Wes Anderson talks ‘The Phoenician Scheme,’ Gene Hackman and his Cannes bus

By JAKE COYLE CANNES France AP Wes Anderson isn t driving the bus Laurent is That s the name of the driver who s bringing Anderson and his bus to the Cannes Film Festival Related Articles Dear Abby Abusive husband says he s changing Global warming hits Little Great Island region Dear Abby Mom iced out by rude son DIL Dear Abby MIL won t budge for son s birthday Bono The world has never been closer to a world war in my lifetime As they drive from his home in Paris to the South of France Anderson explains by phone I don t drive the bus You have to have like four years of training and an EU bus driver s license The thing is if you re going to drive a bus like this you ve got to be able to drive it in reverse too For years Anderson has in favor of the normal festival cars that shuttle guests brought his own bus to Cannes so his whole cast can arrive together at the premiere On Sunday Anderson and company including Benicio del Toro Mia Threapleton Michael Cera Scarlett Johansson and Bryan Cranston will pile in for the premiere of Anderson s latest The Phoenician Scheme It s another example of how Anderson has made something quite peculiar into a regular tradition With remarkable regularity Anderson has been crafting movies uniquely his own since his debut Bottle Rocket There are variations Various are expansive family dramas The Royal Tenenbaums Particular are more intimate Rushmore Particular are more densely layered Asteroid City The Phoenician Scheme a leaner tale which Focus Features will release May is Anderson working in high comic gear A playful and poignant kind of thriller it stars Del Toro as the tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda who decides to name his daughter a novitiate Threapleton heir to his dubiously accrued fortune The wheels keep turning for the -year-old Anderson But there are signs of time passing too The Cin math que in Paris is hosting an Anderson retrospective as well as an exhibition of props costumes and artifacts from his expansive personal archive Anderson who has a -year-old daughter with his wife the costume designer Juman Malouf spoke about those things and others on his way to Cannes to unveil The Phoenician Scheme a movie that adds yet another fitting mantra to the world of Wes What matters is the sincerity of your devotion This image issued by Focus Features shows Benicio Del Toro in a scene from The Phoenician Scheme TPS Productions Focus Features via AP This image circulated by Focus Features shows Michael Cera left and Mia Threapleton in a scene from The Phoenician Scheme TPS Productions Focus Features via AP Bill Murray from left Mia Threapleton director Wes Anderson Benicio del Toro Michael Cera Jeffrey Wright and Benedict Cumberbatch pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film The Phoenician Scheme at the th international film festival Cannes southern France Sunday May AP Photo Natacha Pisarenko Mia Threapleton from left director Wes Anderson Benicio del Toro and Michael Cera pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film The Phoenician Scheme at the th international film festival Cannes southern France Sunday May Photo by Lewis Joly Invision AP Show Caption of This image issued by Focus Features shows Benicio Del Toro in a scene from The Phoenician Scheme TPS Productions Focus Features via AP Expand AP How was it to dig through all the things you ve saved from your movies ANDERSON We ve been keeping this stuff for so long The experience of doing it was kind of great I d sort of get pulled over there to approve things And my reaction was Well we have more stuff So we kept adding things My daughter has lived with a lot of this stuff The Fantastic Mr Fox puppets have been in our apartment in New York ever since we made the movie in boxes Over the years she takes them out and plays with them AP Jason Schwartzman once reported me your movies aren t for kids but it s like they re for kids when they grow up Do you agree ANDERSON Laughs Jason and Bill have a way of catching you off guard with a turn of phrase But I like that description It s kind of an amazing experience to have had Jason involved in our movies for so long given that he was when I met him It s fun and a strange feeling The decades have to elapse for you to have had that much time together And it s quite shocking that they do But there it is AP The sweetest parts to The Phoenician Scheme are its father-daughter moments Were you at all inspired by your own experience as a father ANDERSON I didn t have something I thought I wished to communicate about what it s like to be a father The story really come out of an idea for Benicio and for this character But I don t think he would have had a daughter if I didn t That s my hunch He s a special kind of a father in all the worst tactics But nevertheless there s something we related to That s seemingly somewhere in the DNA of the movie AP What drew you to Del Toro ANDERSON If I were to say what is the first idea of the movie it is that face It s not an image of the setting it s an image of Benicio in a close-up as this character His face is just so expressive and enthralling It s a special advantage he has He s quite mesmerizing just looking at him on camera his chemistry with the exposure of film In The French Dispatch there were electric moments on the set But the electricity was amplified when we went back into the cutting room The wheels started turning When we manifested The French Dispatch however a large number of years ago in Cannes I did mention to Benicio there Just be aware there s something else coming AP Is that a common way for you to start imagining a movie I can see Rushmore starting with Murray s face with a cigarette dropping from his mouth The Royal Tenenbaums with Gene Hackman s smile and The Grand Budapest Hotel with Ralph Fiennes as a concierge ANDERSON Essentially you ve put your finger on the movies that were written for a specific actor along with Jason in Asteroid City Owen and I were talking about Gene Hackman by the time we had pages of a script Ralph was the idea for the character in Grand Budapest before there was even one page But I never had one where I thought of someone in such a tight close-up With this movie somehow it s the face and the eyes and the closest close-up AP After Gene Hackman s death Bill Murray and others talked about the tough time he gave you while making The Grand Budapest Hotel ANDERSON First of all Gene Hackman one of the greatest movie actors ever He did enjoy the movie I think between action and cut He explained That s when I have a good time But he really didn t enjoy the parts in between which is majority of the time He wasn t wildly taken with the script in the first place I don t think he loved the idea of being that guy I think he thought There s a lot of things I don t like about this man and I m not sure I want to live as him Also I was very young He was shy and reserved though he could also get quite explosive We didn t know each other well Sometimes when we had conflict we often had open conversations about what just happened And I felt like I learned so much about him in those times And he would often become much more gentle I don t want to assume a great friendship because I don t think he would have ever have referred to our relationship laughs in those terms But I really liked him He just carried so much tension and he used in the work but it was sometimes bordering on a little abusive especially to me Laughs AP Given how good he is in the film it makes me wonder if the best parts for actors are the ones they resist ANDERSON I think that s the episode sometimes When he saw the movie he stated me I didn t understand what we were making But he totally understood it when he saw the movie It worked for him He liked it and I think he liked what he had done it I later thought I wish I had paused for three days of shooting edited specific of the scenes scrupulously and then shown him Here s what you re doing and here s what we re doing I think maybe if I had done that we might have had a gentler time AP You ve managed to continue making movies for adults at various scale when hardly anyone can do that Are you happy to avoid the changes in the industry or do they concern you ANDERSON The path that I ve had as a movie director I don t know if that s totally available right now I don t know if the kind of movies I started out making would have been made on the same scale or with the same sponsorship or with any audience available To get to the point where I can make the movies I make I now I just don t know what way that would take I think certain things have changed fundamentally But I m not years younger than myself so I just do what I do Jake Coyle has covered the Cannes Film Festival since He s previously interviewed Wes Anderson in Cannes about Asteroid City and The French Dispatch For more coverage of the Cannes Film Festival visit https apnews com hub cannes-film-festival