Why Wes Anderson refuses to watch his TikTok memes
Like Bill Murray hiding from the world behind his answering machine, Wes Anderson is actively avoiding TikTok to protect his mental sanity from the waggish microcosm of Andersonian social media videos that were born from the depths of his very own creative womb.
Unless you have been living under Mount Rushmore for the past few months, you probably know that TikTok has been brimming with clips made by fans of the director. Tiny short films used to record their own lives in the style of Anderson’s movies.
Here’s what you need to create an Andersonian TikTok: 1) one box of mixed pastel and highly saturated acrylic colors from 1955; 2) three rulers to measure your compositions to achieve the symmetry of an early Renaissance painting; 3) one Fabergé egg to inspire insane attention to detail in your art direction; 4) an unlimited number of title cards set in yellow Futura Bold; 5) ten pages of quirky dialogue written by a naive version of Larry David high on magic mushrooms; 6) Owen Wilson; 7) assorted David Bowie songs. One example:
There are hundreds. Thousands, even. And they went viral big time: The #WesAnderson tag in TikTok is now grossing 1.4 billion views.
But Anderson hasn’t seen any of them (or so he says). Talking to Jake Coyle in an interview with the Associated Press, he declares that he has never seen any TikTok, actually: “I’ve not seen the ones related to me or the ones not related to me.” What’s more, he also says that he hasn’t seen “any of the AI-type stuff” related to him. He’s referring to the generative AI remakes that turn classic Hollywood blockbusters into Andersonian films, from Star Wars: The Galactic Menagerie to The Lord of the Rings: The Whimsical Fellowship to the latest one, just a couple days ago, Avatar: The Peculiar Pandora Expedition.
The public loves these, but Anderson is avoiding them. Not because he dislikes these attempts to rip off his work. On the contrary. He understands—rightly so—that they come from a place of pure love and admiration: “The only reason I don’t look at the stuff is because it probably takes the things that I do the same again and again. We’re forced to accept when I make a movie, it’s got to be made by me. But what I will say is anytime anyone’s responding with enthusiasm to these movies I’ve made over these many years, that’s a nice, lucky thing. So I’m happy to have it.”
But at the same time, he seems to be scared of the potential effect on his creativity and mind: “I have a feeling I would just feel like, Gosh, is that what I’m doing? So I protect myself.” It actually makes a lot of sense. And he always seemed to me like a very sensible and sensitive person, at least based on his exquisite work.
Alas, Wes, you can’t hide from AI forever! It’s coming for you. It’s coming for all of us. Even Bill Murray. In fact, I firmly believe that Tilda Swinton is an alien artificial intelligence living among us. But maybe that’s a subject from my own AI-generated Anderson film: The Fanciful Adventures of a Wondrous Being.
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