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Working with Wes Anderson
Brut America
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5/24/2023
TikTokers are turning their daily lives into scenes from Wes Anderson movies. So what is it actually like being directed by the filmmaker?
Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, and Jeffrey Wright talk to Brut about being his actors in "Asteroid City," at Cannes Film Festival.
Category
🎥
Short film
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
My head tends to go this way, but he wants it this way.
00:02
And artistic frustration is inherent in the work itself.
00:06
He's invited you there because he wants you there.
00:09
He creates such a familial environment.
00:12
You know, everyone comes home.
00:14
We all live in the same hotel.
00:16
We all stay together.
00:17
We dine together.
00:19
We sleep together.
00:20
Keep it simple.
00:22
I shouldn't have said that.
00:24
That's true.
00:25
But we, you know, I think that's really unusual.
00:30
Not the sleeping together part,
00:31
but the ability to create a real sense of community.
00:39
Everything is so unique and special, though.
00:42
But you know Wes quite well now.
00:44
It's been ages.
00:46
Is it difficult for some new people
00:48
to enter in this kind of family,
00:50
in this kind of new environment somehow?
00:53
I mean, I think there's a learning curve.
00:55
There was for me.
00:57
And there is whenever you step on a set
01:01
with a new filmmaker,
01:03
and you don't necessarily know how either of you work.
01:07
They don't know how your process is.
01:09
And you develop a shorthand now, I feel.
01:12
So once you've experienced it,
01:15
even for an actor coming on board,
01:17
I think you got it within a few days.
01:21
Okay, this is how you need to be prepared,
01:24
a certain level of preparation
01:26
that's different from every other job.
01:32
The one thing about Wes is he's very kind and thoughtful.
01:36
And even though there's all this specificity in his work,
01:40
it is collaborative.
01:42
You're finding things.
01:46
It's playful, very alive.
01:48
So I think you just get an understanding of that.
01:52
It's also, it's very challenging to do the work
01:55
because he's so specific on what he wants.
01:59
And artistic frustration is inherent in the work itself.
02:04
I don't think I've ever worked on any project
02:07
where at some point I'm not frustrated with myself
02:12
for lack of being able to grab onto something
02:14
or completely understand a moment
02:17
where it escapes you.
02:18
And it has its frustration built in.
02:22
But as long as you have a support group around you
02:26
of other actors who have felt the same way
02:29
at some point in the process and can help you.
02:34
We learn to trust each other.
02:37
And we trust Wes to, in a calm way,
02:41
guide us through the logjams that we may be facing.
02:45
For you actors, the body is quite an important tool.
02:49
And in a Wes Anderson movie, as a viewer,
02:52
I saw very symmetrical things and stuff.
02:54
I was wondering, how do you deal with his universe
02:58
and your body?
03:00
It's a good question.
03:01
Well, I think it's what Adrian was saying
03:03
about you learn to speak his language.
03:05
He has a cinematic language that he uses
03:10
in all of his work.
03:11
And it's up to us to learn that language,
03:14
to adapt to it, and to figure out how we get to it.
03:20
Actors work very differently.
03:22
So you can't write a rule that this is what you do.
03:25
You have to discover it on your own.
03:27
You're there for a reason.
03:29
And he's invited you there because he wants you there.
03:36
And that makes it easier to kind of assimilate
03:40
to what's required.
03:41
Yes, there is a need.
03:42
I remember at certain times we'll do a very distinct
03:46
close-up or a shot, and you feel like you're straight,
03:50
or you wouldn't normally be aware of certain things,
03:53
and he would want it tilted slightly differently
03:56
or whatever.
03:56
And then you've gotta still exist in the moment
04:00
and try and create it to a sense that it feels very calm,
04:03
but my head tends to go this way, but he wants it this way.
04:06
And that doesn't necessarily feel the same for me,
04:08
but you have to make it work.
04:10
You just go with it.
04:12
You have to really...
04:13
There's a wonderful physicality in all of the characters.
04:18
I think really it all comes down to preparation
04:20
because the material is so...
04:22
The writing needs to be delivered at a certain way
04:26
and certain inflections,
04:28
and everything has to feel very true to you,
04:33
but they also have to work in half the time
04:35
that you would normally convey the same sentence.
04:37
And then there are multiple camera moves
04:39
and adjustments going on and interactions with others
04:43
and the physical stuff.
04:44
So when you show up,
04:48
you need to know it so well that you can adjust.
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