American director Wes Anderson has mocked Donald Trump’s plan to impose severe tariffs on foreign-made films, suggesting it would mostly financially hit film-makers like him and be unworkable in practice.
“Can you hold up the movie in customs?” the world’s chief auteur of cinematic whimsy asked at a press conference at the Cannes film festival.
And then what do we get?” The easily distracted US president has not elaborated further on his film tariff plans since the announcement on 5 May.
The Phoenician Scheme stars an array of Hollywood royalty, with major and minor appearances from Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson and Michael Cera.
In Cannes, Anderson announced he is working on a script for a future film with British actor Richard Ayoade, who plays a Che Guevara-style guerrilla fighter in The Phoenician Scheme.
Wes Anderson, an American filmmaker, has made fun of Donald Trump’s proposal to impose high tariffs on films produced abroad, arguing that it would primarily hurt his business and be impractical.
At the Cannes film festival, the world’s leading auteur of cinematic whimsy asked at a press conference, “Can you hold up the movie in customs?”. “I don’t think it ships that way.”. I won’t give an official response just yet because I’m not sure I want to know the specifics. “”.
Trump claimed that the US film industry was dying a “very fast death” because more and more American filmmakers were shooting in other nations to take advantage of tax breaks or lower production costs. He made this announcement earlier this month on his Truth Social platform, imposing a 100 percent tariff on all films “produced in Foreign Lands.”.
Anderson, who’s in Cannes to promote his new film, The Phoenician Scheme, which was primarily filmed at Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam outside of Berlin, Germany, said, “The tariff is fascinating because of the 100 percent.”. Although I’m not an economics expert, I believe that Trump is implying that he will keep all of the money. What do we get after that?
Since making the announcement on May 5, the US president, who is easily distracted, has not provided any additional details about his plans for film tariffs. Rather, an open letter signed by major studios, film industry unions, and Trump’s own “Hollywood ambassadors,” Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, urges the government to attempt to revitalize the American film industry through tax incentives, citing those already in place in Australia and the United Kingdom.
In The Phoenician Scheme, the Puerto Rican actor “”plays” a cruel and self-centered businessman who, after escaping an assassination attempt, starts to realize his mistakes and worries about the future of his fortune.
According to Anderson, Korda represents “the darkness of a certain kind of capitalist” and is “a character who is not really concerned with how the big decisions he has empowered himself to make for the world are affecting populations of workforces and landscapes.”.
Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, and other Hollywood celebrities make both significant and cameo appearances in The Phoenician Scheme. In Cannes, Anderson revealed that he is writing a screenplay for a future movie with Richard Ayoade, a British actor who plays a guerrilla fighter in The Phoenician Scheme in the vein of Che Guevara.
When asked if he intended to make a follow-up to any of the twelve films he has already directed, Anderson said he wanted to work with Steve Zissou on a second installment of The Life Aquatic (2004) and he shook hands with Bill Murray on the project without warning.
