Lyon’s impressive Roman-style auditorium, normally used by the city’s symphonic orchestra, was sold out as U.S. writer and director Wes Anderson took to the stage as guest of honor of the Lumière Film Festival.
Mid-way through his conversation with festival director Thierry Frémaux, the crowd gathered in the massive 2,000-seat venue was treated to a screening of one of Anderson’s new Roald Dahl adaptations, the short film “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.”
The storyof a rich man who sets out to master an extraordinary skill to cheat at gambling, it is one of four Dahl stories recently adapted by Anderson for Netflix, which acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company (RDSC), that manages the rights to the late British author’s works, from back in 2021.
The only adaptations Anderson has done are Dahl stories, starting with his first animation film, “Fantastic Mr Fox,” in 2009. Asked whether he would like to make further short story adaptations, Anderson answered in the affirmative. His hope, he said, is that it might encourage young people to read.
“My thought was that this way of telling a story might relate to reading, and particularly if young people saw them, it might introduce them to certain authors and draw attention to writing,” he said, adding that another author he would like to adapt the work of is Paul Bowles.
Referring to French New Wave legend François Truffaut, Anderson said: “Apart from the Antoine Doinel films, “La Peau Douce” [“The Soft Skin”], and “L’Argent de Poche” [“Small Change”], almost everything else is adapted from a book, and something I always liked about Truffaut is that he’s a great reader, and his love of writing is in all his movies. In “Day for Night,” you actually see him shopping for books!”
Anderson, an avid Francophile who has an apartment in Paris, is very popular among French audiences. Like Tim Burton, who received the lifetime achievement Lumière Prize last year at the festival, Anderson’s idiosyncratic style is discernible from the first frame of any of his movies. Yet, he told the Lyon audience, “the one thing I never think about, really, when I’m making a film is myself or my own style, my voice.
“I think about what’s new for this movie, how do I make this movie the best it can be, how do I get the greatest collaborators together. And yet every time I make a movie, the first thing people say is: ‘You can sure tell who made this one!’,” he said with a smile, drawing laughter from the crowd, before adding:
“I feel my movies connect to each other in ways that I don’t make an effort for them to, and I accept that about myself. But for me, each movie is a completely new adventure.”
It’s an adventure the director has been sharing for more than two decades with what Frémaux described as his “troupe” of actors, which includes Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and, more recently, Ralph Fiennes.
“It seems natural to me,” he said simply. “I am lucky enough to have worked with some of my favorite actors, so when I do a new movie, I know where to find them,” he said, explaining that he likes to have the cast live together during the shoot: “It makes the whole experience much more emotional, and I think the actors like to be around other actors, and give themselves over to a project fully when there is a chance.”
A cohabitation which Anderson exports to Cannes when he attends the festival – where his latest feature “Asteroid City” was in competition this year – housing his whole team outside the city and ferrying them into town on board his bus – “a very comfortable one,” he assured Frémaux, who enquired jokingly, inviting him to join them next time.
Wrapping up the conversation with a Q&A session, Anderson was asked what advice he would give an aspiring, struggling young filmmaker.
With typical modesty and humor, he shared the experience of his first film, “Bottle Rocket,” co-written with Owen Wilson.
“I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and no one could convince me that we shouldn’t do it, my confidence was the highest, then. When we finally made it and showed it to an audience, they hated it. I was so shocked, it was a disaster. But that changed me: Had I known that before, I probably wouldn’t have made that movie, and I’m glad of that, because the blind confidence you have when you’re young, you need it!”
Faithful to the festival’s custom, Anderson introduced a selection of his own films at Lumière, as well as a screening of “Pather Panchali,” the first in the cult Apu trilogy by Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, to whom Anderson dedicated “The Darjeeling Limited.”
The Lumière Film Festival runs in Lyon until Oct. 22.
