Is Any Of The French Dispatch Based On A True Story Real Life & Inspirations Explained

Is Any Of The French Dispatch Based On A True Story? Real Life & Inspirations Explained

Real-life people inspired Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, which stars Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, and Timothée Chalamet.

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Is Any Of The French Dispatch Based On A True Story Real Life & Inspirations Explained

Could Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, be inspired by real people and based on true events? The French Dispatch is Wes Anderson’s 21st movie and remains true to his trademark whimsical style like previous eccentric, ensemble films The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Originally slated to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2020, The French Dispatch was significantly delayed due to the pandemic, but finally debuted in theaters on October 22, 2021.

The five-time Oscar-nominated and award-winning director, Wes Anderson, has a habit of creating quirky characters that exist in fanciful settings, and The French Dispatch is no exception. Set in 1960s France, the film is about an outpost of an American Magazine stationed in the small, fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. The story follows an obsessive editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr., and his set of American expatriate writers as they compile stories for the final issue of the magazine.

As is tradition with Wes Anderson films, the cast of The French Dispatch is loaded with A-listers including many of Anderson’s favorites that have acted in a number of his previous films. And, while the eccentric characters the actors portray in The French Dispatch are fictional, they, like many aspects of the film, reflect some truth. The French Dispatch, in all its absurdity, is inspired by the real editor of the famous American magazine, The New Yorker, along with his staff and their stories.

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The New Yorker’s founder and long-time editor-in-chief, Harold Ross, inspired The French Dispatch’s Arthur Howitzer Jr. played by Wes Anderson’s most frequently used actor, Bill Murray. Ross was famously obsessive, editing 1,399 issues of the magazine over 26 years until his death. Ross’s crew of writers included Joseph Mitchell (characterized by Herbsaint Sazerac in The French Dispatch and played by Owen Wilson); James Baldwin and A. J. Liebling (The French Dispatch’s Roebuck Wright, played by Jeffrey Wright, was a combination of these two writers); and S. N. Behrman (Tilda Swinton’s J. K. L. Berensen in The French Dispatch).

Oscar-winners Frances McDormand and Adrien Brody also play characters based on real people. McDormand’s character in The French Dispatch, Lucinda Krementz, is based on the writer Mavis Gallant, whose piece entitled, The Events in May: A Paris Notebook covered the real protests known as “May 68” that took place in Paris in the spring of 1968. Adrien Brody’s character, however, is not based on a writer at The New Yorker, but on a real art dealer, Lord Duveen, whose story ran in six parts in 1951.

When asked about the parallels drawn between fact and fiction in The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson replied that the story is truly about Bill Murray’s character, Arthur Howitzer Jr, and his work: “It is more a portrait of this man, of this journalist who fights to write what he wants to write. It’s not a movie about freedom of the press, but when you talk about reporters you also talk about what’s going on in the real world” [via Cosmopolitan]. Certainly, the real-world elements in The French Dispatch only make Anderson’s whimsical world more wondrous.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/french-dispatch-movie-true-story-real-magazine-inspirations/

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