Wes Anderson’s films are renowned for their eccentricity, often wacky characters and outstanding cinematography. But what is it like on the set of the Academy Award-winning director’s movies?
Michael Cera told us.
In a new Rolling Stone AU/NZ interview, which features in our June-August issue, the Canadian actor discussed new film The Phoenician Scheme, which he stars in alongside a stack of Hollywood legends like Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, and Benedict Cumberbatch, just to name a few.
Cera confirmed that the on-set experience is as unique as the on-screen product. For one, no actor is given their own trailer.
“Everybody is there for Wes and everybody’s there to be part of this process, which is very specific, so it’s just a lot of enthusiasm from everybody,” Cera told Rolling Stone AU/NZ.
“Wes has a whole team of people that he has assembled over his whole career that he’s curated very meticulously, so the whole operation is really handmade.
“It’s very demanding work where you do dozens of takes of a given thing to get the timing right with camera moves and with tricky dialogue and monologues, and he does like to do things like that in long, sustained takes. So it’s very focused, very gratifying.”
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Cera has long been a fan of Anderson who rose to fame with classics like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, even saying that the Houston-born filmmaker created “a type of humour within this medium that didn’t exist before him.”
Though the work may sound gruelling, Cera said he loved Anderson’s tactics.
“You don’t leave the set and disband,” Cera explained. “[Wes is] able to keep things very tightly focused and you do a lot more work in the course of a day. You do a lot more takes, and the camera rolls much more on his set than any other set. When he cuts, he doesn’t allow people to file in and lose tension… which is wonderful for an actor because a lot of the time on set as an actor, you’re idling and you’re losing your mind a little bit and going, ‘When can we do a take?’ It feels like Wes has that same kind of engine in him. He wants to stay on it and get as many takes as possible and keep refining it.”
Cera stars as Bjorn Lund in Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, with Rolling Stone praising his “nebbishy academic” character for “adding to the screwball vibe” of the black comedy.
“You leave impressed that Anderson can still manage to do what his does best without succumbing to self-parody here. The blueprint may be familiar. But it’s still a pretty foolproof plan,” the review added.
Read Cera’s full Rolling Stone AU/NZ interview here. The Phoenician Scheme is in Australian cinemas now.
