Is The French Dispatch Based on a True Story?

The undisputed master of carefully crated dioramas is back. The trailer to Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, shows off his usual penchant for whimsical characters, blocky aspect ratios, hand-crafted ephemera and symmetrical compositions. Set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé during the mid-19th century, it tells the story of an American journalist who sets up a weekly magazine to report on local French issues. Take a look at the trailer below:

The film will be an episodic tale, focusing on three stories from the magazine: “The Concrete Masterpiece”, “Revisions to a Manifesto” and “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner”. With a huge all-star cast that includes Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Owen Wilson, Jeffery Wright, Willem Dafoe, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray and many, many more, it has the potential to be Wes Anderson’s best film yet.

But is The French Dispatch based on a true story? The answer isn’t quite as easy as saying “yes” or “no”, but instead something far more satisfying in between the two – a fictional retelling of different non-fiction tales. Read on to find out more.

The French Dispatch is Directly Inspired by The New Yorker

As they report, Wes Anderson has always loved The New Yorker, having collected editions ever since he was a teenager; making The French Dispatch his love letter to the world of magazine journalism. The character of Arthur Howitzer, Jr, played here, of course, by Bill Murray, is based on its co-founder Harold Ross.

It makes sense that Wes Anderson would be inspired by such a magazine, which is infamous for the amount of copy-checkers a piece goes through in order to be fit for print, its iconic NY Irvin Font, its prolific use of commas to, break, up, sentences, and delightfully droll cartoons. The stories and characters from the film are based off famous American expatriates in France, their stories imaginative adaptations of what was published in The New Yorker itself.

“The Concrete Masterpiece” is Based on a Six-Part New Yorker Profile of Lord Duveen

In 1951, S.N. Berhmann wrote an article entitled “The Days of Duveen: A Beginning in Delft”, a lengthy profile of Lord Duveen, a famous art dealer who would do anything to score a big deal. Tilda Swinton will play the Berhmann stand-in while Wes Anderson-regular Adrien Brody takes on the role of an art dealer, travelling to a French prison to try and negotiate a deal to take a painting  from incarcerated artist Moses Rosenthaler. The trailer asserts this as the funniest story of the three, Brody fully leaning into the persona of a ruthless art dealer.

“Revisions to a Manifesto” Looks at The Real Riots of May 1968

In May 1968, the whole of France was on fire, beset by protests from the unions, working class, and, capturing everyone’s imagination the most, the students. Mavis Gallant’s Two-Part September 1968 article “The Events in May: A Paris Notebook” is the key inspiration for this chapter of the film.

Tilda Swinton plays the famous Canadian expatriate writer, claiming in the trailer that “The kids did this. Obliterated 1000 years of Republican authority in less than a fortnight. What do they want? Freedom, full stop.” Timothée Chalamet, perhaps the perfect young man to star in a Wes Anderson movie, plays one of the protesters alongside Lyna Khoudri. Given Anderson’s perfect skill in depicting youthful anarchy – as seen in Moonrise Kingdom and Bottle Rocket – his take on the May ’68 protests should be a winner.

Roebuck Wright Is A Cross Between James Baldwin and A. J. Liebling

James Baldwin was a famous black writer who moved to Paris to escape the racist culture of the United States during the late 40s and early 50s. He became a key member of the Left Bank movement, publishing his work in literary anthologies and writing for magazines, before becoming a critically  acclaimed novelist. Jeffrey Wright’s character Roebuck Wright has many of these same traits, as well as a few from A.J. Liebling, who joined The New Yorker in 1935 and was one of its most acclaimed authors.

Like Liebling, Roebuck Wright is a food writer, commissioned to write a profile of the personal chef of the Police Commissioner. The chef is played by Korean-American actor Steve Park, while Matieu Amalric plays a man whose son has been suddenly kidnapped, suggesting that this story will likely digress far from its original food-based focus.

The Film is About the Creation of These Stories

What makes Wes Anderson’s work – especially The Grand Budapest Hotel – so enjoyable is the way the stories fold into each other matryoshka-like, so its not only about what is being told but how it is being told. In each of these stories, as well as the larger meta-story about the magazine in general, the journalists are front and centre; making their tale not only about what they are reporting, but how they got the story. The result is likely be a moving tribute to the world of journalism, especially when working abroad. Which leads us to the next question:

Are Expatriate Magazines Still Common?

As for obscure French cities, it is unlikely that expats will find magazines in English outside perhaps The New York Times, The New Yorker or some British Broadsheets in international hotels. For Paris-based expats, however, there are two publications that still operate in English: France-USA Contacts, a bi-weekly circular offering classified ads on jobs and services, and The Connexion, a national monthly magazine discussing French news that is relevant to expats.

This concept of expat or English-language magazines in non-English speaking countries isn’t just common in Paris. The monthly Exberliner Magazine offers news from the German capital in English while The Local group of websites captures national news from across different countries in Europe and discusses them in English. Perhaps the success of The French Dispatch revitalises interest in these types of publications.