Summary

Collider’s Steve Weintraub chats with Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, and Mia Threapleton for Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

Del Toro discusses his collaboration with Anderson, and how the filmmaker’s unique style allows for a freedom to creatively explore.

Cera and Threapleton share moments from the set, discussing Anderson’s “clever” methods for perfecting scenes and his love for multiple takes rivals that of David Fincher.

Filmmaker Wes Anderson returned to the 78th Cannes Film Festival this year with his latest, The Phoenician Scheme. The movie stars Benicio Del Toro and the writer-director’s usual troupe of stars, including Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, and Bill Murray, in a cross-country caper that ventures where no Anderson film has gone before. In the movie, Del Toro plays weapons dealer, Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda, a dubious businessman who’s cheated death on more than one occasion. On his sixth brush with mortality, Zsa-zsa decides it’s time to get things in order. He appoints his estranged daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), as the heir to his empire, and the two set off on a journey to find funding for Korda’s newest enterprise. With The Phoenician Scheme playing in select theaters, Collider’s Steve Weintraub had the opportunity to talk with Del Toro, Michael Cera, and Threapleton about their time spent with the auteur on set. While Del Toro is a returning collaborator, this is a first-time team-up for Cera and Threapleton, and the two share what it was like finding Anderson’s vision for each scene and how many takes they did with some approaching David Fincher levels. Del Toro also discusses the ways Anderson’s signature style both “boxes” its stars in and allows the freedom for creative exploration. Check out the full conversation and which movie theaters the trio frequent in the video above or the transcript below.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Stars Share Their Favorite Movie Theaters

The trio discuss their favorite venues from coast to coast.

Image via Focus Features

COLLIDER: I love seeing movies in movie theaters. It’s like my church, my temple, my shrine. Do you have a favorite movie theater? BENICIO DEL TORO: I do. In Westwood. The Fox. It’s closed right now, but I hear that is going to open again. A lot of directors bought it. MIA THREAPLETON: Collectively, they bought it? They’re remodeling. Jason Reitman, Guillermo Del Toro. A huge list of filmmakers. MICHAEL CERA: They own it? They really do. I would imagine a lot of premieres are going to go there. DEL TORO: That place is incredible. CERA: If it’s the one I’m thinking of, there in Westwood, it always has a lot of premieres, right? DEL TORO: There’s two. The Bruin is closed, and the Fox is closed as well. It’s so sad. They’re just facing each other. What about the Bruin?

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I’m not sure about the Bruin, but the Village has done a lot of premieres. I would imagine, with all the owners, they will be like, “I want to do my premiere in Westwood.” Favorite theater? THREAPLETON: I don’t have one, but often I’ll find myself in a movie theater that’s doing a rerun of a beautiful old 1940s French sort of crime something-or-other, something very obscure, and always it’s very vintage with the velvety things and the beautiful, ornate gold around the top of the screen. Whenever I’m in a theater like that, I really feel like, “Wow! This is why I love coming to the movies and watching movies in these kinds of places.” CERA: That’s great. I’d say probably the Metrograph right now. It’s in the Lower East Side. Do you ever go? I live in L.A., but I know exactly what you’re talking about. CERA: It’s great. The programming is amazing, and you can go get an amazing dinner and see a movie. It’s not a huge screen, but you can have so many amazing experiences there.
Benicio del Toro Discusses Exploration in Wes Anderson’s Scripts

“He boxes you in, but he expects you to bring the truth.”

Jumping into this movie, I love Wes, and I love his work. As actors, what is it like preparing to step on a set with Wes? He’s so particular with dialogue, he’s so particular with camera moves, and he wants exactly what he wants, so what is it like prepping? THREAPLETON: He was probably different for each of us. I think preparation is subjective to the person, probably. DEL TORO: For me, he is very particular. He boxes you in, but he expects you to bring the truth that actors bring. Within that, those outside lines, there is plenty of exploration that you can do within his respect for the words. Also, I recognize he is one hell of a writer, and when there is good writing — and I’ve had the opportunity to work on projects that have been based on great writing — for me, it’s like the minute you take something out, it just doesn’t function the same. So, good writing is almost like building a Jenga thing; if you take something out, it comes down. So, your instinct is to honor the word, and once you do that, it really starts to flow. But you have to bring in your work, the same work that you do in any other movie. It’s got to be there while you do it, because he expects it. He wants honesty, and from the honesty, you can get the laugh or the tears, whatever it is. But he expects you to bring in whatever it is that you bring as an actor.
Wes Anderson’s Number of Takes Rivals David Fincher

“It’s impossible to count them…”

Image via Focus Features

Everyone talks about [David] Fincher and how many takes he likes to do, but no one really talks about Wes and how many takes he likes to do. What is it like when he is looking for something exact? I don’t know if you did it, but on take 50, what is that like? THREAPLETON: We had a week of preshoot, and on day one, we did 69 takes. I really remember that because I would say, “Oh my goodness, this is great.” My first thought was, “This is great,” because it gives us so much time and freedom to try so many different things within safe knowledge that we know that Wes knows what it is that he wants and what he’s looking for. Also, there’s this freedom and trust that I think we all place in him to just tell us what to do. It was really fun to have that time. CERA: It’s really clever how he schedules things because, like Mia said, we did like two weeks of “pre-shooting,” which I’ve never even heard of this. THREAPLETON: It was like shooting days. It was a week of doing one scene a day. CERA: Exactly. He’d clear a lot of space and time for us to kind of build a thing. Like what she said, we did 69 takes of this one piece, where Benicio’s getting his suit fitted. Then the same day, later that day, we did one more setup where you have the shaving bowl, and we did 35 takes of that. So it was like, “Okay. We’re going in the right direction.” DEL TORO: Wow, you guys are weird! Were you counting the takes? It was probably all my fault. [Laughs] It was me messing up the lines. THREAPLETON: Do you remember, I think we did 35 rolls of film that we went through in a day. CERA: That is a lot.

THREAPLETON: I think that was with Benedict [Cumberbatch]. I think that was when we were in the big room. CERA: But he knows how to build a day. He knows how much time you’ll need for a certain piece and which things are going to be complicated and which things we can kind of glide through. DEL TORO: I don’t count the takes. THREAPLETON: I remember hearing afterwards. I didn’t count them. It’s impossible to count them while they’re going. CERA: But we cut the second setup in half. Half as many takes as the first. So, we’re getting better. The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in select theaters. The movie releases everywhere on June 6.

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