Wes Anderson’s aesthetic, tone and style are unmistakable. When this particular writer commented that you can recognize an Anderson film “within 10 seconds,” the subject of this interview chimed in, “even less!” – and he’s not wrong. But there’s also the inherent allure of its cast of oft-recurring stars. Now appearing in his fifth Anderson feature, no one is a bigger fan of Anderson’s work and process than Academy Award winner Adrien Brody.
So once you hear that Brody, who speaks with obvious glee and understanding about everything from Anderson’s ability to cast incredible young talent to the way he uses animatics to plot his films, will play a director in “Asteroid City ” – a theater director, but a director nonetheless – the question seems obvious: does he play Anderson?
No, not Truly. OK, maybe a little, but certainly not more than the main inspiration of him: Elia Kazan.
“I’ve spent a lifetime with filmmakers,” Brody told IndieWire. “I’ve lost count of how many films I’ve made, but I’ve been working professionally since I was 12 and have probably spent more time on a film set than many people I’ve worked with. I’ve learned a lot over the years, and each one is so unique and of course that informs some of my work portraying this man. (To be clear: It’s Schubert Green, the director of the stage version of what’s being made into a movie, that’s the subject of “Asteroid City,” and what we promise makes a lot more sense on screen in another Anderson gem. )
Brody began acting when he was just a kid, landing both an off-Broadway appearance and a PBS made-for-television movie before the age of 13. Ford Coppola’s short film “Life Without Zoë”). He is still the youngest person to win the Academy Award for Best Academy Award (for Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist”). Over its decades in Hollywood, it has been directed by Spike Lee, Terrence Malick, Rian Johnson, Peter Jackson and M. Night Shyamalan.
“I referenced Kazan in many ways, and also Marlon Brando, but mostly Kazan right at that time,” Brody said. “It’s funny because, in ‘Blonde,’ I played Arthur Miller, and to some extent, these guys were friends. But Kazan has really changed a lot of our expectations of what cinema and performance are, the expectations of that performance. And actors like Brando obviously set the stage for actors of future generations to honor a more realistic form of emotional expression than was the norm of the time. So I like those aspects of the movie and Wes honoring that, and he’s also playful in that.
OK, so maybe there is a bite of Anderson in there, if only because it is so present throughout his work. “Even as an actor, when I’m lucky enough to play the lead in a movie, (there’s) usually a director element (there), if the director is a writer on that,” Brody said. “There are a lot of qualities that, if you look, are present in that individual or traceable to that individual, so it’s there for the taking if you’re present.”
When Anderson cast Brody in the 2007 film ˜The Darjeeling Limited’, the actor, best known for heavy films like ˜The Pianist’, ˜The Thin Red Line’ and ˜Summer of Sam’, was hardly an obvious choice for the lightest touch of an Anderson Film. But it worked, and the pair stuck together, with Brody also starring in Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and “The French Dispatch.”
“I am incredibly honored and feel truly privileged to have had such a long friendship and professional relationship with Wes,” Brody said. “He has single-handedly influenced my life in many positive ways, from our time traveling through India together and all these interesting cities around the world, Görlitz in Germany and Chinchón here in Spain. They are sort of magical experiences where he brings together so many interesting people, many of whom have remained close friends. … I love the boy and we are friends. He and my mother are friends! My mother has been on every set and is family. It’s very unusual.
When asked if Anderson ever told Brody why the director thought of him for more comedy films after the Oscar-winner had spent so much time on darker projects, Brody paused. “He didn’t tell me,” the actor said. “I think he saw in me the capacity for that job. … In my case, at that point in my career, I had done some comedy work, but the movies I was known for were very dramatic roles. It’s my responsibility to represent those movies and the subject matter, and there’s really no room for that levity. But the whole beauty of being an actor is being different in the characters you play and the style in which you play the characters. And Wes was very helpful in expanding that for me. And I’ve done a series of much more overtly comedic work since then.
So what is it like when Anderson lets Brody know she has a thing for him? Well, first there has to be a script. “Maybe Wes imagines people while he’s writing, but he comes to you when he has something to share,” Brody said. And when does he do it? “There’s a musicality to the writing and an inherently sharp and tongue-in-cheek rhythm and lyrics. I feel like the filmmakers try to dub that, and Wes does that so well because he’s from a real place. He hears it and sees it and finds humor in all that peculiarity.
She also loves the team around Anderson, including key boss Sanjay Sami (who has been with the pair since “The Darjeeling Limited” and is, as Brody puts it, “essential”) to Anderson’s cinematographer Robert Yeoman dating. “For the timing to work for certain shots, a lot depends on this individual’s experience and understanding of Wes’s specificity,” he added.
For Brody, that specificity allows him to tap into both comedy and drama, a marriage of tones he revels in. comedy and tragedy in real life,” Brody said. “And there’s no need to overtly play the play within the play, unless you’re doing something that’s very superficially funny and that’s also fun to do, but the key is to be in that line well and play it in a way. very direct and unaware of the joke. That’s what kills, right?
“Tone is so important and being on the same page tonally with the people you work with, and sometimes you’re not all on the same page,” she said. “Sometimes the producer has a very different idea of what he would like from your performance than the director, and sometimes the other actor is doing something that isn’t necessarily in the same space that you feel they should be in, so it’s a matter of aligning everyone’s vision into one place that gels and then being present enough in that moment to hear it and modulate your reactions within the context of that.
Align shared visions? That’s not a problem on an Anderson set, Brody said, pointing to the director’s use of animatics (essentially, moving storyboards) as a visual reference and a tool for everyone to get a feel for the film’s overall vision .
“It’s a wonderful tool for actors to know the kind of tone of the film,” he said. “Wes is actually going to play all the characters, he’s going to play all of that stuff, not that he’s asking you to do that exactly, but it’s a very significant guideline to help you get a sense of pacing. And Wes’s pace is quite brisk and demanding, so there’s no room for a thought or pause that isn’t intentional. You have to be able to do all the physicality and deliver every line with some subtlety, but never miss a beat and keep it well within the time frame that he sees. And it’s very exciting. His Very thrilling.”
Focus Features releases “Asteroid City” in select theaters on Friday, June 16, with the expansion following on Friday, June 23.
