Director Wes Anderson’s newest film “Asteroid City” takes place in a retro-futuristic 1955 and follows a family traveling to a Junior Stargazing convention in the midst of loss. The film is co-written by Anderson and Roman Coppola and stars Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johannson, and Tom Hanks. Anderson tells The Treatment that setting the film during that time allowed him to unpack the post-World War II PTSD many experienced in the 1950s. He talks about why he is always looking towards the next project. And, he explains the joy of working with a film family along with having his own family at home.
The following has been edited and condensed for clarity.
KCRW: What would you say “Asteroid City” is about? What's the plot?
The plot? Yes, that's a big question. [Laughs] You know, I remember seeing Carrie Fisher on David Letterman once, and him asking her that same question [of the book that she was promoting]. She said, “I think the one disadvantage of my book is that it has absolutely no plot whatsoever. So to describe it is a task.”
But in our case, there is a simple version of our story which can be described. A war photographer from the East Coast is on his way with his family to a gathering of students, astronomers, and scientists. It's a kind of science fair in the desert at an observatory for a meteor crater. But part of that journey is that he's taking his family to move to the West because there's been a death in the family, and his children don't even know about it. They're going to the grandfather, so it’s a story of a migration during a loss. And then there are other families that are there for [the science fair gathering] in this little town. And it's what happens when they all get together there. That's the setup.
You have made so many stories about people creating narratives. What draws you to that?
Wes Anderson: I'll tell you what happened with this movie — Roman Coppola and I have a few vague ideas for this next thing we want to do… But the number one thing is, we want to write a part for Jason Schwartzman that’s something he hasn't played before. That is going to be the center of this movie.
So the movie grew around making this role for Jason, but part of what we had was wanting to do something that was both set in the backstage world of a 1950s New York stage show, and to do to do the play that they're preparing itself. … We talked about [1950’s William Inge plays] “Picnic,” and “Bus Stop,” and then found ourselves with a Western play on the New York stage. And the movie grew and grew from those ingredients.
Interesting, because those pieces are also very much New York takes on the West.
Yes, completely. You know, I'm from Texas so I have my bit of the West that I grew up with, and that's in my blood in some sense. But I've always responded to that particular take on the West that comes from people well outside it.
[Frequent collaborators Owen and Luke] Wilsons’ family was always quite involved with Richard Avedon's project about the American West. That's a very erudite, sophisticated look at the West, or Wim Wender's view of our West … I always loved it, it spoke to me and speaks to me in a different way. I also love the Hollywood ‘50s look at that era — at the deserts, and at the desert towns, and the small towns. But in a way, I think this one [“Asteroid City”] definitely is coming at it from the point of view of outsiders, and from the theatrical world.
Yeah, that romanticizing the West is funny. As I was watching, I found myself thinking of “The Petrified Forest.”
That's one we definitely looked at, that's a great one. There's some like “Petrified Forest,” or “Bad Day at Black Rock” — a ‘30s and ‘50s. These were ones that I knew, and then other ones that I'd never seen before that went into looking for research. I was saying, “What else is out there about the West?” How do we use that? Like, I'd never seen “Inferno,” the 3D with Robert Ryan.
You mentioned Wenders and Avedon. You could feel their yearning in their art for those spaces that they didn't have in the places that they came from.
They're fascinated by them. It's romanticizing, and part of the romanticizing (I think) is mythologizing … I love that act.
There's something interesting because the other subject matter, or part of the subject matter, of our movie is actors. It's about people putting on a show and it's about inventing something. And I guess that's part of what mythologizing is … Every character in our movie is also an actor in the story, so they each have two names — their name when we see them as an actor, and then the name of the character they play in the play within the movie. It’s not… simple.
So much of your work plays with the idea of theatricality. What compels you to tell stories in this way?
The thing we do is … every movie is a theater piece. It's just to what degree, you know? … Good filmmakers can make it seem like you're almost watching a documentary. And certainly, there's a tradition of movies where the hand of the director is meant to disappear, you don't see it and feel it [even though] it's there. And the artistry is in that.
But I have a particular affection for ones [like] the Powell and Pressburger movies, films where you do see this sort of artistry as part of the show. And I hope that can be done in a way that makes the story as engaging, or more engaging. It's just a different way to do it. You don't normally represent the writer within the movie. In our story, there's the character of the playwright who has written the story we're telling, whom Edward Norton plays. He's Conrad Earp — the playwright — and there’s a director, and a whole theater company. The movie is really the presentation of their work.
Where does the line between the presentational and representational exist for you?
We're talking about all sorts of stuff that swirls around the movie, inspirations and interests for us. Nevertheless, at the center of it is this role we wrote for Jason Schwartzman. The thing we're actually telling a story about is the grief that his character is experiencing. This character who's dealing with the biggest things we deal with: The lack of control that we ultimately have, dealing with the overwhelming unknowns of life, and all those fears and anxieties.
Another thing about the period is that it presents itself as a kind of placid decade in America. We see this sort of Eisenhower-golf-course feeling of America, and all these backyards that have appeared all over the world. But the thing we talked about when we were writing the story is that these are people who are also in the aftermath of the war. There’s an undiagnosed trauma condition that they're still dealing with. And their families are on the receiving end of it.
There's an anxiety about what's happening in the world around them. There's a fear of outside, and there's a kind of blind trust in the technology and the might of America on the surface… and there's also the seeds of all the doubt and resistance that are going to form the decade after. So that's where we've kind of situated our little drama with these characters.
A lot of the incidental music choices in the film — like Les Paul & Mary Ford’s “How High the Moon,” — are about this technology being invented in pop culture. Was your intention with the music to mirror what the film is saying on its much larger scale?
Our music is a particular slice of Americana… it's not really country music. It is a Western inflected kind of music, but it has a sort of swing thing. It is a certain kind of genre which I don't quite know how to describe. A lot of the recordings in the movie come out of kind of regional American music, but they’re English recordings, they’re skiffle artists. We have the Springfields and “Last Train to San Fernando,” and “Freight Train.” These are [mostly] English artists who have done the recordings, which wasn't like a preconceived thing. It was just something I gravitated to with Randall Poster, who works with me on the music. I think that kind of takes us back around to Wim Wenders and the outsider’s take on the West, the mythologizing of it.
More: Music supervisor Randall Poster on soundtracking Martin Scoresese and Wes Anderson
The original music that we made for the movie was by a French guy. And our cowboy band in the movie — again, this wasn't a deliberate or intentional choice, it’s just what unfolded in front of us — the main cowboy in this little cowboy group in the movie is called Montana, and he's played by Rupert Friend, who's from Oxford. The rest of his band is: Jarvis Cocker, from Sheffield; Seu Jorge, from Brazil; a French banjo player, Jean-Yves Lozac'h (who worked on “Fantastic Mr. Fox”); and another guy, Perè Mallén, from Spain. And that's our group of cowboys. So it's not exactly a documentary, but it's our thing.
The songs you picked are really evocative because they’re both Americana, and idealizations of what Americana is. Why did you gravitate towards that for this film?
I think there's something in this period when our movie is set. We're in the middle of the ‘50s, in the New York theater world. The Method is peaking because Kazan has made the jump to movies. I was thinking about how much Owen Wilson and I — when we were in college — how central to our existence at that time [was] Marlon Brando, Elia Kazan, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, and that whole thing. … That work had such power for us, and I feel like it’s part of why I ended up going in this direction.
As often as not, your movies start with the aftermath and repercussions of familial trauma. What brings you back to that?
I'm 54 now. A thing that happens over the years is that all of the dead people begin to pile up. You end up having these conversations with yourself where you’re like, “I’d really like to get this person's voice in this situation, and I'm never going to. It's never going to happen, no matter what, it's over.”
I don't know that everybody's like that. But for myself, I am particularly like that. I might not fall into the category of the people who are quick to carry on, and take it on the chin. I have a tendency to kind of think about [people who I’ve lost] a lot. The thing that happens is that you sometimes appreciate them more when they're away. That feeling of missing people is so powerful.
To me, these are some of the most important moments that we experience. And it's in these moments when you start to get a special appreciation of the whole course of this person. We only have so many people who we have a real connection with in our lives. It is the most dramatic thing when those connections are cut, finally. So I find myself coming back to this again and again. But I think it may be shifting in ways because … I have a seven-year-old daughter now.
… There’s this character of Augie [but then there’s] Jason [Swartzman, who plays the character Augie Steenbeck in “Asteroid City”], who I met when he was 17. We did [1998’s “Rushmore”] all the way back then. We've done lots of work together over all these years, and we've been very close friends all this time. He has three kids now, and in the movie he has four kids. Roman [Coppola, Anderson’s “Asteroid City” co-writer] has three kids. There's a shift in all of our points of view from all this stuff — birth, death, and all of that. We talked about it a lot while we were dreaming this up.
… I've always kind of felt like there's so much that gets dealt with by saying, “Okay, let's do another one. Let's go to the next movie.” I love having a company. I love collaborating with the people who I work with, and telling these movie stories. It's a lifesaver.
Before you created your own nuclear family, there was a constancy of your characters trying to create family around them. How has that evolved?
I have my family in real life, and now I have more of a family. I have my wife, and my daughter. But I've always really relied on my movie family, my movie families. I will say we make the experience of making a movie quite an intimate one, just because we like it that way. That's not the way movies necessarily are done.
The company — the group of actors we had on this movie — I had a great time with them, not just making the movie. We all lived together, and we had dinner together every night. … So all of that is kind of connected to the themes of the movie. So much of the movie is about actors. That's quite a specific experience in my life, spending time with actors. It's moved me.
Is a certain degree of optimism crucial to all of your work?
When you make a movie, the person behind the camera and their limitations have everything to do with how the thing is going to end up. Their voice is a complicated thing that you can't quite pin down. I remember when I was in college in Austin, word got out that Terrence Malick was looking for some creative writing students to write some treatments and things.
He was asking for people who could write something optimistic, because he couldn't at that time. He wanted to write something hopeful, and his voice didn't permit it. Now why was that? He had made a choice. It's because so much of this creative and storytelling type of work comes from your unconscious. You don't necessarily choose it — it chooses you.
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