In Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Phoenician Scheme (currently in limited release; opening wide this coming weekend), it’s quickly evident this is a different kind of Wes Anderson film. Oh, make no mistake, it’s very much still a Wes Anderson film, but there are noticeably many more people being blown up and more fighter jet attacks than you might be expecting. Also, there’s a noticeable uptick in laugh-out-loud moments than his past few movies. Benicio del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda, a businessman of questionable ethics, who – along with his daughter and heir, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), and an insect expert named Bjørn (Michael Cera) – must meet with many denizens of his network of contacts to raise a considerable amount of money in order to “fill the gap” of the money he’s losing on his latest forays. But, more importantly, his main goal of the film is to just keep himself alive through a series of never-ending assassination attempts. Hence, all the people exploding and the fighter jet attacks you may not have been expecting from a Wes Anderson film. Ahead, Anderson takes us through how this story developed and the timeliness of a film about an extremely wealthy businessman obsessed with planes. Also, at one point, the plot of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film you’d probably never expect to be mentioned in a Wes Anderson film is discussed, which leads us into the plot of the Mike Nichols film, Catch-22. It’s interesting because it’s here that Anderson laments about what to do as a filmmaker when you make the perfect film, yet it’s rejected by the audience. He swears he’s only speaking on Mike Nichols’ behalf here. Also, Anderson reveals the one actor who has eluded him all these years, and it’s a name that might well surprise you.
The Fine Art of People Exploding

“That’s what the movie was supposed to be about: somebody who’s going to exploit this country and help organize that and skim a lot of money in the process of other people doing things.”

Image via Focus Features

COLLIDER: Last time we spoke I mentioned “Wes Anderson movies” is its own genre and asked where you’d start and you said Looper. WES ANDERSON: I said Looper? I think because you were looking forward to Looper. ANDERSON: That’s great. Now, I don’t think The Phoenician Scheme is anything like Looper. But it’s probably your closest movie to Looper. ANDERSON: You’re probably right. That’s funny. Looper is good! So how does that happen? ANDERSON: [Laughs] Well, it’s taken a long time to fully absorb Looper and bring it back to this. But I think, yeah, it’s funny, thinking back as far back as Moonrise Kingdom, it’s just something I don’t do. Like, to think about my point of view then, and what I would think about this movie at that time? It wouldn’t even cross my mind. I have to live a decade of things that produce this. If I had told you then, “You’re going to do a movie with fighter jets and bombs going off and people exploding,” you would probably not believe me. ANDERSON: Well, I think I would say, “Oh, is it like kind of a sort of this genre type movie?” But in fact, to me, it was a businessman movie. A ruthless businessman. And it kind of found its way into fighter jets and assassins and things like that. But the basis of it was always this guy was doing deals in the Middle East. He’s trying to do land and construction projects to make a lot of money and kind of create a network of things there that is going to produce loads of money over many years. That’s what the movie was supposed to be about: somebody who’s going to exploit this country and help organize that and skim a lot of money in the process of other people doing things. But in the course of it, we had some enemies, some assassins. Things entered into it, and it became a little more … we always had airplanes. Because it’s, like, the symbol. And now, today, there’s nothing more “rich man” symbol than the airplane. And very much in the news. ANDERSON: Yes, the big airplane there. But I think, initially, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that he would be ejecting the pilot. Once we had a lot of ingredients, we started writing. And writing the first scene of the movie where the assistant gets blown in half, and then he ejects the pilot out, this is tonally different from what I thought it was. And it’s just going this way. So we continued down that road.

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So wait, when you’re making it is when you realized you were doing a different kind of thing? ANDERSON: Making the script. I see. ANDERSON: Just because we had a sort of feeling of the whole movie, but when I started writing the first scene, the details of it surprises you, I think, what the movie kind of tells you it is. You have a preconception of it, but then the process of writing, it’s more like you’re unearthing a thing that already exists. And sometimes you say, “I didn’t realize it was like that, this thing.” As if it already exists, which in fact, that’s some metaphor because I guess we’re just constructing it out of our imaginations. In an interview you said this wasn’t based on Trump and the tariffs, it’s just that the news lately has matched the plot. You should just start taking credit and say this was planned. ANDERSON: Well, I also think, the truth is, when you’re writing a script … if it was a work of journalism, you have your research and you have your interviews and you have the observations and impressions. And that goes into your thing, and you fact-check it. With a fictional thing, you have all the same stuff. But you also have just your imagination. And everything’s going in there, and you’re not really aware of where it’s coming from. You’re aware more of what’s coming out. So, I would say, “Why now?” for this story. Something was going in. That probably is true without even faking it to make it sound good. When you gave that interview, the Trump plane situation hadn’t even hadn’t happened yet. ANDERSON: No. Now you have the plane situation. ANDERSON: With the plane thing, I was like… not surprised. Our guy in our story, he’s like how Howard Hughes had his planes. The Spruce Goose. ANDERSON: The Spruce Goose, but also he had an airline. And there are a lot of guys who had airlines. Rich guys, and one of their things is they’ve got an airline. And the private planes and our guy can go where he needs to go because he has his own aircraft. I watched The Gauntlet recently and Clint Eastwood’s character flies Hughes Airline. ANDERSON: Yeah. Well, some of these things kept going. And then they finally didn’t. But anyway, the planes have become much more of a thing because now there’s so many private jets and it’s such a status symbol. And if you happen to have one, I’m sure you’d say, “Yes, it’s a status symbol, but, boy, is it good to have a nice jet.” It’s not just a symbol. It’s a great way to drive, to get somewhere, your own jet. But anyway, I don’t love to fly.

Image via Focus Features

This movie has one of the funniest depictions I’ve ever seen of someone exploding. ANDERSON: Of evisceration? Movie deaths can be funny when it’s a villain in an action movie. Like James Caan in Eraser, your cast member from Bottle Rocket… ANDERSON: Yes. Arnold Schwarzenegger flies a plane into him. ANDERSON: I never saw Eraser. I’m spoiling it for you. ANDERSON: And it kills him, right? Yes. Now I spoiled Eraser for you. ANDERSON: Well, do you remember Catch-22? Yes. I watched that just a few months ago. ANDERSON: Oh, you did? That one is quite disturbing. I was on a Mike Nichols kick, and I watched that and Carnal Knowledge. ANDERSON: Great movies. I think for years he felt like, “Catch-22, what a mistake I made.” Oh, it’s incredible. ANDERSON: It’s a masterpiece. But then what does that do to you? Even Art Garfunkel with a great performance. ANDERSON: But everybody’s perfect. Bob Newhart. There are so many small roles. But I wonder what it does when you make something as big as that, and as good as that, and it’s totally rejected. Bad reviews. Nobody goes. Everything, it just sunk. And by then, he’s so accustomed to getting it right and having everybody love it, that then he is like, “What happened? Have I lost it?” But he didn’t. The audience failed. Anyway. Is this how you feel sometimes? ANDERSON: No, not exactly. Not really. Well, last time we spoke, you mentioned you were surprised Fantastic Mr. Fox didn’t do well. ANDERSON: Yeah. But now, even all these years later, it’s even more revered than it was when we spoke last time. ANDERSON: Yeah.

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Okay, I will say it, the audience failed. I know you’re not going to say that about your own movie, but it did, because now people love it. So, you have to feel like that sometimes? You can assemble a great cast, just like Catch-22. The movie’s incredible. What happened here? Why do I have to apologize for this? ANDERSON: I know. It’s the thing. It does happen sometimes, but how are you going to judge it? But it’s easier to look at Mike Nichols and say, “Now, in his case, I see this because that is, to me, it’s so clear.” And even that movie, it’s so exquisitely made, every bit of it. Right. ANDERSON: And expensive. And 120 days of shooting, or something like that, that must’ve been so shocking to him to say, “You mean you don’t think this is a masterpiece? Everybody doesn’t get this is a masterpiece, and it isn’t?” That must’ve come completely out of left field for him anyway. But I’m talking about Mike, not me. Okay, people exploding, when did you know that was funny? ANDERSON: I had a thought early on, this character is going to be surrounded with violence. He’s violent, he’s unkillable, and there’s mayhem around him. There’s violence. But as soon as we started to get into the specifics of it, somehow I started feeling like I think the violence of our film is going to be more like, not exactly Buster Keaton, but it would be Jacques Tati. Or if Buster Keaton was going to have some significant blood, evisceration, what would it be like if there was a sort of delight to the tricks of it, or something like that? Something like that entered into it. And I started to think, “Let’s see what flavor that’s going to be.” So that’s sort of what we pursued. By the time he has this showdown with Benedict Cumberbatch, really, it’s a violent confrontation, but it’s also a sort of series of almost camera tricks and gags. There are parts of that sequence that remind me of a Monkees episode. And I mean that in the most positive way. The best gags! The Monkees! The Monkees are incredible. Obviously, Bob Rafelson is a great filmmaker… Yes. Down the stairs and pull the rug.
Wes Anderson’s White Whale

“I think sometimes somebody has an idea of the kind of work they want to do at that time in his or her life, and we weren’t right.”

Image via Focus Features

Who have you not worked with that you want to work with? You mentioned the Bill Murray movie you admired was Razor’s Edge, which I watched recently… Very good movie, yeah. What’s your current Razor’s Edge, where it’s someone we know, but maybe not the reasons why we know them? Yes, I wonder. Let me think about it a second. Someone who, I haven’t had at all? The typical person I think of is… I probably shouldn’t share… Yeah, you can. Oh … it’s fine. Over the years, I had so many movies that I tried to get Jodie Foster to be in. Oh, wow. It used to be every movie, we went to Jodie Foster for a part. And I think I did it three movies in a row, maybe four. And I met her, and I liked her. And I thought it was going to get her. And I think she’s just great, Jodie Foster. And I loved her. In the first movie she directed, Little Man Tate, she plays the mother. Do you remember that movie? Yes, I do. And she has this real sparkle. She has a lightness in it. It’s just a different kind of character. But anyway, I still would like to get Jodie Foster. But I guess after asking few times, I thought maybe I’m not… I think sometimes somebody has an idea of the kind of work they want to do at that time in his or her life, and we weren’t right. What specific movies did you offer her? Well, I don’t like to say, because if I say, then you say, “Oh, you mean so-and-so, who’s in the movie, wasn’t your first choice.” And so I don’t want that to be a thing. It was Michael Cera. [Laughs] She would have been great. But anyway, she’s pretty amazing, Jodie Foster. Anyway, so… We’re going to get the word out on that. If this ever happens, I’m going to take credit. Okay, good.