Cannes 2023: Wes Anderson on his new ‘50s-set film ‘Asteroid City,’ AI and all those TikTok videos

Cast members Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Maya Hawke, Director Wes Anderson and Rita Wilson pose.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

When Wes Anderson comes down from Paris for the Cannes Film Festival in the south of France, he and his actors don’t stay in one of Cannes’ luxury hotels but more than an hour down the coast and well outside the frenzy of the festival.

“When we arrived here yesterday, we arrived at a calm, peaceful hotel,” Anderson said in a interview. “We’re one hour away, but it’s a total normal life.”

Normal life can mean something different in a Wes Anderson film, and that may be doubly so in his latest, Asteroid City. It’s among Anderson’s most charmingly chock-full creations, a much-layered, ’50s-set fusion of science fiction, midcentury theater and about a hundred other influences ranging from Looney Tunes to “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

Asteroid City, which Focus Features will release June 16, premiered Tuesday in Cannes. Anderson and his starry cast — including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, Margot Robbie, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright and Adrien Brody — arrived all together in a coach bus.

The film, which Anderson wrote with Roman Coppola, takes place in a Southwest desert town where a group of characters, some of them nursing an unspoken grief, gather for various reasons, be it a stargazing convention or a broken-down car. But even that story is part of a Russian Doll fiction. It’s a play being performed — which, itself, is being filmed for a TV broadcast.

All of which is to say Asteroid City is going to give all those Tik Tok videos made in Anderson’s distinct, diorama style fresh fodder for new social-media replicas, both human-made and AI-crafted. Anderson spoke about those Tik Toks in an interview the day before Asteroid City debuted in Cannes, as well as other questions of style and inspiration in Asteroid City, a sun-dried and melancholic work of vintage Anderson density.

“I do feel like this might be a movie that benefits from being seen twice,” Anderson said. “Brian De Palma liked it the first time and had a much bigger reaction the second time. But what can you say? You can’t make a movie and say, ‘I think it’s best everyone sees it twice.’”

Anderson thanked his cast after a six-minute standing ovation following the film’s world premiere at the plush Grand Theatre Lumiere.