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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting.
Speaker 3: On here today? You're not interested in art?
Speaker 1: Now we look, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a conversation. Hey. Film spotters Adam
Speaker 3: and Josh.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: The Film Spotting Archive has reviews of Wes Anderson films
Speaker 3: going back to two thousand and seven's The Darjeeling Limited,
Speaker 3: plus Sacred col reviews of Rushmore and The Royal Tene Moms.
Speaker 4: With Anderson's latest, The Phoenician Scheme, now in theaters, we're
Speaker 4: sharing our review of his previous feature, twenty twenty three's
Speaker 4: Asteroid City from June twenty twenty three. Pierce that review.
Speaker 5: Junior stargazers and space cadets. Each year we celebrate Asteroid
Speaker 5: Day commemorating September twenty third, three thousand and seven BC,
Speaker 5: when the Arid planes meteorite made Earth impact.
Speaker 3: Let's start this discussion by doing what every character and
Speaker 3: we meet a lot of them, is trying to do.
Speaker 3: An asteroid City, Get our bearings. Wes Anderson's latest is
Speaker 3: a play within a play that's also a TV show. Okay,
Speaker 3: that probably wasn't helpful. Let's try this. Actress Scarlett Johansson
Speaker 3: portrays fictional actress Midge Campbell, who comes out West Asteroid
Speaker 3: City with her junior stargazing star daughter, Midge Campbell. Well,
Speaker 3: she's played by an actress from back East named Mercedes Ford. So,
Speaker 3: as Anderson himself has explained, you're ultimately seeing an actress
Speaker 3: playing an actress playing an actress. Now that we've got
Speaker 3: that all cleared up, truthfully, I've almost surely oversold how
Speaker 3: confusing the mid fifties set Asteroid City is while totally
Speaker 3: underselling just how dense it is post war America and
Speaker 3: the fractured men who return from battle, the mythic West,
Speaker 3: the space Race, Broadway, and the actor's studio and Playhouse ninety,
Speaker 3: not to mention direct references to the Cinema of Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 3: It's as if Anderson created Asteroid City the movie and
Speaker 3: the place to intermingle all of his greatest inspirations and influences.
Speaker 3: Anderson said, when I started wanting to make movies, this
Speaker 3: period was the center of everything. We were watching The
Speaker 3: Godfather and Taxi Driver and Brian de Palma, but maybe
Speaker 3: even more Marlon Brando and James Dean, Montgomery Cliff and
Speaker 3: Elia Kazan the emotion of this period of movies and
Speaker 3: their relationship to the stage. I want to get to
Speaker 3: a question for you, Josh that may seem a little silly,
Speaker 3: as I've just put forth why the play within a
Speaker 3: play approach was always at the core of this project.
Speaker 3: And this certainly isn't new territory, as we could run
Speaker 3: through a litany of similar framing devices and meta layers
Speaker 3: in Anderson's films. But I hope that it will provoke
Speaker 3: us to really consider what the director is up to
Speaker 3: here and how successfully he achieves it. Imagine that the
Speaker 3: whole movie Asteroid City is comprised only of the events
Speaker 3: that we see take place within Asteroid City, events that
Speaker 3: already comprise the majority of the movie's runtime, Johansson's Midge
Speaker 3: and her flirtations and existential musings, with Jason Schwartzman's Augie Steinbeck,
Speaker 3: a war photographer now widower struggling to break the news
Speaker 3: of his wife's death to his four children, Steve Carell's
Speaker 3: industrious motel manager, Tilda Swinton's astronomer doctor Hickenlooper, Jeffrey writes,
Speaker 3: General Griff, etc. Instead of these characters stemming from the
Speaker 3: mind of Edward Norton's playwright Conrad Irp, they come only
Speaker 3: from the mind of Anderson. No TV sound stages with
Speaker 3: Brian Kranston playing the host, no black and white acting
Speaker 3: class interactions, just all of these a little bit lost
Speaker 3: souls coming together in the desert, forced to stay together
Speaker 3: a little longer than planned following a close encounter of
Speaker 3: the third kind. And I don't mean here imagine an
Speaker 3: alternative version of the film Asteroid City. I'm saying this
Speaker 3: is the only version we'd ever be aware of. I
Speaker 3: think there's a pretty good chance that the two of
Speaker 3: us and many other Anderson appreciators would have been satisfied
Speaker 3: with that hermetically sealed off presentation of Asteroid City. What
Speaker 3: will we have lost?
Speaker 4: Though, great question, one that I was circling around as
Speaker 4: those layers began to unfold. And I'm glad you noted
Speaker 4: that you probably are making it sound more complicated than
Speaker 4: it is, because that's true, and I don't want this
Speaker 4: to scare off anyone, particularly people who thought the French
Speaker 4: Dispatch was a little too dense for them. This to me,
Speaker 4: is much simpler than that in terms of its construction.
Speaker 4: But you're not incorrect to lay out all those layers.
Speaker 4: They are there, the one you just asked me about.
Speaker 4: I'll be honest, We're four or five days from seeing
Speaker 4: Asteroid City. That's the one I'm still immersed in. I'm
Speaker 4: immersed in that eighty percent screen time set in the
Speaker 4: title town story, the characters there, what happens there, what
Speaker 4: that might mean. I'm going to need another viewing, or
Speaker 4: at least a couple more days until I start digging
Speaker 4: deeper than that. I think that's partly because to your point,
Speaker 4: I was satisfied with what I got there. I have
Speaker 4: as much as I've loved his more recent films that
Speaker 4: have added on the layers to the cake, so that
Speaker 4: these are layer cake movies, which really started I think
Speaker 4: in Earnest with Grand Budapest those again, have loved them all,
Speaker 4: huge fan, but I connect more strongly with the more
Speaker 4: straightforward narratives that he did previously, and so that's how
Speaker 4: I've responded to this one as well. I'm not trying
Speaker 4: to ignore those other layers. I'm going to have to
Speaker 4: get to them a little later. And my reasoning is
Speaker 4: I don't want to rush through it. I want to
Speaker 4: enjoy what is taking place in Asteroid City, because, again,
Speaker 4: as you said, that could be a movie of its own.
Speaker 4: What movie do I think that is. We'll get to that,
Speaker 4: but I want to hear your response to that question
Speaker 4: before we get there. I would say that, and you've
Speaker 4: hinted at this, this could very much be a movie
Speaker 4: entirely about the acting experience, what it means to be
Speaker 4: an actor, the art of acting, how audiences receive acting.
Speaker 4: That may be enough for what Asteroid City is about.
Speaker 4: I think it's in that next layer that I've yet
Speaker 4: to really dig into. But I think that's why it's there.
Speaker 4: It sounds to me I'm unfamiliar with a lot of
Speaker 4: the background information you shared. Maybe that was the genesis
Speaker 4: of this project many years ago, perhaps, and I think
Speaker 4: there's a lot of richness there. There are some fantastic
Speaker 4: performances here, performances within performances within performances, as you said,
Speaker 4: but just on the surface of a single character performance.
Speaker 4: I think Schwartzman and Johansson are excellent in particular. That
Speaker 4: may be all this movie needs to be about. That's
Speaker 4: the layer I've yet to get to. But how are
Speaker 4: you feeling? Is that the layer this movie needed for
Speaker 4: you to like it as much as I'm hoping you did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I probably did appreciate it even more
Speaker 3: because of that ambition, because of that audacity, would have
Speaker 3: been fine, I'm sure with that more stripped down version
Speaker 3: of this film. And I'm gonna say it's probably a
Speaker 3: little silly to suggest that making a movie smaller would
Speaker 3: make the movie seem smaller. Yeah, that's what would have happened,
Speaker 3: I think, though, I think it would have been satisfying
Speaker 3: without being as rewarding. And look, every good movie should
Speaker 3: get better with repeat viewings. Definitely the case with Anderson's films,
Speaker 3: which are very rich. Asteroids City, though, is one that
Speaker 3: almost demands I think that you go back and unpack
Speaker 3: all of its references and all the ways it kind
Speaker 3: of folds in on itself, and not just to get
Speaker 3: the references, though I would like to do that. I mean,
Speaker 3: we can get as minute even as the fact that
Speaker 3: that character I mentioned, Scarlett Johansson, one of her characters
Speaker 3: in this film is named Mercedes Ford. You know, it's
Speaker 3: as if is if this woman has probably taken a
Speaker 3: stage name where she's grabbed like this more exotic foreign
Speaker 3: car and they've merged it with the basic American car.
Speaker 3: For it's playing with all these myths and ideas everything,
Speaker 3: even Hickenlooper is a reference. Of course, I don't think
Speaker 3: there's anything in this film. Of course there's nothing by accident,
Speaker 3: but it's one of those films where it really does
Speaker 3: feel as if every detail matters. And watching it again
Speaker 3: or multiple times after that isn't just to sort of
Speaker 3: pick up on the trivia of it to get all
Speaker 3: those references, but to really see how all of those
Speaker 3: references contribute to the narrative and the ideas and yes,
Speaker 3: the emotions that Anderson I think is exploring here. And
Speaker 3: there were really two moments then locked it for me,
Speaker 3: and we were talking about this a little bit afterwards.
Speaker 3: I think even the next day you said that there
Speaker 3: were some lines that you really wish maybe you had
Speaker 3: taken better notes on, or that you could reference. I'd
Speaker 3: like to see if we have any overlap here. Two
Speaker 3: that unlocked it for me. One is a moment I
Speaker 3: think it's Maya Hawk is a teacher who's got a
Speaker 3: group of young students I don't know, maybe eight, nine,
Speaker 3: ten years old on a field trip. They've come to
Speaker 3: Astoid City to learn about space, and this is one
Speaker 3: of her scenes where she's trying to teach them the
Speaker 3: morning after this alien sighting. Now, I hadn't actually watched
Speaker 3: the trailer for Asteroid City before seeing the movie, so
Speaker 3: I kind of thought. I kind of thought, you know,
Speaker 3: even though it's not like it feels like a gigantic spoiler,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have expected that that was something they revealed
Speaker 3: in the trailer. But it's right there. So it's not
Speaker 3: like the whole movie hinges. It does kind of thematically,
Speaker 3: but it's not as if the movie, in terms of
Speaker 3: the plot hinges on this moment, not giving anything away.
Speaker 3: They have an alien sighting. It is completely by surprise.
Speaker 3: They have no expectation of this before this moment. They
Speaker 3: believe they're alone in the universe, and you can see
Speaker 3: how sort of upset she is. Not upset like angry,
Speaker 3: more just she's clearly been rocked. Her world has been
Speaker 3: rocked by this, and now she's trying to she's trying
Speaker 3: to teach.
Speaker 4: Students, well, it's changed her plan, Adam, you should know
Speaker 4: this as a teacher. Now, I mean, there's nothing worse.
Speaker 3: And it's changed so much more than that, it's changed
Speaker 3: the plan for all of their lives in a way. Right,
Speaker 3: So she says, some of our information about the Solar
Speaker 3: System may no longer be completely accurate. Anyway, there's still
Speaker 3: only nine planets in the Solar System as far as
Speaker 3: we know. And one of the kids, Billy, raises his
Speaker 3: hand and Billy says, except now there's an alien. And
Speaker 3: you really do you sense? I love the performance. You
Speaker 3: sense her hesitancy and the doubt that's creeping in as
Speaker 3: she's saying those words, Like the way she says, as
Speaker 3: far as we know, as far as we know, there's
Speaker 3: still nine planets in the Solar System. And it just
Speaker 3: raises for me this idea that I think this movie
Speaker 3: is really exploring, among so many other ideas and questions,
Speaker 3: which is what do we cling to as truths, universal
Speaker 3: foundational truths. How do we navigate this experience, this experience
Speaker 3: of life with out a set of rules? Twelve hours ago,
Speaker 3: they thought they understood the rules, They thought they understood
Speaker 3: what kind of universe they lived in. Now they realize
Speaker 3: they don't. Everything is up for grabs, and that chaos,
Speaker 3: that uncertainty is disconcerting. And I think that even ties
Speaker 3: back Josh to the central storyline of this film, which
Speaker 3: is surrounding grief. These Steamback kids. There's a life with
Speaker 3: a mother, and there's a life now without. They're just
Speaker 3: now coming to terms with it. They just discover it.
Speaker 3: It just gets thrown thrust onto them, and they have
Speaker 3: to reckon with it. So there's life before and after,
Speaker 3: just like there's before and after life with the alien?
Speaker 3: What do you what are you going to be tethered to?
Speaker 3: Which then gets to the second moment and I can't
Speaker 3: remember the line. Maybe you do, but I know a
Speaker 3: character says it. I don't remember the exact context, Steve,
Speaker 3: and I wish I had better notes here. Someone says
Speaker 3: something to the effect that you just have to keep
Speaker 3: telling the story. And for all of these artists, including
Speaker 3: Anderson himself. The sense for me is that the only
Speaker 3: way you can deal with all that chaos and uncertainty
Speaker 3: is to just keep telling the story. Are you ever
Speaker 3: going to find the meaning of it all? Are you
Speaker 3: going to find the answers?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: You just keep telling the story. And that story involves characters.
Speaker 3: The stories involve people. All you can do is keep
Speaker 3: taking some comfort and solace in each other.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's one of the lines. It absolutely is. And
Speaker 4: it's so funny because it comes at a point where
Speaker 4: you are starting to feel overwhelmed a little bit about
Speaker 4: what this all might mean. Not overwhelmed by the style,
Speaker 4: you know, I couldn't get enough of that, the filmmaking
Speaker 4: those sorts of things, or the performances, but starting to think, Okay,
Speaker 4: this has been fun, but what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: And what happens? This is in the TV documentary you mentioned,
Speaker 4: which is chronicling the production of the play that is
Speaker 4: the story proper and Schwartzman, who is the actor at
Speaker 4: this point, not the father in Asteroid City, but the
Speaker 4: actor playing him, asks Adrian Brody, as the play's director,
Speaker 4: doesn't even ask him, he just kind of says, an exasperation,
Speaker 4: I still don't understand the play, and it just hit
Speaker 4: me because I was right there with him. It was
Speaker 4: like exactly where I was. And then Brody's director is
Speaker 4: the one who says, you had it, just keep telling
Speaker 4: the story. That was his direction. I love your reading.
Speaker 4: I love this idea of you know, being disconcerted by
Speaker 4: events and wondering what truths can we cling to. I
Speaker 4: think that absolutely fits. I had a little different response
Speaker 4: to the alien encounter, I think, and then a reading
Speaker 4: that worked backwards for the film. I almost found that
Speaker 4: for the characters to be it's the end epiphany, right,
Speaker 4: And we've gotten these in almost every one of his
Speaker 4: movies where a character suddenly it's Max Fisher flying the kite,
Speaker 4: it's Steve Zizou underwater encountering the jaguar shark. I think
Speaker 4: I'm gonna lose my cred if I got that wrong.
Speaker 4: You know, these epiphanies, they often come in the you know,
Speaker 4: the final twenty minutes of his films. What's so interesting here?
Speaker 4: And why you're right that it's not necessarily a spoiler
Speaker 4: though I did not know it going in. As well,
Speaker 4: the alien appearance, it's about the midway point. It feels
Speaker 4: like and so it is an epiphany that turns a
Speaker 4: little differently than previous ones for me. And I'm going
Speaker 4: to back all the way up and then say that
Speaker 4: I found asteroid City. My takeaway was this is maybe
Speaker 4: his darkest film, maybe his bleakest film, And I think
Speaker 4: it's capturing a feeling right now that for me at least,
Speaker 4: is very appropriate this movie, Adam. I think maybe because
Speaker 4: of the atomic setting, it had me thinking about the
Speaker 4: doomsday clock. And this is not something I really think
Speaker 4: about very much, but I actually thought, I'm gonna go
Speaker 4: see what's the doomsday clock saying right now? And this
Speaker 4: is that, you know, it's kind of a pseudoscientific thing
Speaker 4: that's supposed to measure how close we are to destroy ourselves.
Speaker 4: Right It's at its worst right now. And I thought
Speaker 4: that fits. That makes sense to me, just how kind
Speaker 4: of I've been feeling when you talk to like younger people,
Speaker 4: how they talk about their future. It's like, yeah, this
Speaker 4: tracks that the doomsday clock is saying things are pretty dire.
Speaker 4: And then I'm thinking about this movie, which is set
Speaker 4: decades later but sort of a similar time. Right, we've
Speaker 4: had a pandemic, We've had American insurrection. Those are unique,
Speaker 4: but Russian aggression environmental degradation that we have now. But
Speaker 4: you think also about the atomic testing element and what
Speaker 4: that meant when it was first dawning upon humanity's consciousness
Speaker 4: in the fifties. The extreme existential angst of nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 4: I have to imagine, was similar to what we are
Speaker 4: experiencing now, as the doomsday clock attests. And so I
Speaker 4: think this movie is wrestling with all of that and
Speaker 4: making it personal to your point, not only in the
Speaker 4: Schwartzman character's family wrestling with the mother and wife's death,
Speaker 4: but Midge's character is performing. She's rehearsing this suicidal scene
Speaker 4: in her next movie, and she is giving it such
Speaker 4: pathos that you really worry for her as a character,
Speaker 4: not as an actress playing that part, but as a character.
Speaker 4: This is also a common theme in Anderson's films, considering suicide,
Speaker 4: and it's darker for me because it just feels both
Speaker 4: personal and bigger. It really does feel as if the
Speaker 4: world is on the verge of crumbling. There's another line
Speaker 4: that I wrote down, We're doomed or something like that,
Speaker 4: and someone says in a response, maybe we are wondering
Speaker 4: it feels like we're doomed? Is something like that, Maybe
Speaker 4: we are? And I think there's stylistic touches that support
Speaker 4: this reading. Think about that highway ramp in the middle
Speaker 4: of town that goes to nowhere. It's just like, very
Speaker 4: funny but also kind of an unsettling joke. The atomic
Speaker 4: testing constantly going on in the background. How about the
Speaker 4: police chase that interrupts every favorite guest. It's so funny
Speaker 4: in the film, right, It's like police car chasing a
Speaker 4: hot rod down main street, screaming. They're shooting at each other.
Speaker 4: It's funny, it's another one of the Roadrunner cartoon elements,
Speaker 4: but it's also deeply distressing in a way, like your
Speaker 4: life is going to be interrupted by this any moment.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you can do. You're in the gunfire. Why
Speaker 4: do so many characters carry guns with no explanation in
Speaker 4: this movie? Adam Tom Hanks's father in law, he doesn't
Speaker 4: need a gun, Steve Carrell's hotel keeper, he doesn't need
Speaker 4: a gun. And they're just kind of in their holes
Speaker 4: in their belts. This is a movie that's deeply disquieting
Speaker 4: to me, constantly reminding of me of that, and then
Speaker 4: the Alien comes, and for me, it was almost as
Speaker 4: if it opened things up for these characters. You know
Speaker 4: what I thought about. We've talked many times about how
Speaker 4: Tarkowsky's Mirror has affected our viewing of every movie since
Speaker 4: The Alien for me was a little bit like the
Speaker 4: wind in Mirror, where inexplainable, disturbing in a way, unsettling,
Speaker 4: yet somehow also maybe a little bit comforting that, Okay,
Speaker 4: things feel out of our control, but maybe that's because
Speaker 4: we're not in control and there's something else out there
Speaker 4: we don't understand, and there's something comforting about that. And
Speaker 4: the reason I turned to that is because there are
Speaker 4: very subtle changes for some of these characters after that
Speaker 4: point that I won't get into now because I've talked
Speaker 4: long enough, but did find the movie for me moving
Speaker 4: a little bit away from that despair and unease that
Speaker 4: it otherwise was really steeped in for me, almost more
Speaker 4: than any of his other films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we saw the film the same way.
Speaker 3: We're thinking about it, very much the same way. Some
Speaker 3: of our word choices might be slightly different. You mentioned
Speaker 3: bleak and that it might be his bleakest or his darkest. Yes,
Speaker 3: those elements are there. That's what's grounding everything and what
Speaker 3: the rest of the film is riffing on and responding to.
Speaker 3: But as I said, really following up that mantra of
Speaker 3: just keep telling the story, it feels to me his
Speaker 3: most hopeful in some ways. And just to mention about
Speaker 3: Hank's real quick I like that character touch because it
Speaker 3: seemed to me one where because of the way he
Speaker 3: carried himself, and he has a very kind of stern demeanor,
Speaker 3: and that gun obviously was an indicator as well. It
Speaker 3: made me think this guy has to be a military guy.
Speaker 3: He's someone who probably comes from that world, the military world.
Speaker 3: Now he's trying to domesticate back into regular life, and
Speaker 3: that's one of those barriers that he can't quite break.
Speaker 3: That's just now who he is. And I think this
Speaker 3: movie is filled with those kinds of dichotomies, including the
Speaker 3: types of dichotomies that surround what you're expressing or this
Speaker 3: conflict of the film, the hopefulness versus the bleakness, the
Speaker 3: sort of fatalism of it, it's all there. I think
Speaker 3: that is what he's really exploring, and it does feel
Speaker 3: to me that that time You're right that time in
Speaker 3: the fifties that he's tapping into it must have felt
Speaker 3: like that every day for people, for a lot of Americans,
Speaker 3: but especially people maybe living in some of these these
Speaker 3: towns around places like the you know, real asteroid cities
Speaker 3: where bombs are being tested. But even then on the
Speaker 3: East Coast, that's another dichotomy at play here, the East
Speaker 3: Coast and the actors and it's all very cerebral and
Speaker 3: they're trying to get inside these characters and understand them.
Speaker 3: But then we've got the West, and everything about the
Speaker 3: mythicness of that is in opposition to what we think
Speaker 3: of as the East. This movie is those things, and
Speaker 3: then we get the dichotomies in terms of the color
Speaker 3: and black and white, yep, the aspect ratios that switch
Speaker 3: here in this film. And I'll come back to that
Speaker 3: a little bit more, but that, for me is really
Speaker 3: why you can't separate or I don't think you get
Speaker 3: a quote unquote better film if you separated out all
Speaker 3: the asteroid city story stuff, because it's so tied to
Speaker 3: all the other stories that we get and all the
Speaker 3: other storytellers we see. Without the dichotomies of the movie
Speaker 3: simply isn't as rich. So that actor's studio stuff. For example,
Speaker 3: I really feel like, Josh, if you if you know
Speaker 3: anything about that group at all and what some of
Speaker 3: those actors, and that includes people like Marilyn Monroe even right,
Speaker 3: it's part of the actor's studio, lots of other famous
Speaker 3: people whose films that Anderson grew up on and that
Speaker 3: you know, we're all familiar with. There was a sense
Speaker 3: by doing this work, the work of being an actor,
Speaker 3: and this is just my sense of it too from
Speaker 3: what I've gleaned from movies and reading, is that they
Speaker 3: were they were unlocking the mysteries of the universe too.
Speaker 3: They were, or at least the mysteries of humanity, trying
Speaker 3: to deeply understand what makes us all tick and then
Speaker 3: translate that to the screen, to put that in a
Speaker 3: box and make people see themselves reflected in that and
Speaker 3: better understand where they stand in the universe by living
Speaker 3: through it through these characters. Now we can sit here
Speaker 3: and say, well, that's maybe way too grandiose a notion,
Speaker 3: but that's what those students were in those classrooms hoping
Speaker 3: to learn. They were trying to unlock those things. And
Speaker 3: I imagine that someone from the outside, someone in Middle
Speaker 3: America hearing about the actors and the actor's studio and
Speaker 3: picking up these little things. They even had a sense
Speaker 3: that I don't understand what's going on in those classrooms. Sure,
Speaker 3: I don't know what they think they're doing, but that's
Speaker 3: not that different than the astronomers trying to make sense
Speaker 3: of the universe. Like there was this time where all
Speaker 3: of these things were converging. You're starting to be able
Speaker 3: to access the universe through technology and actually going out
Speaker 3: into space. That's making you think about your world differently.
Speaker 3: And now people are taking things like acting and they're
Speaker 3: exploring the mind in a way that is ostensibly deeper
Speaker 3: than what had ever been done before. Again, it comes
Speaker 3: back to this idea of mysteries too. And so when
Speaker 3: you look at Asteroid City, when you think about all that,
Speaker 3: and then you look at Asteroid City the movie, but
Speaker 3: also the place, just the place itself within the movie,
Speaker 3: it it for me takes on another layer of poignancy.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to use a word here in a
Speaker 3: moment that you already said, and you don't just appreciate
Speaker 3: the visual aesthetics of it, which I'm with you, I
Speaker 3: could have just watched I could have just watched people
Speaker 3: move about.
Speaker 4: Sound for the production design as well. Is it's just incredible.
Speaker 3: Yes, But these locations, when you think about Anderson and
Speaker 3: his work, You've already referenced some of these films, those
Speaker 3: spaces always have so much meaning to Anderson's characters, right Rushmore,
Speaker 3: the school, the Tenenbaum House, the boat in the Life Aquatic,
Speaker 3: the Grand Budapest Hotel. But these places exist within the world.
Speaker 3: They can't actually be completely sealed off from the world,
Speaker 3: as much as the characters maybe want them to be.
Speaker 3: The outside world always encroaches. And the difference here, I think,
Speaker 3: or one difference I thought of, is that Asteroid City
Speaker 3: is what it is only because of the outside world encroaching.
Speaker 3: Like it's not actually really a town undo itself. Almost
Speaker 3: nobody actually lives there. The only people we meet, for
Speaker 3: the most part, we meet all the people who who
Speaker 3: come there for some other reason. And every edifice we
Speaker 3: see in Asteroid City is artifice. The whole thing is
Speaker 3: and I know this again will sound a little silly,
Speaker 3: but this is where the movie folds in on itself.
Speaker 3: The whole thing is like a movie set. Yeah, not
Speaker 3: one piece of construction or writing on the walls or
Speaker 3: on a sign or a set of stairs or whatever.
Speaker 3: Not one of those things wasn't something that was created
Speaker 3: by a maker, created by Wes Anderson.
Speaker 4: Even the Mesa's in the background, which are delightfully pink
Speaker 4: like those are clearly clearly fake.
Speaker 3: Exactly so when I talk about poignancy, and I talk
Speaker 3: about what I imagine to be personal, even though I'm
Speaker 3: not suggesting I know anything about Wes Anderson's own life
Speaker 3: or things he might be dealing with right now in
Speaker 3: his life, but I got the sense watching it that
Speaker 3: one of the things he wanted to explore on screen
Speaker 3: and deal with is the idea that the more uncertain
Speaker 3: we are, the more life seems to unravel or be
Speaker 3: unraveling around us or control, we naturally try to exert
Speaker 3: over it and reassert ourselves. And so this movie is
Speaker 3: it's not just about that push pull like it embodies it.
Speaker 3: It embodies it literally in every frame where we have
Speaker 3: a filmmaker. They always say that about Anderson. His detractors
Speaker 3: say it to a fault, that it's all too controlled,
Speaker 3: it's all too intricately manicured. Whatever. This is one of
Speaker 3: those films where it both seems to me he's taken
Speaker 3: it to yet another level of being that orchestrated and designed,
Speaker 3: because as I said, there literally isn't a thing you
Speaker 3: see that not only do you know Wes Anderson, imagine,
Speaker 3: I almost figure he's the one who wrote those things.
Speaker 3: He probably got out the paintbrush and actually wrote the
Speaker 3: things like oil change and you know, pancakes whatever for
Speaker 3: for a dollar, whatever it is. That's the sense you
Speaker 3: get watching it. It's as if he himself, like the
Speaker 3: characters are trying to exert that that control have have
Speaker 3: complete dominance and dominion over this space.
Speaker 4: And then the alien comes in and takes all that
Speaker 4: control away, which is and I'm pretty sure I won't
Speaker 4: describe it in detail because I want people to experience
Speaker 4: it and be surprised. I think stop motion animation is involved.
Speaker 4: Let's just say I'd like was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 4: percent in when I saw how they handled the alien.
Speaker 4: It's just wonderful. I love what you said about the
Speaker 4: actors studio and the seriousness of the project at work
Speaker 4: there in terms of trying to wrestle with this anxiety
Speaker 4: and angst and unease and using it not just to
Speaker 4: put on a performance, but to understand more about the
Speaker 4: human psyche. I think that's absolutely right. It helps me
Speaker 4: to connect it with the you know, the story proper
Speaker 4: that we see, and it's also gives us a chance
Speaker 4: to talk more about these performances, which everyone here is wonderful.
Speaker 4: I think every small bit part is absolutely precisely doing
Speaker 4: what it needs to be using that particular actor's persona
Speaker 4: and talents. But I really think Schwartzman and Johansson are
Speaker 4: holding this thing together on an emotional level. Hers is
Speaker 4: almost a supporting turn. I don't even know if you
Speaker 4: would consider his a lead turn, but she definitely gets
Speaker 4: less screen time, but I think she's kind of the
Speaker 4: central focus. And the way she that vacant stare she holds,
Speaker 4: which suggests someone very lost. And this is whether she's
Speaker 4: looking at a character or looking directly at the camera,
Speaker 4: someone who's incredibly lost in the ways we've described, possibly despair,
Speaker 4: but also it just pierces right through you.
Speaker 2: He took a picture of me, whow, I'm a photographer.
Speaker 2: You didn't ask permission. I never ask permission?
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 2: Because I work in trench's battlefields and combat zones, really.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: I mean you're a war photographer.
Speaker 2: Mostly sometimes I cover sporting events. My name is Augue Steinbeck.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 4: What are you going to do with that?
Speaker 5: That picture? Hm?
Speaker 2: Well, if it's any good, I guess I'll try to
Speaker 2: sell it to a magazine now that you mentioned it.
Speaker 2: Midge Campbell eating.
Speaker 4: A waffle Schwartzman, you know she's minimalist, and so is
Speaker 4: he as Augie I should say, not is the actor
Speaker 4: Plane Augie, but as Augie almost like speaking without separating
Speaker 4: his teeth in many ways. And there's a great joke
Speaker 4: about that, which I won't spoil. I think it's in
Speaker 4: the trailer too, though, unfortunately. And he I don't think
Speaker 4: he's one of the best lines. It's so good, and
Speaker 4: I don't think i've seen him. I haven't seen everything
Speaker 4: he's done, but something as clenched as this is, and
Speaker 4: I love that different side of him. And he's also
Speaker 4: good as the insecure actor Plane Augie as well, as
Speaker 4: we've already touched on, gets another one in great lines
Speaker 4: in that part. So they're both they're both just, you know,
Speaker 4: top of their games here.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, I think they are both very good
Speaker 3: and I have always appreciated Schwartzman, especially in in Anderson's films.
Speaker 3: I will only say that you're right. They're giving performances
Speaker 3: that are in a very similar register and show similar restraint,
Speaker 3: and are similarly kind of vacant at times or a
Speaker 3: little bit detached. And I would I would say that
Speaker 3: Schwartzman's performance is incredible if it wasn't for the fact
Speaker 3: that he was playing off Johansson. And I think that
Speaker 3: Johansson just exhibits something with that character. For all the
Speaker 3: ways they're very similar, there is something, to use your word,
Speaker 3: more more piercing, a little bit more haunting for sure,
Speaker 3: a bit more mysterious. There's there is a a well
Speaker 3: of mystery to her character that Schwartzman's character doesn't quite
Speaker 3: put off. And I don't know if that's because of
Speaker 3: the way they're written. I don't know if it's because
Speaker 3: of the direction and what Anderson wanted, or it's something
Speaker 3: that's lacking in Schwartzman's performance, or it's just something that's
Speaker 3: so there in Johanson's performance, because I think she's incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean, if I had
Speaker 4: to rank them, she's she's giving a richer performance, even
Speaker 4: though it's a character with a little less screen time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do want to mention, as we're talking about
Speaker 3: the layers and storytelling and following that idea of telling
Speaker 3: the story, things like all of these devices, sometimes literal
Speaker 3: or physical devices, like the camera. I mean, Aggie's a
Speaker 3: war photographer, so you see him always bringing the camera
Speaker 3: up to his eye. It's almost like it's his protection.
Speaker 3: You know that he has his art, he has this
Speaker 3: this camera that allows him to get a little bit
Speaker 3: of space and see the world the way that he
Speaker 3: wants to see it. But we also get these frames
Speaker 3: in a lot of different ways. It's not just the
Speaker 3: frame of the camera, and that frame is sometimes the
Speaker 3: personium of a stage or a television, or it's the
Speaker 3: movie the widescreen that we're seeing all of those things there.
Speaker 3: But Josh even the way he shoots Scarlett Johanson and
Speaker 3: Jason Schwartzman as they spend a good chunk of the
Speaker 3: movie talking to each other from their little bungalows, Yeah,
Speaker 3: a window, and they have some space in between them,
Speaker 3: and when you look directly at them, when the camera
Speaker 3: shows them head on, it's like they're within another frame
Speaker 3: of course they are a window, and that window is
Speaker 3: almost like the aspect ratio. It's the squarer right, classic
Speaker 3: style aspect ratio which we sometimes get in other universes
Speaker 3: within this movie. But then when Anderson shoots the desert
Speaker 3: space between them so that you see them on each
Speaker 3: side of the frame, it creates a new wide screen
Speaker 3: frame like their faces and their windows create yet another
Speaker 3: screen within the screen. I started to almost feel like,
Speaker 3: am I going crazy? I'm seeing I'm seeing rectangles and
Speaker 3: squares everywhere I look. But that's that's to me to
Speaker 3: the film's credit. Yes, that that I started to experience
Speaker 3: all that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's it's emphasizing their separation, them feeling
Speaker 4: boxed in by their own individual identity or individual angst
Speaker 4: and anxieties that are there are shared anxieties in this movie,
Speaker 4: and there are very individual anxieties, and it makes space
Speaker 4: for both. It frames both appropriately, as when we see,
Speaker 4: you know, the chain link fence around the government facility
Speaker 4: that that kind of is oddly designed, so it's just
Speaker 4: going straight deep into the screen then back all the
Speaker 4: way showing how wide it is. And there's also I
Speaker 4: think and Anderson formal first I would have to go
Speaker 4: again frame by frame through all his films to make
Speaker 4: sure I think we get at a swishpan within a
Speaker 4: split frame. So it's when two characters are ones on
Speaker 4: each side right of the screen, separated, they're not just
Speaker 4: standing next to each other. And then that police chase
Speaker 4: goes by, and I forget which character, and one of
Speaker 4: them turns to look at the police car, and the
Speaker 4: camera pans quickly with them. I mean, he's gonna drive
Speaker 4: himself insane at some point if he keeps layering things
Speaker 4: like this. I just hope, I just hope I can
Speaker 4: keep up with them.
Speaker 3: Well, you know what put me in the headspace, and
Speaker 3: we'll go out on this. I'm gonna invoke your beloved
Speaker 3: life aquatic. The opening of this film is a shot.
Speaker 3: I may not be getting it exactly right, but as
Speaker 3: I recall it, it's a shot of it's Brian Cranston
Speaker 3: talking as the host of the TV show, and the
Speaker 3: first image we see is him but through the glass
Speaker 3: of the TV booth.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 3: So there's there's people working on the TV show who
Speaker 3: are in the very foreground the glass that they're looking through,
Speaker 3: and then Cranston on the stage. So again we've got
Speaker 3: we've got all these layers here, we've got the stage
Speaker 3: itself that he's on, we've got the studio glass. But
Speaker 3: it made me think immediately of the submarine shot from
Speaker 3: Steve Zizou that that even that shot, Josh, when you
Speaker 3: think about it, the way he frames that, that moment
Speaker 3: with the jaguar shark, that group of people sitting in
Speaker 3: those seats in the submarine looking out through that wide screen,
Speaker 3: it's like they're at a movie theater. It's like they're
Speaker 3: it's like they're watching this this all unfold in front
Speaker 3: of them. And it works for me on the level
Speaker 3: that it's almost as if Anderson can only see the
Speaker 3: world through through frames, through these types of boxes, and
Speaker 3: so so he layers his film with his characters doing
Speaker 3: the same.
Speaker 4: One of the best shots in his filmography that one
Speaker 4: from Zazoo, for sure.
Speaker 1: That's im class.
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