‘Accidentally Wes Anderson’ Creator on How He Feels About the Filmmaker’s Look Spawning Endless Memes
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The creators of “Accidentally Wes Anderson” had no idea what was coming when they launched their Instagram page. Wally and Amanda Koval started the account in 2017 to celebrate visually-appealing buildings and landscapes around the world that looked as if they could have inspired Wes Anderson films.
From tiny libraries in New Zealand to, of course, lighthouses in Canada, the Instagram page, with 1.8 million followers, and its accompanying website curate colorful, symmetrical and historic tableaux that might have sprung directly from a scene in “The Grand Budapest Hotel” or “The French Dispatch” — except they’re submitted by photographers from around the world.
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A wildly successful book expanding on the Instagram content followed in 2020, which has since been published in several languages. Now, the “Accidentally Wes Anderson” world includes a website with suggested travel itineraries, an online shop stocked with well-curated “AWA” swag, a newsletter and exhibitions in Seoul and Tokyo.
But six years ago, the Kovals had no idea an entire meme kingdom would pop up on TikTok and YouTube borrowing the filmmaker’s distinctive aesthetic for both whimsical Tiktoks about the creators’ quotidian pursuits as well as using AI to fuse the Anderson look onto major properties like “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings.”
Wally Koval says he isn’t quite sure what to make of TikTok’s #WesAndersonTrend, but he tells Variety he hopes people won’t reduce the filmmaker to just his aesthetic, instead of considering the entirety of his work.
A big fan of Anderson’s latest, “Asteroid City,” Koval is excited he’s been able to help showcase so many photographers and artists, most of whom aren’t professionals — and make “AWA” into a full-time pursuit for both his wife and himself, who had both been laid off during the pandemic.
How did the Instagram get started?
I never really asked anybody to send us photos in the beginning, they kind of just did. Most of it was sourced from photographers and other Instagram accounts. It was me curating my own places that I wanted to go and visit and tagging photographers.
Were you and Amanda professional photographers?
No, I was working in events and marketing and Amanda was working in corporate catering. We did not have a background in photography. We were not writers.
How big of a Wes Anderson fan are you?
I am a fan of this work, probably not the most intense fan. I know that there are many others out there that know so much more about his movies and can probably talk in a much more intelligent way about things like cinematography. I just look at it and I go, “I really like that, that made me feel some type of way, or I enjoyed it.”
What’s your relationship with Wes Anderson been like?
He has been incredibly supportive and so incredibly kind to us. In the beginning, I was a stranger. I wrote him a letter and said we have this project, I think it would make a good book. He basically came back and said, “OK, you can make the book, but I’ll have final sign off.” We worked with 180 photographers from 60 different countries while we worked our full-time jobs. It was really something else when I opened that email and not only was he happy with what we had created, but he also penned the foreword for us. It’s the most perfectly Wes Anderson intro to the book that we could have asked for.
What are your favorite Anderson movies?
My rotating cast of top three to five films might change on a six to eight month basis, like it rotates with the seasons maybe. Right now…definitely “Life Aquatic.” I would go back to to “Rushmore” and honestly, this has nothing to do with all the press and everything, but I’ve seen “Asteroid City” now twice and it’s kind of crazy how many layers are involved in the film.
What was it like being invited to the “Asteroid City” premiere?
It’s wild. These are amazing events that that we can go to. But honestly, sitting in my tiny two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn where I’ve been for 15 years and looking at a stack of eight “Accidentally Wes Anderson” books, each in a different language, that is absolutely insane to me. I never thought I’d have my name on a book, I went to school for food marketing! It’s mind-blowing in the weirdest sense.
What’s your favorite place for seeing cool things to photograph?
It’s a toss up between so many places, but I’m going to go with Tokyo.
How do you feel about all the TikToks and videos using the Wes Anderson aesthetic?
There’s thousands of them now, some better than others, of course. Whether it’s riding the Long Island Railroad or going to lunch with my family — my favorites are the ones that take the mundane tasks and turn it into something more interesting. So if it’s someone taking a creative look at a mundane task and having fun with it and and bringing a smile to themselves and maybe to others around them, I’m all for that. Who wouldn’t want to live in a Wes Anderson film? If it puts a smile on your face and it’s doing something creative, then why not?
What about the AI videos that take popular films like Star Wars and make them into Wes Anderson-style films?
There are certain elements of the Wes Anderson aesthetic that are more high profile, for instance, the color palette, the symmetry, etc. The AI examples that have popped up, they seem to really just focus on that. But I feel like there’s so much more to it. After watching “The French Dispatch” or “Asteroid City” or even watching “Rushmore” for the 100th time, there’s so many layers.
My hope is that through those things it might inspire them to look a little deeper, to watch them, and maybe dig further to find out more versus just, “Oh, I get it, Wes Anderson is about color and symmetry.” There’s so much more depth to the characters, to the plot, to the storyline.
So you don’t feel responsible for the meme-ification of Wes Anderson?
No, I had nothing to do with it. Our community has nothing to do with what those trends are about. Someone came up to me and said, “How did you get this to happen?” as if I had a hand in some major ploy to start this trend.
Why do you think “Accidentally Wes Anderson” resonated with so many people?
There was something very interesting that Wes said to us when we were picking the cover. What he wrote was, “What I like about what you do is that it’s not so much like what I do.” I find that there’s a lot of meaning in that, because I’m not replicating “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” I’m not aiming to replicate what he has done, but rather take this perspective and aesthetic and look out from the perfect world which he creates. Everything in a Wes Anderson picture has meaning and is put there with purpose. And then you turn that lens to the real world, which is imperfect and not symmetrical, and not always very bright. But if you can look at it through that lens just slightly, I think that there’s a lot of beauty in that imperfection and a lot that can be taken away from that.
How are you able to help the photographers who contribute get recognition?
We’re basically selling their work on their behalf and that has been really cool. A lot of those prints were taken with an iPhone. The fact that we’ve been able to curate this group of individuals — maybe they don’t know how to use a DSLR, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they saw beauty and were able to capture it. We send them a check and they’re like, “This is insane.” They never thought that they would be making money from their photography because they’re not a professional photographer in that sense.
Like the photographer who took that photo that’s on the front of of the book, he was 18 or 19. When we chose his photo of the Hotel Belvedere, he didn’t know that it had made the cover, he was in the Swiss Army reserves. His local paper did an article on him and he was recognized around town.
What’s up next for “Accidentally Wes Anderson”?
We have a puzzle that Wes Anderson has signed off on that’s going to be coming out in October, that’s made up of some interesting photos.
What would you like people to take away from “AWA”?
Inspiring photographers and creators and travelers and people who appreciate interesting stories and architecture to take their own adventures and look at their own hometowns and their own excursions through a slightly different lens.
Like, people say “I’ve always wanted to go to New York” and I would say “You don’t have to live anywhere special. You can literally be in a small village … If you go to your Main Street, there is a library, there’s a courthouse, there’s a post office. There’s something there that has an interesting history.” There’s an endless number of stories and an endless number of angles with which you could look at a building or a structure, a person or a community to uncover something new.
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