To follow up on the other day’s story about Wes Anderson ‘directing’ production at The Fantastic Mr. Fox‘s London studio via email from Paris (and FMF is stop-motion, so there actually is a physical set involved), I was able to get the original Empire Magazine story. Here’s a little more from it:

…For reasons best known to himself, Anderson is directing the film via email from Paris [...] which has disquieted some of the crew.  “I didn’t meet him before I got the job,” admits cinematographer Tristan Oliver, renowned for his work with Nick Park on Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit movies.  “That was all done at a remove; he obviously saw my showreel and CV and stuff, but we didn’t meet.  And when we finally did meet, it was after he sent me a number of DVDs.  He has a lot of favourite films that he likes to reference.  He’s in love at various points with various genres, I think, and when we started, he was playing around with a kind of Bergman/Fellini feel.  Really just specific scenes in specific films.  And so the process of interpreting what he wanted started at that point, because you think, ‘I’ve got 15 DVDs here — what does he want?’”

Hold on, you mean to tell me a hipster icon is into Bergman and Fellini?  Excuse me while I stop my bow tie from spinning comically.  In any case, the movie looks good from what I’ve seen so far.  See, sometimes being a director is like being psychologist.  You just hire talented people to do your work for you and whenever they ask what you want, you just say, “What do YOU think I want?”  and take a puff from a big pipe.  I’d like to see Wes Anderson direct Terrence Howard.  Wes Anderson would explain a scene by sending him a Koyaanisqatsi DVD, and Terrence Howard would express his response to it via interpretive dance, and the crew would snap their fingers in appreciation.

[Thanks to giantcowofdoom for the scans]