‘To Imitate Wes, It Would Take A Lot More Than Just That’

During a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, where Wes Anderson was premiering The Phoenician Scheme, the director declared that he felt like he had already worked with Michael Cera before, just because of how natural it felt to have him join the movie. And it’s true, some would say that Michael Cera and Wes Anderson were a match made in heaven. The two artists even shook hands and swore they would work again together, in front of all the journalists who attended the conference.

“Wes and I, we have known each other for a long time, and we have been in touch a lot over the years,” Michael Cera told me over Zoom.

Cera portrays Bjorn, a young Norwegian and insect expert who becomes Zsa-zsa Korda’s tutor in that area. Benicio del Toro’s character, Korda, is a rich businessman who somehow constantly narrowly escapes assassination attempts. He is also someone who likes to learn and be surrounded by tutors who are experts in a certain topic, and that’s when Bjorn comes into play.

The particular thing about Bjorn is that he always stands behind everyone else, where he can observe everything. Is he just shy? Or is he plotting something else? I asked the actor how where his character stood in each scene informed him on who Bjorn really was.

Cera said, “He’s got his own agenda going on back there, he’s always hovering closely, always having an ear on the situation, and you kind of find out later what he was really up to, but that was something we figured out a lot in rehearsal, like he’s always kind of there. And then he sheds his skin and becomes someone else, but that was definitely intentional.”

The actor then shared how his costume, his big round glasses and his strong norwegian accent helped him bring Bjorn to life.

He said, “The glasses in particular had a very, very, strong prescription, so they changed the way your eyes look, they make your eyes smaller, so you just feel like you have a different face, like you’re wearing a mask, you feel very different, inhabited suddenly too. I see that with my 3-year-old, he puts on a mask and he becomes a wild animal. It gives you the confidence to create something new. The outfits too, which are so beautifully designed and built from the ground up, it gives you a sense of character. You look in the mirror and see what you look like, it informs you from the outside in, on who you are creating. And it gives you an idea on how to support that, from the inside out.”

Cera praised Anderson’s way to work with storyboards and shared how helpful it can be for an actor to see what the next scene is going to look like. He said, “The storyboards, they are sort of animated movies, and Wes does the voices. You get a sense of the movie, you learn a lot that way. You don’t worry about blocking.”

The actor then detailed how they shot the quicksands scene, where Cera jumps into quicksands to save Zsa-zsa. He said, “There’s no visual effects, that’s how it looked in the camera, brilliant trick. Basically, it’s a pool of water, there’s a layer of cork on top of it that looks like sand. You just dive right through it, and it was pitch black under there. I had a couple of days of rehearsal and when we shot it, I just did one take.”

We then spoke about how Wes Anderson’s movies are so visually unique, but also about how they should not just be reduced to an aesthetic. In 2023, TikTokers started a trend that went viral, by filming their lives as if they were in a Wes Anderson movie, from using pastels colors to symmetrical frames.

On the trend, Cera said, “It’s kind of reductive to only talk about the aesthetic. I think the biggest reason his movies resonate with people is because of the writing and the feelings that are in his movies. If it was only the style and the aesthetic, they wouldn’t be as impactful as they are. The impact comes from the amazing warmth and the feeling of love, which goes for all his movie, there are all about connection someway or another. But I think that’s why his movies affect people, even though it’s easy to overlook it because writing is sort of invisible.”

He added: “I think it’s a little uncreative. To imitate Wes, it would take a lot more than just that. I think you have to be a great writer too. He created those worlds, not just visually but he created them from his imagination too. It’s his world, like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, the whole family, the life they live out there, it’s an amazing world to create.”

Cera drew a parallel between Anderson’s way to approach storytelling to Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu’s.

He said, “Ozu never really strayed from his approach, I think he used one land for every movie, all the time. So all these movies kinda have the same grammar but it’s not true to say, if you’ve seen one movie you’ve seen them all. Because he told a million stories with that language and they’re all powerful in their own way, and they’re experimental in their own ways too. It’s instantly recognizable but it’s too reductive to say that it means you know what you’re getting into when you’re putting one of his movies on.”

Cera will soon be making his directorial debut with Love is not the Answer, starring Pamela Anderson and Jamie Dornan. I asked the actor if working with Anderson helped him get a sense of how he was going to enter this industry from a director’s point of view for the first time. He said, “I think that as an actor, you’re always watching a director and how they run a set. You learn a lot from great directors just by seing how they conduct themselves and how they communicate with their team, how they keep the spirit alive and keep everyone motivated. It’s a big part of the job actually, being a cheerleader and keeping the energy good because there’s a lot of pressure on a director. If he’s loosing confidence or feeling the pressure, it can affect everything, and it kind of trickles down.”

He added: “Wes’ spirit on set is amazing, he’s very enthusiastic, he’s a great host, he’s very responsible for the energy. He keeps things very bright, I loved watching him do that.”

The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in theaters.