How ‘Asteroid City’ Filmmaker Wes Anderson Does Cannes

The mega cast of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City — including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Jeffrey Wright, Bryan Cranston, Matt Dillon, Adrien Brody and Maya Hawke — landed on the Cannes red carpet May 23 by megabus, a transportation choice that has become something of a tradition for the Paris-based filmmaker.

Anderson, known to prefer that his collaborators hit the Palais together, last relied on a bus to transport Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton and other The French Dispatch colleagues in Cannes in 2021. It’s not Anderson’s only “quirky” Cannes protocol, per multiple sources. Rather than opt for a hectic hotel like the Carlton, Martinez or Majestic — de rigueur for most high-profile casts — Anderson opts to stay at his favorite French hideaway outside of Cannes. (“We’re one hour away, but it’s a total normal life,” he told the AP.)

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The sources added that because of the distance, Asteroid castmembers traveled by bus from the hotel into Cannes, where they made an hours-long pit stop at the JW Marriott for glam and styling before making their way down the Croisette to the Palais. Also, the Anderson way is to limit guests to plus-ones so nobody arrives with a huge entourage and everyone relies on local glam artists.

“It’s like his films,” the source explained. “The cast stays at the same place, they have dinners together, it’s very family-oriented. It is an equal playing field where nobody has personal assistants and it creates a certain experience for filming.”

During a festival press conference, Johansson put it like this: “It is not the familiar process of being on a soundstage and going to your trailer to have all this downtime, which eats up the momentum. It feels very vibrant, much like you are working in theater.”

A version of this story first appeared in the May 31 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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