Less searching, more waiting: The Phoenician Scheme director Wes Anderson’s formula for creativity

NEW YORK – Opening in Singapore cinemas on June 5, American writer-director Wes Anderson’s new film The Phoenician Scheme is a black comedy starring Benicio del Toro as Zsa-zsa Korda, a ruthless tycoon and arms dealer whose adversaries keep trying to kill him.

After narrowly escaping death, he sets out to convince his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun, to become his heir and, if need be, avenge his death.

But as the pair embark on a globetrotting journey to secure funding for Korda’s infrastructure project in the fictional nation of Phoenicia, they are pursued by rivals determined to sabotage his plans.

Anderson, 56, brings his signature style – eccentric, stylised and ornate, with whimsical characters played by a large ensemble cast – to a story about a dysfunctional family, one of his pet themes.

And as with movies such as comedy-drama The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – which was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay Oscars – he directed this from an original screenplay he wrote.

But, asked how he comes up with these ideas, Anderson confesses it is a mystery even to him.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” the film-maker says at a recent New York screening of The Phoenician Scheme.

“Usually, when I’m finishing a movie, there’s something else that comes along that I start to get drawn to,” says Anderson. He was also Oscar-nominated for the family comedy The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and animated feature Isle Of Dogs (2018).

“I don’t so much experience the act of searching for a new thing. It’s usually, somehow, kind of waiting.

“I think your brain is doing work that you’re not totally aware of – something’s kind of brewing and suddenly it clicks, and it can tell when you’re ready for it,” says the film-maker. He won a Best Live Action Short Film Oscar for The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar (2023), a fantasy based on a story by author Roald Dahl.

“But I do think the more you’re reading and watching movies and sort of studying, the more it comes to you,” he adds.

Puerto Rican actor del Toro, 58, who took home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for crime drama Traffic (2000), agrees this is part of the formula for creativity.

“You have to study for the rest of your life forever, and be a student forever,” says the star, who picked up a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the crime thriller 21 Grams (2003).

Anderson is known for attracting big names to his projects and working repeatedly with a handful of actors – notably Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Willem Dafoe and Adrien Brody.

Del Toro, who also starred in the film-maker’s 2021 comedy The French Dispatch, says it is a singular experience acting with Murray, who appears in The Phoenician Scheme – his 11th collaboration with Anderson – as God.

“I’ve always wanted to work with Bill Murray,” del Toro says of the 74-year-old American actor best known for his role in the Ghostbusters supernatural comedies (1984 to 2024).

“And I think I’ve seen everything – I’ve seen an actor show up with his own script, his own wardrobe, his own everything – but I’ve never seen an actor show up with his own soundtrack.”

Murray, he reveals, walked onto the set one day blasting English singer-musician Eric Clapton’s hit 1991 song Tears In Heaven from a Bluetooth device.

“It was very sad and everyone’s attitude on set changed.

“And then Wes, who was very far away, screamed, ‘Bill, classical music only!’ And Bill went straight from Eric Clapton to Bartok or something. And everybody went back to work,” del Toro recalls, laughing.

The Phoenician Scheme marks English actress Threapleton’s first lead role in a feature film. And even though she is no stranger to celebrities – being the daughter of English actress Kate Winslet, 49 – she was often starstruck on set, especially with American actor Tom Hanks, who plays Korda’s business associate.

“I grew up watching all of those people, and the voice of Tom Hanks was my childhood,” says Threapleton, 24, who appeared in the period drama series Dangerous Liaisons (2022) and The Buccaneers (2023 to present).

“I sat down and was, like, ‘Oh my god, he’s talking to me. And he’s telling stories about (the 1998 war film) Saving Private Ryan.’”

But she decided her best strategy was to take a deep breath and collect herself. “I went, ‘I’m just going to sit here and try not to have some sort of panic attack.’”