\n<\/p>\n
Fifteen years ago, while the director Wes Anderson was adapting Roald Dahl\u2019s \u201cFantastic Mr. Fox\u201d<\/a> into a stop-motion animated film, the author\u2019s widow, Felicity, asked whether he saw cinematic potential in any of Dahl\u2019s other tales. One came immediately to Anderson\u2019s mind: \u201cThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,\u201d a short Dahl published in 1977 about a wealthy gambler who learns a secret meditation technique that allows him to see through playing cards.<\/p>\n Many filmmakers had inquired about adapting \u201cHenry Sugar\u201d over the years, but Dahl\u2019s family was happy to set it aside for Anderson. There was just one problem.<\/p>\n \u201cI never knew how to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The 54-year-old filmmaker typically works at a prodigious pace, putting out distinctive comedies like the recent \u201cAsteroid City<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe French Dispatch<\/a>\u201d (2021) every two or three years. But he has spent nearly half his career trying to crack \u201cHenry Sugar.\u201d The breakthrough finally came when Anderson decided to use more than just Dahl\u2019s dialogue and plotting: He would also lift the author\u2019s descriptive prose and put it in the mouths of the characters, allowing them to narrate their own actions into the camera as they happen.<\/p>\n \u201cI just didn\u2019t see a way for me to do it that isn\u2019t in his personal voice,\u201d Anderson explained. \u201cThe way he tells the story is part of what I like about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The result is a 40-minute short starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley and Richard Ayoade, with a delicious assist from Ralph Fiennes as Dahl. After premiering at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, \u201cHenry Sugar\u201d will be released Wednesday on Netflix, followed by three more Anderson-helmed Dahl shorts<\/a> \u2014 \u201cThe Swan,\u201d \u201cThe Rat Catcher\u201d and \u201cPoison\u201d \u2014 that employ the same actors and meta conceit of using Dahl\u2019s prose in dialogue.<\/p>\n (That prose has been under a microscope of late because of a plan by Dahl\u2019s publisher to edit out language<\/a> that was deemed offensive, some of which reflected the author\u2019s racist views<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t want even the artist to modify their work,\u201d Anderson said when asked about it at a Venice news conference. \u201cI understand the motivation for it, but I sort of am in the school where when the piece of work is done and the audience participates in it, I sort of think what\u2019s done is done. And certainly, no one besides the author should be modifying the work \u2014 he\u2019s dead.\u201d)<\/p>\n I spoke to Anderson about his Dahl projects in Venice. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When you read Dahl as a child, you feel like he\u2019s telling you things another adult wouldn\u2019t. While watching your characters say Dahl\u2019s prose directly into the camera, I felt that same conspiratorial connection again.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Oh, that\u2019s good. And yeah, every kid who experiences it has that same thing. There\u2019s mischief in every Dahl story, and the voice of the writer is very strong. Also, there was always a picture of him in these books, so I was very aware of him and the list of all his children: He lives in a place called Gipsy House, and he\u2019s got Ophelia and Lucy and Theo.<\/em> Do you know about his writing hut?<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t until I watched \u201cHenry Sugar,\u201d but it looks like you recreated part of Dahl\u2019s house for the scenes in which Ralph Fiennes plays him.<\/strong><\/p>\n When I made \u201cFantastic Mr. Fox\u201d and I was working on the script, we stayed at the house for some time. In those days, that writing hut was still filled with his things and left the way he had it. [Dahl died in 1990<\/a>.] There was a table with all these sort of talismans, little items laid out, which I think he just liked to have next to him when he was writing. He had this ball that looks like a shot put, made of the foil wrappers of these chocolates he would eat every day. He\u2019d had a hip replacement, and one of the talismans was his original hip bone. And there was a hole cut in the back of his armchair because he had a bad back. It is odd to have somebody write in a way that\u2019s sort of cinematic.<\/p>\n You grew up imagining Dahl and the place he lived. How did it feel to stay there?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was a dazzling thing. It\u2019s the house of somebody who has a very strong sense of how he wants things to be.<\/p>\n Something I\u2019m sure you can\u2019t relate to it all as a director.<\/strong><\/p>\n No. [Laughs<\/em>] I remember the dinner table, a great big table with normal chairs, but at the end of it is an armchair \u2014 not a normal thing at a dinner table \u2014 with a telephone, a little cart with pencils and notebooks, some stacked books. Essentially, \u201cYou can all eat here, and this is where I sit and have everything I want.\u201d Also, he bought art and he had a good eye. I remember there\u2019s a portrait of Lucian Freud by Francis Bacon next to a portrait of Francis Bacon by Lucian Freud. The place is filled with interesting things to look at.<\/p>\n It sounds like the kind of set I might expect to see in a Wes Anderson film, filled with these totems and details.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Things that are about a character. Yeah, and he\u2019s quite a character.<\/p>\n As you thought about adapting \u201cHenry Sugar\u201d over the last decade and a half, did that give you time to figure out why you were so drawn to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n I always loved the nested aspect of it. I do these nested things in my movies starting with \u201cGrand Budapest,\u201d but I think it possibly comes from \u201cHenry Sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n Another thing that you carry over from recent works is the idea of theatrical artifice: You want the viewer to see how this story is put together, and even the walls of the set are wheeled in and pulled apart. What draws you to that approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n When you watch a movie, generally you\u2019re seeing someone try to create an illusion of something happening, because in fact right off the frame is a light and a guy with a microphone. But for me, the theatrical devices really happen. So I think to some degree, I like the authenticity that a theatrical approach can bring. It\u2019s a way to tell the story where there\u2019s a little sliver of the documentary in it, even though most of what we\u2019re doing is the exact opposite of a documentary.<\/p>\n And the viewer feels along for the ride, especially in some of the <\/strong>long takes that have a lot of choreography<\/a><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n On the set there\u2019s so much to wrangle, but when it all starts to happen, it is quite a great thing to sit down and say, \u201cWow, look at that, 90 seconds of the movie is happening right in front of us right now.\u201d Every time with complicated shots that have tricky staging and lots of things for actors to do, there\u2019s usually the feeling that this may not work, that what needs to happen here may never occur. So it\u2019s always this great relief as you see it evolve and say, \u201cNo, we\u2019re getting there and they\u2019re going to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When they nail one of those tricky long shots, what feeling do you have?<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cNext!\u201d That\u2019s usually what it is.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t allow yourself even a moment to exult in the perfect take?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a little moment of, \u201cOoh, that was a good one.\u201d Then, \u201cOK, so do we do lunch? Or we could set up [the next shot] and then eat.\u201d That sort of thing.<\/p>\n