Anderson Countdown Part 10 - The French Dispatch

Hello everyone and welcome to Some Like It Scott's newest Countdown miniseries: the Wes Anderson Countdown. To honor one of the great still-working indie writer-director auteurs, who's next film ASTEROID CITY comes out later this year, Scott, Scott, and Jay will be watching all 10 of the American filmmakers' works to-date, from his origins with the '90s heist-comedy BOTTLE ROCKET, all the way to his latest feature, 2021's star-studded anthology drama THE FRENCH DISPATCH. Join us each week over the next 10 weeks as we progress through Anderson's full oeuvre in the buildup to ASTEROID CITY!

On Part 10 of the Anderson Countdown, Scott, Scott, and Jay revisit Wes Anderson's most recent film to-date, and discuss the anthology drama: THE FRENCH DISPATCH. Written and directed by Wes, THE FRENCH DISPATCH is set in 1975 and is imagined as an ode to bygone years of journalism (specifically The New Yorker magazine), and delivers that in the form of publishing one final issue for the French foreign bureau of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper, after its founder, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), passes away unexpectedly. Howitzer wished for the bureau to cease publication after his death, but his staff put the finishing touches on the upcoming issue and publish it in his honor. The film unfurls almost magazine-like, in the form of an anthology, as it splits into 3 different short stories, preceded by an even briefer tour of the local fictional French city, Ennui-sur-Blasé and followed by Howitzer's obituary. The three central stories - The Concrete Masterpiece, Revisions to a Manifesto, and The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner - each are written by a different French Dispatch reporter. 'The Concrete Masterpiece' tells the story of a mentally unwell, incarcerated painter, Moses Rosenthaler (Benecio del Toro), whose nude paintings of a prison guard, Simone (Lea Seydoux), spark greed in a fellow inmate and art dealer Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody), leading to a years-long quest to get Rosenthaler to paint new art for him to sell. 'Revisions to a Manifesto' plots the story of a French student protest-turned-revolution, led by the disaffected Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet), after the students' initial concerns about access to the girls' dormitory at school boil over when fellow protestor, Mitch Mitch, is conscripted into the French military. And finally, 'The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner', tells the daring story of the kidnapping and rescue of Gigi, the son of the Ennui police commissioner (Mathieu Amalric). Naturally, each story has much more going on beneath the surface, as each story's writer contends with the effects being so close to each events has on them, and sheds its own light on how the magazine's now-late editor-in-chief supported them in their journalistic endeavors. The countdown crew reflect on the star-studded cast, this new filmmaking format for Wes, and whether the the central 3 stories satisfactorily tie together.