Wes Anderson skewered Donald Trump’s proposed tariff on movies shot abroad at a Cannes press conference for his new film “The Phoenician Scheme,” questioning how it will work.
“Can you hold up the movie in customs? It doesn’t ship that way,” the director said, evoking a chorus of laughter.
“The Phoenician Scheme,” which features a sprawling cast of Anderson regulars, shot in partly Germany. When asked about the tariffs, Anderson initially replied: “I thought you said he was giving us a plug or something. Did Trump see it?”
But he then went on to mock the idea: “The tariff is interesting because I’ve never heard of a 100% tariff before. I’m not an expert in that area of economics, but I feel that means he’s saying he’s going to take all the money. And then what do we what do we get? So it’s complicated to me. Can you hold up the movie in customs? It doesn’t ship that way.”
The film is a droll three-hander, starring Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera and breakout Mia Threapleton, who is the daughter of Kate Winslet. Del Toro plays business magnate Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the richest men in Europe and subject of repeated assassination attempts, while Threapleton portrays his estranged daughter, a smoking and alcohol-swilling nun named Sister Liesel. Like Threapleton, Cera is a newcomer to the Anderson troop, playing a duplicitous tutor named Bjorn Lund.
Speaking about the genesis for the film, Anderson said he and co-writer Roman Coppola were at first intending to pen something “very dark” about a business magnate who is “not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world are affecting populations of workforces and landscapes.”
Anderson added that there was “the darkness of a certain kind of capitalist that we were building this on, but it took us somewhere else. We need a psychiatrist’s couch to really answer it properly, and even then I don’t know. But it’s in the DNA, somehow.”
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At the heart of the film is the father-daughter relationship between del Toro and Threapleton. Anderson explained that he and Coppola and del Toro all have daughters and then began serenading Coppola’s 14-year-old daughter who was in the front row with “Happy Birthday,” with the rest of the panel and audience singing along. Del Toro then dove into his own character’s arc in the film, which sees him morph from a ruthless titan of industry into a somewhat doting father.
“This part was so juicy. There were so many options where to go,” del Toro said of playing Zsa-zsa. “The character is full of contradictions, and he’s evolving from A to Z. And so it was really challenging and exciting. And you just give everything you can to Wes, and then he does his magic in the editing room, and, you know, and then you get what you get. … The humor [is] something that we talked about. It is just be honest and serious. And if the humor comes, it comes.”
The “Asteroid City” helmer then revealed his next film, which he said he’s co-writing with Coppola and Richard Ayoade, who plays a heavily armed Marxist revolutionary in “The Phoenician Scheme.” “The next film is also pretty dark,” he said. “Actually, can I announce our project? Roman and Richard and I are working on a script together for a movie, and I think it does have a darkness. I’m not going to say anything about it, but I mean I’m at a press conference. I have to announce something.”
He also teased future collaborations with both Cera and Bill Murray, the latter who wasn’t part of the panel but was seated in the front row. Anderson shook hands with each of them to confirm their involvement. “Let’s shake on it,” Anderson said to Cera. “Sometimes people say yes and they don’t really mean it later … I’m just saying, let’s get this on the record.”
Added Benedict Cumberbatch: “Watching him discover Michael is like God discovering water. It seems like a really natural, obvious element to have in his arsenal as a filmmaker. It was really a perfect partnership.”
Later on, when a journalist asked about sequels to any of his films, Anderson said to Murray: “You know, we’ll do ‘The Life Aquatic 2.’ Shall we?”
Rounding out the “Phoenician Scheme” cast is Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Riz Ahmed, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, Rupert Friend and Hope Davis, all of whom have starred in at least one previous Anderson feature.
“The Phoenician Scheme” will have a limited theatrical release from Focus Features starting May 30. The film will expand wider June 6.
From Variety US