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Wes Anderson and Bill Murray teased a Western project during a surprise onstage reunion in Paris, with Anderson saying he and Murray have “for many years” talked about making one — potentially with Owen and Luke Wilson.
The exchange took place at Cinema Paradiso, the star-studded four-day festival of open-air screenings and live music organized by indie film powerhouse MK2 in the courtyard of the Louvre museum in Paris from July 1-4.
While Anderson was presenting his 2014 classic film “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Murray popped up on stage and delighted the crowd with his deadpan riff about what the filmmaker is like on set.
“The question is: what is Wes like to work with on set?” Murray said, standing beside Anderson. “As you can see, he has a beautiful smile. Come on, smile. He has a beautiful smile, and he withholds it. He does not give us a smile all through the day.”
Murray continued, “You can do a take, you can look at your director, you can finish the scene, you can shoot the reverse — nothing. But later, after Wes has had dessert, here comes that beautiful smile again. So he really needs dessert all day long.”
The actor joked that Anderson was “not happy unless” he has “chocolate or panna cotta,” adding, “That’s what he’s like to work with. I know that doesn’t sound professional — more medical — but it’s true.”
Murray has long been a fixture in Anderson’s cinematic universe, appearing in 10 of the director’s films over nearly three decades, from “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” to “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “Moonrise Kingdom,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The French Dispatch” and “The Phoenician Scheme.” He was also due to appear in Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” but had to drop out after contracting COVID in England (he was eventually replaced by Steve Carell).
“The movie I want to make is a cowboy movie, because he’s (Anderson) from Texas, and I feel he owes the world a cowboy movie,” Murray said. “That’s why I’ve started walking like this,” he added, adopting a Western gait.
Anderson then confirmed the idea had been circulating for years. “We will do a Western, you know. I think,” Anderson said. “For many years, we’ve talked about doing a Western. Owen and Luke Wilson, I think, will be a part of that… They’re from Texas, too, and I think it’s our destiny.”
For MK2, the moment captured the spirit of Cinema Paradiso, which Elisha Karmitz, co-CEO of MK2, described as an event designed to “create a sense of wonder through cinema” by blending film, music and gastronomy for a broad public.
“It feels more like a music festival where films are being screened than a traditional film festival,” Karmitz told Variety, adding that Cinema Paradiso has, for more than a decade, been built around “eventizing films” and creating shared experiences around them.
Held outdoors at night, the festival welcomes 3,000 spectators seated on deckchairs across the Louvre’s Cour Carrée. Access is free through a lottery system, with MK2 receiving around 200,000 ticket requests each year.
While admission is free, the event has a roughly €2 million production budget and is financed entirely through sponsors rather than ticket sales. The main sponsor is Japanese cinema entrepreneur Mr. Kinoshita, who has supported Cinema Paradiso since 2019 and “without whom, truly, the event could not take place,” Karmitz said.
Other major partners include Chanel, which previously backed MK2 for the 2015 edition of Cinema Paradiso at the Grand Palais and is now supporting the Louvre edition for the second year, in addiiton to Peugeot, with whom MK2 recently staged a Paradiso drive-in activation at the 24 Hours of Le Mans circuit.
This year’s Cinema Paradiso lineup reflects the festival’s mix of cinephile nostalgia, contemporary auteurs, live music and Parisian spectacle. Alongside Anderson and Murray’s appearance for “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” the four-night program sees Joachim Trier presenting his Oscar-winning film “The Worst Person in the World;” Léa Mysius presenting her Cannes competition film “Birthday Girl” alongside Monica Bellucci; and a closing screening of Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” which has visual connection to the Louvre’s collections.
Karmitz said the programming is built around a balance of cult titles, recent classics, previews and films connected to the venue itself. “Cinema, and creating events around cinema, is our passion,” he said. “At MK2, we have a community of spectators, and we like to live that passion with our community.”
MK2 has been a leading force behind the flourishing of alternative cultural offerings in the French capital. It notably released in theaters “Kaizen,” a documentary that followed YouTube star Inoxtag climbing the Mount Everest.
Led by brothers Nathanaël and Elisha Karmitz, the family-owned company, which runs a popular arthouse exhibition chain in Paris and won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, recently opened its capital to the public for the first time in its 52-year history. The crowdfunding campaign, launched on investment platform Lita, is meant to help bankroll the modernization and expansion of the MK2 Bibliothèque, a 20-screen complex in the 13th arrondissement which is believed to rank as Paris’ third largest movie theater.
