The offcial companion to The French Dispatch and the latest volume in the bestselling Wes Anderson Collection series.
THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION: THE FRENCH DISPATCH
by Matt Zoller Seitz, illustrated by Max Dalton
Abrams, September 2022
The French Dispatch—the tenth feature film from writer-director Wes Anderson—weaves together stories of an eccentric band of expat journalists working at the titular American newspaper in 20th-century Ennui-sur-Blasé, France. Broken out into a series of vignettes, this love letter to the New Journalism era is filled with a cast of Anderson’s frequent collaborators, including Jason Schwartzman, Bob Balaban, and Willem Dafoe, as well as new players Timothée Chalamet, Jeffrey Wright, Elisabeth Moss, and Benicio del Toro. In this latest one-volume entry in the Wes Anderson Collection series—the only book to take readers behind the scenes of The French Dispatch—everything that goes into bringing Anderson’s trademark style, intricate compositions, and meticulous staging to the screen is revealed in detail. THE WES ANDERSON COLLECTION: THE FRENCH DISPATCH presents the complete story behind the film’s conception, anecdotes about the making of the film, and behind-the-scenes photos, production materials, and conceptual artwork.
Matt Zoller Seitz is the editor in chief of RogerEbert.com; the TV critic for New York magazine; the author of The Wes Anderson Collection, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Oliver Stone Experience, and Mad Men Carousel; and the coauthor of The Sopranos Sessions. He is based in New York City.
On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano’s hometown paper, New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon.