Wes Anderson made fun of Donald Trump’s plan to impose steep tariffs on films made outside America asking how it would even work.
The president announced earlier in May that he would impose heavy tariffs on all films “produced in foreign lands” because the “movie industry in America is dying a very fast death”.
“I thought you said he was giving us a plug or something. Did Trump see it?” the director replied when asked about the tariff plan.
Speaking at a press conference for his Cannes film festival, the Oscar winner questioned the logistics of how the tariffs would work.
“Tariffs are fascinating. I’ve never heard of a 100 per cent tariff before. I’m not an expert in that area of economics, but I feel that means he’s saying he’s going to take all the money. And then what do we get? So it’s complicated to me,” he said.
“Does that mean you can hold up the movie in customs? I feel it doesn’t ship that way. I’m not sure I want to know the details so I’ll hold off on my official answer.”
The Phoenician Scheme, shot partly in Germany, stars Benicio del Toro as business magnate Zsa-zsa Korda who appoints his daughter Sister Liesl, played by Mia Threapleton, his sole heir. The two soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins played by a storied cast of Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Mathieu Amalric, Bryan Cranston, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis.
Geoffrey Macnab gave the new film four stars in his review for The Independent. “Whenever one of his new features appears,” he wrote of Anderson, “it provokes near-allergic reactions among detractors who simply can’t stomach the director’s whimsy and very arch storytelling style”.
To his admirers, however, “he’s a unique filmmaker, one who combines wit and brittle sophistication with child-like naivety”.
The Phoenician Scheme, Macnab noted, was one of Anderson’s “most enrapturing works of recent times, witty, packed with arcane literary and artistic references, but also full of plenty of refreshingly juvenile humour”.
Also at the Cannes film festival was Boyhood director Richard Linklater, who said on Sunday he was not putting much stock in the film tariff threat.
“The tariff thing, that’s not gonna happen right? That guy changes his mind like 50 times in one day,” Linklater said of Trump. “It’s the one export industry in the US, it would be kind of dumb to… Whatever, we don’t have to talk about that.”
Asked if it had become more expensive to make films in the US, Linklater said: “I think the true indie film, the no-budget film, has cost the same for the last 60 years. It’s always about how much you have, so that doesn’t change much.”
Before starting his second term this year, Trump appointed actors Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone to serve as “special envoys” to Hollywood, which he said was a "great but very troubled place”. "They will serve as special envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to foreign countries, back!” he said.
It remains unclear what the envoys have achieved so far.
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