature novels. Roald Dahl was my favorite author growing up. But were you ever like, they've got to make visual content out of these books? I need

films and movies, TV shows about these books? Well, I mean, you grow up liking Charlie and the Chocolate Factory already. You know what I mean? We had Willy Wonka as a core text when I was five years old. So you could build the relationship there. Matilda was my favorite. That was my favorite book. It's wonderful. Yeah. It's such a brilliant book. And the movie, when it came out, I remember that being a big deal. And it's honestly pretty good when she makes all the poker chips and everything fly. Yes. Yes. I loved that. That book and all of Roald Dahl's work I think it has a lot in common with Wes's stuff

I mean all of Wes's stuff is also about like people who feel like outsiders and a lot of Roald Dahl's stories are about people who feel like outsiders it was a great pick Amanda I'm glad you picked it

I feel a kinship with you for once when it comes to an animated movie CR you hate animation so feel free to degrade Fantastic Mr. Fox

is absolutely delightful. I will not stand in the way of that. You want my number five? Yeah, go to your number five, Chris. I'm going Darjeeling, which is probably the most maligned movie of his filmography, I would imagine. And for me, it's probably the most emotionally probing one, I guess is the right way to say it. It's definitely the darkest. The father figure has already passed on. It's definitely the darkest. The father

figure has already passed on. The brothers hate one another. It's a huge breakup movie. It's like Wes Anderson's Blood on the Tracks. It's also a really good, to me, road movie. I think the three brothers in this movie are Owen Wilson,

Adrian Brody, and Jason Schwartzman. It's probably my favorite Schwartzman performance. He plays a kind of sort of neurotic Lothario. All three of them basically abuse drugs the entire time. They're on this train trip across India to go find their mother who's living in a monastery. It has one of Wes Anderson's most, I think, memorable sequences, which is essentially a J.D. Salinger-esque short story that happens in the middle of the film

that takes place the day of the three brothers' father, played by Bill Murray's funeral. It involves basically getting a car out of a garage. And it is in and of itself would be a fascinating film to see. It is one of my favorite things that he's ever done i know i guess this film does have its detractors i'd love to to chat about that i guess um but to me this one's really really emotionally rewarding i feel like the criticism that was uh leveled at it was very much about like him entering uh

the world of india but maybe not giving enough time to the world of India. I think that that was what, and I think that there's obviously a legitimate conversation to be had about that. I think if you focus more on what the story is trying to be about, which is these three brothers and the way that they kind of like use and abuse their way through the world,

it actually makes sense that he told the story this way. You know, that there's something kind of superficial that they're going on this quest, this journey of self-discovery to get to the bottom of it. I think every time I watch it, I like it more. The first time I watched it was the first time I was like, whoa, actually, maybe I'm not in love with this

director anymore. And it didn't really work for me, but it has grown on me over the years. And I think that's also similarly to the Fantastic Mr. Fox. I think it's a function of getting a little older and kind of figuring out how I feel about myself and how I feel about my siblings and my parents. And Wes is really good at that.

He's really good at probing that in ways that I probably didn't fully understand when I first started getting excited about his movies as a teenager. Amanda, what do you think about Darjeeling? This is one that I just haven't revisited very often because I had that same thing. I remember I saw this one at BAM in Brooklyn and it was like an event at this point. You have been schooled in the ways of Wes Anderson for our generation and then you go and you see it opening weekend. And I didn't have the same connection with it, you know, for any number of reasons. Maybe I was too young to emotionally connect to some of what's happening in the movie.

And it is also a slightly different emotional valence for a Wes Anderson movie. It's a lot detached, almost uncomfortable sincerity to almost all of his other emotional movies that is probably the only way that I can comfortably connect to sincerity or emotions in general. You know, there needs to be like a lot of distance and then three deadpan jokes

and like no facial expression for me to be comfortable with people expressing their wants or needs or hurt or whatever. And this is a bit more, this is a sharper edge than his other work. And so I think I was just kind of like, I don't know about this. I'm going to move on to, you know, the foxes. The three brothers in this movie basically spend the entire time arguing over who gets to keep certain artifacts from their father, like a belt or prescription glasses or luggage. And it kind of lampoons what would then become

Wes Anderson's own fascination with physical objects. And, you know, these guys are trying to basically be like, dad loved me most, so he would want me to have the glasses or the belt or the luggage and then they obviously realized like how empty these sort of this this game that they're playing is and then i feel like after this wes anderson was like actually fucking objects are really cool like i really like i really like all this stuff let's not ever make fun of that again so i always kind of enjoyed that part of it it is also even though it is about uh louis vuitton luggage in many ways it's also it's the most punk of his movies i would

say you know it's the movie that is the most kind of like defiant in tone and um the most anguished in some ways um darjeeling is good maybe 10 years from now it'll it'll it'll be in my top five not right now it's not my number five is movie that is not on any of your lists and i i don't know if this is controversial but i feel like the film that is now like the lost one in the in the filmography is moonrise kingdom um which i think when it was released was received warmly if not overwhelmingly um i think this is one of his best movies i think it's certainly one of his most affecting. It felt like for many years, Wes was trying to make a kids movie and just never did.

And this is his kids movie. It's a melancholy and deeply emotional and wistful kids movie, but it is a movie about two very young people falling in what they think is love and probably is love. It's very much also seen through the eyes of like broken families and outsiderdom and artistic creation and escape. And, you know, it's a movie that is kind of clearly blending like a lot of the Boy Scout influence of a young life in Texas with this sort of like Norman Rockwell painting lifestyle and the lie

of the American family. That's like a big core theme of his. But sometimes it's hard to put into words like why a movie gets you. And this is just a movie that I just feel like just gets me. I think some people felt like maybe a little bit disquieted by showing the intimacy of two preteens. You know, I think that's like legitimate. I think there can be something a little bit disquieted by showing the intimacy of two preteens you know i think that's like legitimate i think there can be something a little bit awkward about the way the story is told but i don't know it's like kind of true to how i felt when i was 12 and like how i felt trying to talk to girls and make friends and you know i think he's like even though the movie looks like a painting it feels real at times and did you use what kind of bird are you as a pickup line before when you were like 12 yeah that's how uh that's how aileen and i got together actually went

backstage at the play i was gonna say i don't think it's like a coincidence that you are also someone who you know found your wife now in high school you were sort of like possibly more advanced or in tune with your teenage emotions where i watch Moonrise Kingdom and I'm just kind of like, I don't know, do 12 year olds really have feelings? And I'm sure that they will. I do. But also for me, part of like the, the Wes Anderson characters who resonate with me are kind of like the arrested development characters, either the people who are either trying to get in touch with some lost youth or,

and like reclaim it and live it much later, or people who have already peaked and are kind of, you know, on the, on the downward slope, it's a little strange for him to be dealing with people who are like, actually like living in the moment of happiness. You know,

I wouldn't say it's great. You got to like may we all be so lucky but i was like i don't know okay yeah i mean it's not it's not like a pick and daisy's romance though you know there is like a lot of like intensity and catharsis in the movie and there's a big there's a big sadness of the bruce willis francis mcdormand character kind of like juxtaposed with the young love yeah um but this is this is one of my favorites i watched it again last night and i So the Bruce Willis, Francis McDormand character kind of like juxtaposed with the young love. Yeah. But this is one of my favorites. I watched it again last night and I was like, God damn it. This is effective on me.

Okay. That's my number five. So my number four is Fantastic Mr. Fox. Amanda, do you want to hold your number four or do you want to talk about it right now? No, it's also Chris's number four, but we won't stop. Oh, I actually changed mine. Oh, you did?

I changed it. Oh, okay. Wow. Okay. So then Chris, why don't we go to, you did? CR changed it. Oh, okay. Wow. Okay, so then Chris, why don't we go to your number four since you changed it? So I'll cut like his, the beginning part of his career

up to Tenenbaums. I think there is, it's really fascinating to go back and watch the evolution of his style. And so the movie I have it for is the least Wes Anderson movie, but also the most Wes Anderson movie. It's Bottle Rocket.

This is the one that he made on the cheap. This is what got him recognized by James Brooks. This is what got him recognized by Martin Scorsese. This is really kind of what announced him as a talent. And then he went on to really capitalize on it in a way that we don't really get to see very often in filmmaking where somebody's like, you've got a lot to give. Why don't you try something else? And you're like, fucking how about Royal Tenenbaums buddy like um and so i was very uh i remember this movie came out in 96 right and i you know it's right in and around that independent cinema wave of the 90s and i he was he was an oddball of me it took me a couple viewings to like get bottle rocket but once you kind of get the pattern and get the Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson vibe,

and James Caan is really great in this. It's just like a really... It's both an interesting time capsule to go back and see Wes Anderson before everybody is costume designed to within an inch of their life, but also all the themes that are already there about sibling rivalries and mental illness and all the themes that are already there about sibling

rivalries and mental illness and all this stuff that would kind of come up over and over again in his movies, but under layers and layers and layers of accumulated stuff by the time you get to French Dispatch, but if you go back to Bottle

Rocket, it's just kind of like, I'm just going to point a camera at Owen Wilson and let him talk. And it's pretty awesome. Yeah, Dignan is the patient zero for all of his characters. It's sort of like, is there something wrong with this guy or is he a genius? You're trying to figure that out the whole time you're watching the movie. It's a great first

feature. There's a lot of good stuff about this in the You Must Remember This series about Polly Platt. Polly Platt, who over the years identified and shepherded so many filmmakers, especially male filmmakers. And she was there early and introducing Wes to James L. Brooks. And imagine the impact talking to Polly Platt and James L. Brooks at the age of 25 can have on your ability to make movies. He obviously absorbed a lot of wisdom about being honest with your characters. And Bottle Rocket, as odd as it is,

feels like an honest movie. Feels like somebody's trying to figure something out, right? Yes. It's interesting to watch these in reverse order, which I just, I didn't see Bottle Rocket first because I was 12. Just, you know, no one, no one thought to, to, to do that for me. But so if, if you started, you know, kind of with like the grand Baroque period, then going back,

it's very cool. Cause it is like a, you know, Rosetta stone for a lot of things that are happening. Um, and it is amazing that, you know, bottle rocket turns into 10 of bombs and life aquatic and this whole grand career, but you are also kind of like, okay, but you know, bottle rocket turns into 10 of bombs and life aquatic and this whole grand career, but you are also kind of like, okay, but you know, where's, where's all my fancy stuff. Uh,

but you just like, you can't like recreate the experience of going on that like journey with a filmmaker, which I'm a little jealous of. Okay. So, uh, I mentioned my,

my number four is fantastic. Mr. Fox, why don't we go to my number three and Amanda's number three and Chris's number two, which is what, Chris? Life Aquatic. Amanda, why Life Aquatic on your list? Number one, Bill Murray, which I just like, just an incredible, incredible. I think I probably underrate this in the Bill Murray canon.

And obviously it's pretty soon after Lost in Translation and not that far from Rushmore. This is kind of like the golden period of our late 90s gods being like, hey, this is the guy. But this is really the guy. I also love the ocean and love the Mediterranean where most of this was filmed. And just like the sunlight

and the blue costumes. I was rewatching it last night and I was like, I got to make this my fall look, which many Halloween costumes have, you know, been paid. Are you going to get a red beanie? I would do it if someone could hook me up both with like the kind of day leisure suits, you know, the blue with the dark blue stripe stripe and then i'd love some pajamas seems like a whole variety of pinstripe pajamas i'm really available wes anderson started merch shop i like i will buy it um how has he not started a merch shop well thank god he hasn't yeah i don't i don't know what can you i would sleep in a blanket made of the team's issue flag that ned designs i'm just saying totally but then you would kind of feel bad about yourself, right?

Because you'd see like I would. No, but I appreciate that he hasn't while also being like, God, this is perfect. But, you know, this is like one of the sumptuous big ticket underwater. We cut a ship in half. You know, we did all of the intense visual musical stuff. And it is also what I consider to be, I was going to say the Bad Dads trilogy, but once we were talking about Fantastic Mr. Fox, there are really at least four movies about charming, charismatic dads who aren't really doing everything that they should be as a dad or dad like figures, I suppose I should say, who it's it's nice to see sort of soften over the course of the career. But this has some empathy for the character and is like an interesting exploration of of that dynamic and like that recurring character who I'm always very charmed by and like a great supporting cast

really underrated Angelica Houston performance in this as well she was the person who I think we forgot we were talking about his troop you know she's been in I think four of his films now and she also is reliably great she's great in ten of bounds as well um yeah i think this is his most ambitious movie i think this is the biggest swing that he ever took and part of that is like the design of the ship that you mentioned amanda and part of that is the scope of the story and trying to tell a story the story of like a jacuzzo s figure in this crisis between spending your life devoted to your family versus spending your life devoted to your work. You know, like that's ultimately Steve is this like huge narcissistic figure faced with a the introduction of a son that he, you know, he always really knew he had, but never really sought out and then confronting in his later life what it means to be a father.

And it's beautiful and it's interesting and he's trying stuff you know using that henry selleck animation to create all these new creatures in the world and you know going from exotic island to exotic island and action sequences on the boat when the pirates come aboard and there's all this kind of grandeur and also all of this little weird you know we haven't used the words like quirky and twee and all the words that were used to describe Wes when he first came along,

but this also feels like kind of the maximum amount of that stuff too, you know, like his world design feels so big here. Chris,

it's number two for you. What do you like about it? Yeah, you know, I think it's probably the most effective marriage of deeply human and emotional filmmaking with deeply like um mannered and sort of built out world building and so like all the net stuff is just very very very effective even the willem dafoe as the sort of surrogate son in

the whole in the whole movie is really great. Gold Bloom's hilarious in this movie. I just rewatched it. He's just so fucking funny in this. But yeah, I think that this is sort of the apex of the two competing impulses in his mind. And then I think after Aquatic, he gives away a little bit to the diorama filmmaking of like, I'm'm just gonna make it

all like so super specific and perfect and like boxed in and i think that you can reach incredible heights doing that like budapest to me does that but you know um that this is this is really something special speaking of budapest why don't we go to chris's number three and amanda your number two oh yeah grand budapestapest Hotel. This movie rules. Is this the funniest one? Yeah, I think so. And a lot of that is the Ralph Fiennes of it all, who is someone who had not been

in any previous Wes Anderson movies. And it's so exciting when someone shows up and just like gets it and clicks and is like a member of the troupe. And also that you get to see like a new side of Ralph Fiennes as well, which I don't really think he'd gotten those opportunities before. And so, you know, again, Wes Anderson sort the opulence and like the nostalgia, even though it's like nostalgia for things that Wes Anderson was not alive for and I was not alive for at all, which is for all of his movies.

And that like didn't really exist. Right. You know, there are these fantasy lands, but how he's working with the same themes of a family, a group of people, and a father-son-esque relationship, which this is not actually a father-son, but the Gustav character and the Zero character. It's both about friendship, but a bit about family. And it's nice to see that Wes Anderson's emotions evolve slightly over his career and are slightly more hopeful, even though this is set against the backdrop of a base of world war two, essentially it's, you know, thirties, Europe, a made up country in Europe. Uh, so there's a, there is a lot of darkness on the edge,

but this more hopeful, um, like mentorship relationship. And it's really funny. And I, and I do also think like this invented millennial pink like i think it like literally did like this is and obviously he was working in those color tones even in in tenon bounds but this this pink being in that poster i truly think you can try and trace it to like every dumb object in your home now can i ask a question though about this movie yeah so it's obviously like this is one where i feel like i really noticed first and i adore this movie but you notice basically him putting reality at like a kind of step remove because he's like rather than make this um switzerland or whatever i'm going to create like a fictional european country with a fictional dark force rising in Europe.

We're going to take out all the ugly stuff about World War II and keep the romance part about it, even though there's refugees and prisoners and all that stuff. What do you guys think about his ability to interface with, be it real history or the real world,

and whether or not that ever affects how you feel about his movies or how other people feel about them i still think it's possible and and you probably should see this movie despite all the things that amanda said which are all true which is you know it's very funny and charming the design is extraordinary it's still basically a movie about the kind of the end of civilization and civilized culture you know like m gustav is this figure of propriety and his world is completely disrupted and him being thrown in prison at the beginning of the movie is this metaphor for basically like what fascism is

about to do to europe you know it's about to mistreat it and destroy it and i think you can see that without necessarily seeing soldiers being shot on the battlefield. So I like that he doesn't always take the easiest path to that kind of message or that kind of lesson. Would it be interesting to see him more

attentively lock into that kind of world tragedy? It might be. I don't know. Maybe Asteroid City might do that. I'm not really sure. I think don't know maybe astroid city might do that i don't i'm not really sure i think that would make me uncomfortable but again that's just sort of what he does he does it a remove first of all like he he creates you know the new york of royal tenenbaums is also a new york that like never existed it's this idealized salandres version that a small kid in houston reading books or a small child in Atlanta, Georgia reading books like imagined about the 70s.

But so all of these are romanticized ideas of of the past in a way that I don't think is self-conscious. But I do. And I understand if it doesn't work for you, it definitely doesn't work for you. But it's part of the exercise, like this people out of time or things that we can't get back. So I don't know if I necessarily need Wes Anderson to suddenly address the trauma head on in one of his projects. I think we have a lot of other filmmakers to do that and that's their, that's their metiers. Um, but again, I'm deeply not

in touch with my emotions. So that's, that's just one woman speaking. Um, let's use that as an opportunity to pivot to more emotions. So, um, why don't we do my number one first before doing your number ones, which you guys share. And this is also your number four, Amanda, which is Rushmore, which is notably not on your list, Chris. I was a little surprised. Maybe you can't have too many early hit singles. But Rushmore, like Amanda, I also did not see bottle rock at first i saw rushmore first and i might have even mentioned this when we just had our 98 movie draft but uh rushmore is probably one of the five most important movies i saw as a teenager um and definitely a movie that flipped the script on my relationship to movies and one that um obviously introduces like a

kind of a big-time filmmaker who's clearly going to ascend out of that independent wave that you were describing, Chris, and into something more meaningful than that. But he's still never written a character like Max Fisher to me, who is so damaged and so confused and so desperate. I mean, he's really sociopathic in this movie. And looking at the movie now and all the things that he does and the way that he's working through his feelings, which really seem to be like almost entirely informed by insecurity and the death of his mother is like really intense. And it's obviously very funny.

And it does feature this kind of perspective shifting performance from Bill Murray as Herman Bloom. And the music is mind blowing. And just hearing that song by The Creation over and over again, as they're getting up to their dirty tricks, it's got a lot of adventure. We see Brian Cox gearing up for Logan Roy in this movie. A wonderful performance by Olivia Williams. There's tons of great stuff about it, the design of it, the Mark Mothersbaugh score, but I'm still kind of knocked out by the Max Fisher creation and the quote-unquote discovery of Jason Schwartzman and challenging audiences to spend all this time with this kid who's so messed up. I just think this movie is a miracle.

I still can't believe that it happened. I can't believe that people were like, you know, it's a good idea to make this and to spotlight this figure. So I'm just, I still have a huge relationship to Rushmore and it's my favorite of his movies. What do you like about Amanda? I saw it. I can't remember if I saw Royal Tenenbaums first

or this first. It was definitely in college. As I said on the 1998 podcast, I didn't see it when it came out because I was too busy crying about Arbogeddon. But also- There's two polls of American films. Sure.

And I don't know. I definitely saw Election. Someone figured out at some point that you need to see Election, which Tracy Flick is my Max Fisher for sure. And it doesn't take a genius to parse all of that. So by the time I saw it, I think I'd seen,

well, I was handed this in Tenenbaums by a friend and kind of entered the world simultaneously and had election as a reference. So for me, it was more about, I mean, he's obviously an incredibly memorable character, a little bit easier to be like, oh my God, this person's really annoying when you're not a teenage boy. But the seedlings of this style from the slow motion and the music drops and some of the dialogue, even though there's also still people just yelling about handjobs, which was really funny. And it's just like on and on. It makes me laugh. And the stylistic montage at the beginning of all of the clubs and the themes,

both of alienation and father figures, but also the style of the blazer, the very specific. I guess it's set in the 90s but it's not really it could be in the 70s and you wouldn't know the difference so for me this is like the real like oh i see what we're working with here and you kind of start seeing like the wes anderson world opening up yeah also i wrote a hit play as the please listen to my podcast yeah love love rush more okay let's go to the film that is my number two and both of your number ones what is it Chris Tenenbaums so I still think this is his masterpiece do you agree Amanda yes yeah probably the best collection of performances the best collection of performances, the best combination of drama and comedy, the best, I guess to me, probably to Amanda,

probably to you, Sean, the most recognizable of his little dollhouse worlds, just because we've all spent a significant amount of time in New York. And yeah, I mean, I kind of thought for a while there where I was like, oh, is Rushmore, are we sure it's that good? And then I went back and obviously, I watch it for rewatch was like, oh, is Rushmore, are we sure it's that good? And then I went back and obviously

I watch it for rewatchables, but I always loved Rushmore, but I was like, I wonder if Rushmore still, if it still has it. And it really does. It really just is like, it packs such a punch. Tenenbaums. Sorry, Tenenbaums. I went back and I was like, Tenenbaums still has it. Tenenbaums still

really packs a punch, especially around the Richie character, which is probably the most tragic figure in the kind of Wes Andersonmore that Tenenbaums is what, three years later and like so fully complete from the house itself, you know, and it's like a real house that he found and redesigned. Talk about like a literal manifestation of his project and the performances and the music and and the colors like which i i feel like pta being like the lights but it is like you know the fucking lights but when you say wes anderson i think of those like you know the yellows and the and the reds and the and the warmth and I can see everything so composed and it really is from from ten and bounds and that also has a lot to do with how

old I was when I saw it it was the first one I learned a lot about like the rest of the world through this movie which is probably what annoys every single person who can't stand Wes Anderson and you, there are like a fair number of detractors and people who do use words like twee and quirky and just a collection of references. But you know, sometimes you catch things at the right moment and it being so fully formed and me being so fully unformed, I was just like, oh my God, this is it. I think this movie has something that none of the other Wes Anderson movies has, and that's Gene Hackman. Yeah, it's true. As Royal Tenenbaum. Good point. Go back and watch Tenenbaum. Holy moly. I mean, famously,

these two didn't really get along that well, Wes and Gene. And Wes is a very exacting director. And by this point, Gene Hackman was a very seasoned actor. He's like, I don't know if you know this, but I was in Crimson Tide. But he was a fit. I mean, he was, his energy is unbelievable and powers the movie. And, you know, obviously

like Luke Wilson's character is the sort of the pain, the painful heart of the movie. But Hackman is the engine, you know, maybe Margo is the style and Chaz is the anguish, but the neurosis. Yeah.

Yeah. But holy cow, Hackman is just on a thousand the whole time. That scene between him and Chaz in the closet full of all the board games when they're screaming at each other is just amazing. It's just electrifying. When Hackman just like jumps up to like start screaming right back.

It's so good. It's so funny. I mean, I just, you know, obviously we love Hackman on the show. And it's also got maybe the best Owen Wilson of the entire collection. Yes, yes. Eli Cash.

I've been asking this whole time, yeah. Just an amazingly fun movie and a movie that also i i the only like the slightest ding i would have on it is like by the time i saw this i had read all the glass family stories and so if you have read all those stories you're kind of like this feels like such a direct riff on something that's already out in the world which is there's nothing wrong with that necessarily but i felt familiar in a way that i think the first two of his films i was like what is this?

Like, I've never seen anything like this before, but that doesn't really detract. The Glass family didn't have the Ramones playing over it. Yeah, that's true. Touche. And also,

like, we didn't all read the Glass story simultaneously. This really did, like, feel like a moment, even if you came to it several years later. And this, I think this is the one that creates like the real certainly the school of Wes Anderson Hollywood costumes

which has like started to annoy people but it's when it becomes just like a visual cultural signifier and that can be annoying if you don't want to buy the same merch as other people but it also can really be like a you know an exhilarating sense of like oh wow look at we all share this or we would all like to share this weird sense of humor and this particular this particular taste i think the other thing that it has that is became a cliche and has now gone all the way back around again to fully inspired is the slow motion jukebox sequence like margo getting off the bus and then nico's these days playing and then the end of the film when they're exiting the grave site and the van morrison song everyone plays where you're like whoa you know music can do a lot to make something feel special um and this is i think these are

probably the best examples the most memorable examples of just dropping the needle into onto a movie and letting it play out is is one of his superpowers now when you hear those songs like you see those scenes i mean as you were talking i just started doing like like in my head you know i can't talk about it without the soundtrack uh so that's it. That's our list. Wes is one of the greats. Anything else you guys want to add about him and his films? What's one Wes Anderson? What's like a thing you want Wes Anderson to take on?

Like what's, you know, we've got the New Yorker. We've got Hotel Life. What's like a new bit you want him to hit? Maybe like a bank robber, one last job, a cop who's trying to trail him, you know, and just maybe see if the action really is the juice. What's Wes Anderson's take on BJ's on Alvarado at 2 a.m.?

I don't know. I'm willing to follow him wherever he wants to go. Yeah. I'd love a restaurant movie. Oh, that's a good one. Okay. After this Jeffrey Wright segment, I would love to see like a full-blown like this person is a chef in a restaurant in France

or something yeah like the sushi sashimi like three-minute segment in I Love Dogs yeah I Love Dogs whatever

that's a great that's the best that to me was like the best part of the movie I was like oh make that all the Mendel's cake stuff in Grand Budapest it's just like

just go make a chef movie get Bradley Cooper remake Burnt. Burnt remake. Yeah. Perfect. No better way to end an ode to one of our favorite filmmakers

than by referencing Burnt. This is truly a ringer podcast. Chris, Amanda, thank you so much, guys. Now let's go to my conversation with Mia Hansen-Love. Mia, I love Bergman Island. I'm glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us. I'm not really here, but I'm trying to do my best.

This is as close to here as we get these days. So this feels like a film that you could not have made 15 years ago or maybe even five years ago. I'm curious when this idea first came to you as a film. Yes, it actually took me a lot of time to feel capable of doing this film. I feel it was a film that was somehow with me uh for a long time like on the side while I was doing some other films uh but um I needed time to write this film but when I ended up writing it it was so easy actually that's the that was the nice thing about this film, because usually I struggle when I write.

Usually it's painful, just like for the character, when Chris in the film says that it's so difficult for her to write. I mean, usually it's the same with me, except for this film, actually, which is a little bit contradictory, because you could think that when a film deals about the difficulty of writing it should be difficult to write but actually it wasn't like this because I really waited until I was ready and so when I was ready I just jumped into it and then I really enjoyed it so much so yes for many years I think maybe 10 years ago or even more I started to think of one day making a film about a couple of directors making a film that would be a portrait of two directors and and and through that the film would it would be a way to deal with with creation with filmmaking of course but

I mean not only filmmaking creation also, I think, and the process of writing, the process of creating, especially for people who create from their own life, I mean, who take their own life as a first material to create fictions. So this idea of making a film that will be the film both about relationship and about creation and the tension between both somehow,

I've had that for a long, long time. But then it's years later, I just didn't know, like it was just there in my mind. And then it took me years until I got this idea of Fauré and of setting the film there. And that was really the one thing that started the machine for me,

you know, the machine of fiction. And I think the idea of Forreux maybe first came after Bergman died and I happened to, I saw a book. I've had a book in my hands. That was a book that was made from the auction of the Bergman estate because Bergman, after he died, wanted to sell everything, his houses and all the objects that were in it. And they made a book about this auction.

And for some reason, I got the book in my hands. And I was really impressed by these images of the island and about his places. I felt very attracted to this place. Like you can feel attracted to a forbidden place. Like in Blue Bear, the woman who knows she's not supposed to go in the room, you know, like Blue Bear tells her she should not go there. And that's where all the previous women are, you know, are dead. And of course, she has to go there. And it felt a little bit like that for me, like, you know, this place where I shouldn't go to this sacred place.

Like, I mean, it's the ultimate place when you are a cinephile and when you love Bergman's work. Fohr really represents like the, it's like the one place, you know, for a cinephile. There is nothing, there is, I don't know, I cannot think of a better place to go for anybody who's a cinephile than Fohr, you know, a place that would be more connected to a director than for her. So it was like the forbidden place. And I guess somehow it's why I wanted to go there

and make a film there. Tell me about your relationship to Bergman. Do you remember the first of his films that you saw? I'm not so sure, actually. But I think I saw a couple of his films in my 20s not before I think in my 20s uh when there was a retrospective at the cinema at the French Cinematheque at the time it was still at Palais de Chaillot the old Cinematheque and and there were many of his films uh were screened uh I think it was before he died. He was still alive. I don't know in which order I saw them, but I think Monica is probably one of his films that impressed me the most when I watched them.

I mean, the films of Bergman that I saw when I was really young and that impressed me the most are not The Seven Seals or Cries and Whispers. These are not the films that I've had a strong relationship to. I mean, the films of Bergman that I really felt connected to are not the emphatic films. You know, I'm not so much into emphasis. So, I mean, Cries and Whispers, now when I see it,

I'm still extremely impressed by it and if somebody tells me it's a masterpiece I can easily believe it is but I mean it's not it's too much for me I guess you know too heavy you know so for me it was more like Monica or I mean

I also remember his last film you know his last film, you know, his last film, Sarabande, was released in France. I don't know if it was. Was it released in the US? It was, yes. And, you know, Bergman didn't want it to be a film in cinema. He wanted it to be a TV film, but it was, luckily enough, it was released. And I have such a strong memory of watching the film in a cinema in Paris

because Bergman was still alive and it was so moving. It was overwhelming, actually, to see how he was filming his old actors, his actors who he had been filming during their whole life and that they had gotten into such intimacy with one another that he could film them as old people film them naked I mean he had really reached that level of intimacy that few directors ever reached I think and also there was his way of filming youth not only old people because he was also filming this young woman in Sarabande who was extraordinary Yulia D dufenius she was extraordinary in that film and it was also

very strong and modern the way she was looking at her and also it was there was the way he was filming digital anyway i mean i could talk about one for hours it's i i wouldn't know where to start because it's such a big territory you know there are so many different ways to get into it i could talk about his book lanterna magica because i mean his biography i read his autobiography i read also quite young i think i mean it was i i read it before i had seen the i mean when i read his autobiography the i had seen maybe only less than 10 of his films. But I was also very impressed by how he would write about himself. And I love his writing too.

It's often the case for me, I mean, the directors who impressed me the most or mean the most to me, like Truffaut and Romare, they're also writers to me. It's also about the way they're also writers to me it's also about the way they write i i cannot connect so deeply with a director when it's a director who never wrote his films basically the directors i connect the most deeply to are directors who wrote their films and and who are interested into right uh interested in the writing process. One of the most interesting and persuasive

kind of aspects of the film is looking at that balance or the lack of balance that Bergman had in his life and his work and his family and maybe the double standard that a male filmmaker or a man might have versus a woman. Yeah.

We were just talking about your family before we started recording here. I'm curious, like, how you think about that personally as opposed to some of the characters in the film. Well, to be honest, I don't look at it with a moral point of view. Mm-hmm. I am very aware of the difference that there is between a man and a woman.

When we talk about what it is to be a filmmaker or an artist and make a living and how you deal with that and how to find, how you find or you don't find a balance between, you know, whatever you want to give to your family and whatever you want to give to your creation or work. So I'm very aware of that difference. And actually, I got into arguments with some people in my crew when we were filming this scene, the dinner scene, when they're talking about that

and having an argument in the film about the way Bergman abandoned his children and the fact that he had so many wives and that it was the wives who took care of the children. They have this talk about this. And actually, it was interesting because as I was filming the scene, some people, men, I will not say who, but some people in my team like like felt felt aggressed personally by some of the lines by the comments and they were like they would turn to me and say but what what did you mean like why why why do you say that woman would not uh uh cannot do the same and cannot uh make uh children's and films i I mean, it has many children.

And I was just answering, well, because it's true. It's just true. I mean, who can deny it? But you still have men in this case who are denying it. So for me, I mean, it's just a matter of facts, you know. I'm aware that some men can give also as much importance to their kids and to raising them and to, you know, taking care of them as women.

Of course, I am aware of that, you know, but I mean, in general, I do think it's different for a woman who is an artist to deal with the family than it is for the men. I just think it's different,

you know, but on the other hand, what I mean is that it doesn't men. I just think it's different, you know. But on the other hand, what I mean is that it doesn't mean that I, that I, we say, condamn, how do you say in English? Yeah, man for, you know, dealing with it in a different way. Being aware that Bergman abandoned his kids or at least didn't take care of them, didn't raise them and let all his women, his many women take care of them and knowing what kind of man Bergman was in his private life, to be honest, that's not a problem for me in order to love his films. I can still love his films as much

when I know how bad a father, I know he was a bad father. I know he was probably a horrible person to be in love with. But I still love his films as much it's just uh i uh doesn't mean that morality is not a an importance in my personal life for me it's very important but when it's about artists that i uh uh that i uh love uh it's a different uh thing i mean i i i don't think you have to be, I make a difference between their personal lives and what they had to say in their films.

That's what I mean. Yeah, I really loved how you portrayed it in the film. I mean, I think it's a fascinating idea, probably something that we tend to overlook. My wife and I just had our first child. And so you tapped into something maybe that I was feeling about how present or not present I should be in everyone's life. Tell me a little bit about this sort of auto-fictive, biographical, or memoiristic filmmaking. And is that a form of storytelling

that you really like doing? Do you feel... No. You don't? No. So why something that feels like people will assume that this is your life when they watch this film i know but it's just i just can't do my films any other way it's just i write very personal films because i don't know how to write any different you know i just don't know how to me it's like a handicap it's's not something that I'm proud of or that I want to make publicity about. You know, like the fact that my films are so personal and that they obviously have such an autobiographical dimension.

It's something I'm aware of and I never tried to hide it. Although, if I want to be more precise, I would say they are not so much autobiographical or not so frontally as they seem, not so directly. It's much more complicated than that, of course. But I mean, I'm too honest and I give too much importance to sincerity to deny that and pretend they are not.

But it's not something that I would brag about. It's just the way I do because I don't know how to do any different way. Basically, when I try to, I don't like artifices. And when I try to write, I'm always looking for some kind of truth. And my quest for truth, which has always determined my way of writing and my way of making films, this quest always led me to write films that are very much connected to my personal life.

But it's not that I think that you cannot reach any truth if you write total fictions that are disconnected from your life. Of course, I don't think that that would be very naive. There are so many great films or stories and books or whatever that were made with characters that never existed or that were never inspired by a character who existed but it's just that i when i uh try to invent a character that's totally you know out of the like out of nowhere and i i i i don't know him enough you know i i need to know intimately the characters i'm writing about each of them to feel at ease or to feel that i i know their language that i understand them, that I know how

they would move, you know, to know how to film them. I need to have this intimacy to them. Otherwise, it feels all funny. It feels artificial to me. But that's, again, it's a handicap. It's not a, you know, it's not a quality. How does it feel when people approach you, you know, if they've seen Bergman Island and they assume that you are Chris or that all of Chris's feelings are yours, does that bother you? Do you like that you are seen on screen

in a way like that? I think I create it for myself. How do you call it? You know, like a protection, some kind of bubble when it's about that. So people can talk to me about that. And I don't really, it doesn't bother me, doesn't please me. I just, I think I keep distance to this kind of comments.

I don't read the reviews, you know, so much. I read maybe sometimes the title when i when i when people send them to me but i i don't really go into this so um so it is to protect myself uh to not feel ashamed or writing films that that people think tell them really about my life. And actually it's not so true because there is always a distance or, I mean, it's always a reinvention at the end. And my film also deals with that. You know, it's, you can be very transparent and look for a personal truth. I mean, that has to do with your most intimate feelings and experience.

But at the end, when you try to express it and and and and make a film out of it you have to transform it one way or another you only because you have to select the scenes which scene you want to tell and and even if the scenes are scenes that you have been living in the past or something at the end there are memories so the memories are never really what it you know when you write them years after it's never exactly what it was at the end there are thousands of differences and betrayals if we're talking about the reality you know it's always a reinvention a recreation so I'm aware of that and just to give you an example I never I was never in for her with the father of my child. So you see, people think my film is so autobiographical,

but I think once I've said that, you can see the gap actually between my real life and the film, because the film is all about this filmmaking couple who goes to the island. And when I wrote the film, I was actually alone on the island. I wrote it by my,

I was alone and I was scared in one of Bergman's houses so it was if I would make a film about my experience of writing this film I think it would be a totally totally different film actually one of the things that I I love about many of your films is this kind of mysterious unspoken dynamic between lovers or two people who are together um i'm curious what interests you about that those kinds of stories i think a lot of things are unspoken in real life it's just uh i guess it's just uh faithful to my experience of uh being in love and being in a couple or maybe maybe to my experience of it when I was a teenager at least maybe now if I would represent what it is for me

today it would be different but I guess I'm one of these directors who have been so impressed I mean so deeply influenced I mean haunted by experiences of teenage, how do you say teenagehood?

That I keep going back and back to this. And in this film, obviously the film in the film is again a little bit about that because it's like a sequel of my third film, Goodbye First Love. But even more than that, it's more than a sequel of my first film. It's just going back again, you back again to the same source of everything,

which is for me the first love that you can never really get over. So I think when you see people in my films who don't know how to speak to each other and these scenes where there is so much that is said, and that has to do with that, with these memories of teenage wood. There is a little bit of that too between Tony and Chris,

between the adults one, I mean, between the one who are in their 40s who are not teenagers anymore and the other ones aren't actually neither, but they are probably closest to teenage wood than tony and chris but it's it's the same there there is also a lot between them that cannot be said but it's for different reasons i think it's uh quite different what what is unspoken between them has different uh origins i mean uh then then then when than what you see between Amy and Joseph, I mean, in the film.

I'm sorry, this is really getting abstract for the people who haven't seen the film. That's okay. I'm hoping that this will be an opportunity for people to see it. I prefer to have a conversation like this. So you mentioned that there is a film within the film. There are effectively two films happening here.

Just very simply, was one more fun to make than the other? Was one more challenging to make than the other? Huh. They were so different experiences because I don't know if you know, but I shot the film in two different summers. So actually, yeah. Because the story of the film is very complicated in terms of production so uh we had to do that to save the film actually and we were

supposed to shoot the whole film in 2018 but i ended up shooting only half of it with mia vachikovska and anders danielson-Lee so basically and just a few scenes with Vicky Cripps but Tim wasn't there yet basically I didn't have any actor to play Tony at this moment and then I came back the next year and shot the other half with them so I mean when I shot the first half what I enjoyed the most was this feeling of making a film about young people. I mean, there was a lot of innocence about it, you know, more than the second half that I, I mean, that is the first half in the film, but I shot in the second summer. When I was with Mia and Anders, it was really like making a first film again that I enjoyed a lot you know there was nothing so much

intellectual about it it was there is there was a lot of innocence involved in the scenes in the acting and also in the way we were working actually because all I remember from this part is that I mean what I remember the most is like us looking for waiting for the sun you know a very light team and we would go from one spot to the other on the island in the scenes where they are, you know, taking the bike together and going around the island. And we would just, and the weather wasn't always with us. So we would just wait for hours until the sun comes out.

And that's a way of making films. That is probably why I make film, you know, films. So that I have such an extraordinary memory about that but on the other hand I felt very insecure because I was filming only half of the film and I wasn't even sure that I would come back and film the other half you know and so when I came back the other year it was amazing to actually know that I would end this film that I wasn't just going to have half of a film, you know? Everyone that I know who has seen this film

has cited their love for the winner takes it all scene. I'm wondering if you could just tell me why you chose that song and if that means anything special to you. Well, obviously, yes. You know, I don't use so many songs in the film and I don't work with composers. So I think that's part of why the music always...

People who like my film remember the musics of them, the songs of them, because it's not like the films where you have... I mean, in so many films now, you have music all along the way. Like you have a two-hour film, you would have one hour and a half music, basically. It's something i really don't like about the way people use the music and and and often the music is there like you don't really listen to them and it's just there you know and

i think in my film you have a lot of you have a lot of silence and then when you have a song you really listen to it and the characters listen to them. So one of the things I mean is that also I use the music in a way that people listen to it more or pay more attention to it. But yeah, I just love this song. I mean, I love ABBA, otherwise I wouldn't use that song. And I just couldn't imagine. Well, not only because they are Swedish, even though I thought it was interesting at some point to use this very

popular Swedish music, you know, on for her and, and, and make Bergman connect with ABBA was something that, that I thought was a little bit kitschy, but, but I love that.

Yeah. I love it. But, but mostly it's about the song itself. It just, I just love it. And it's the kind of song that I love, you know, where you have a lot of melancholy, but a lot of energy too.

And you have that in some of the Daft Punk songs that I used in Aiden too. And in many of the songs that I use, each one in different ways. But I love songs that have this balance of enthusiasm or energy about them. And on the other hand, the sadness or melancholy that I can feel very easily connected to. This film is primarily in English. I'm wondering if that's something

that you think you'll do more of, or was that just a circumstance of the kind of actors that you wanted to work with? I have no idea. Honestly, I enjoyed, I certainly enjoyed working in English because that had to do with the actors

that had to do with that specific story. For some reasons, I couldn't imagine it in French, mostly because that would have felt too close to my own story to myself. So making this film in English was a way for me to kind of go to bring more fiction to the film. I needed it really. And it would bring another culture into the film, another mood. And actually did because the actors also, as they spoke better English than I do they they they knew they had

ideas about the lines how to say that say them in a way that feel more natural to them so I I I think I gave them a lot of freedom in terms of you know reinventing their lines and especially Tim you know he was so good at finding shortcuts, you know, in a way to say things. And so I think making it in English was for me, yes, a way to kind of bring more distance to my own story. And I loved it, but it's not like, it's not something that I decided to do or wanted to do as a career thing or anything like that. So I have no idea if I can do this again.

And it would really need to make sense for me. I just saw a new film and it was in French and in Paris. Are you usually as flexible with the dialogue in your actors if it's in french no good to know um mia i know that you are a if you see this film you know you're a cinephile we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen have you seen a great film recently the The last great film I saw, what was, I haven't seen so many films recently

because I've been working so much. It's not the last film that I saw, but that comes to my mind. If you don't mind, it's not the last, but it comes to my mind now because Kelly Raycard has a retrospective in Paris right now but First Cow is a film that I saw not long ago and that I really loved I'm a huge fan of her work but I was so much impressed by this film this new film I mean it's not new

for her but it's the last her last film The way she portrays a friendship and the quietness of the film. I thought the film was so deep. It impressed me a lot. First Cow. First Cow and Bergman Island would be a neat double feature. Mia, thank you so much for doing the show.

Thank you very much. Thank you to Mia Hansen-Love. Thank you to Amanda and Chris, of course, and our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on this episode. Next week, it's finally here. Me, Chris, and Amanda are talking about the movie event of the year, Dune. We're diving deep into Neville New's epic and battling the sandworms to deliver an epic conversation about one of the most epic movies of the year. See you then.