American filmmaker Wes Anderson.
American director Wes Anderson (Houston, 52 years old) will shoot his next film in Chinchón (Madrid) during July, August and September. Although no detail has been leaked from the completely American production, on the outskirts of the town the sets that will simulate a western desert landscape are already clearly visible (although the film does not belong to this genre), and in the that these days several dozen operators work to have everything ready by mid-July. By then, after the premiere at the Cannes festival of his previous work,
The French Chronicle,
Anderson will start his project in Spain, a country chosen for the landscape and for the quality of the work of the
service
companies
,
the local production companies that are in charge of the procedures, the construction of sets, the reservation of accommodation, transportation and, in general, everything necessary to shoot a feature film.
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Production is done by Indian Paintbrush, the company Anderson works with. The American is not just any filmmaker. Endowed with a fascinating sense of aesthetics, he pampers all the components that appear before the camera, recreating with costumes and decorations very different worlds that in the end bring him closer to his tastes. Known for his passion for visual symmetries, and for the nostalgic humor that emanates from his scripts, Anderson, himself a film genre, resides in France, so in the last decade he has not left Europe to raise his films. Since
Moonrise Kingdom
(2012), located in Rhode Island, he has not returned to his native country. At the Cinecittà studios he erected an Italian village for his short
Castello Cavalcanti
(2013), produced by Prada, the textile company; in the German studios Babelsberg recreated the universe full of references to Stefan Zweig and interwar Europe for
The Great Budapest Hotel
(2014);
Isle of Dogs
(2018),
stop motion
animated
film,
was filmed in a British studios, and the still unpublished
The French Chronicle,
about life in a French city throughout the 20th century told from the chronicles published in a fictional local English newspaper,
The French Dispatch
—Original title of the film—, it was made in a huge industrial warehouse on the outskirts of Angouleme.
This is the film that would have opened the Cannes 2020 festival. After its cancellation, the premiere was postponed for a year, and will now be seen in the new edition of the French competition, which begins on July 6.
A sticky desert
This Wednesday several dozen workers were busy building huge decorations in the shape of the usual mounds that appear in classic Westerns. Farther from the view of the pedestrian and the mechanotube structures that support the false earth, within an immense private estate, a train station and its corresponding track are recreated. Anderson has not yet visited the location: before Cannes he will be in New York, at the Tribeca festival, where the 20th anniversary of the premiere of
The Tenenbaums will
be celebrated in mid-June
,
and he will chat with part of his artistic team.
In Chinchón they still do not know the names of the actors who will be in the Spanish filming, and its mayor, Francisco Javier Martínez, does not even lie to the filmmaker. “It is very important for the city. It is true that we have been the usual location for numerous filming, but that a great American production disembarks here for many months gives us life, category and publicity ”. Martínez explains, from the door of the Town Hall, located in the famous arcaded Plaza Mayor of Chinchón, that they have collaborated in the search for facilities. “We have mediated negotiations with the Parador, the hotels, the rural houses ... They are going to take over everything. The theater will be their center of operations and they will even be able to shoot there ”, points out the councilor of the town, with 5,000 inhabitants and located 46 kilometers southeast of the capital.
Part of the sets under construction on the outskirts of Chinchón for Wes Anderson's film. Victor Sainz
Martínez cannot reveal much more: any act related to the film is protected by strict confidentiality agreements.
Although on the notice board of the Town Hall a statement signed by the municipal corporation and Film Madrid, the company in charge of promoting audiovisual filming in the Community, ensures “the support of the City Council” for the project and asks all the inhabitants for their collaboration.
According to Profilm, the association of Spanish international audiovisual production companies, in 2020 73% fewer foreign projects were developed in Spain.
Direct investment went from 132 million euros in 2019 to 36 million last year.
The director of
Rushmore Academy
or
Life Aquatic
He is known for his meticulousness, his passion for sets made in dioramas, for his commitment to pastel colors or coordinated ranges of few shades according to each project and for working with the same interpreters. So in this project, which is marked by a desert landscape that has pushed him to locate in Spain, and which has a budget close to 35 million euros, there will be some of his favorite actors, a group in which Tilda is found. Swinton, Owen Wilson, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, Jason Schwartzman (who is also usually his co-writer), Christoph Waltz or Bob Balaban. "I call them, but I never tell them the size of the paper, which would be impolite, but I ask for their help to make the film, and they sign up," said the filmmaker in an interview in EL PAÍS when it premiered.
The grand Budapest hotel.
One of his actors defined him as “the grown-up Saint-Exupéry prince”. “I don't know what that means, really. Maybe he had a lot of fun on the set ”, he replied, and remembered how he was as a child:“ I spent a lot of time drawing houses and architectural elements, because that was what I wanted to be as an adult ”. From there his particular aesthetic was born, which has influenced so much in current interior decoration and on Instagram. And about his life in Chinchón, when he presented
Isla de perros
in Madrid
, he
already gave a hint of how he likes to work: “My way of making cinema is familiar. If I can, I try to make sure that the whole team lives in the same hotel, I like to have lunch and dinner together, that nobody goes home ”.