Lauren Wilford
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laurenwilford.bsky.social
Lauren Wilford
@laurenwilford.bsky.social
movies, philosophy, looking around. exasperated humanism & compassionate cynicism. hospitality work.
laurenwilford.com
@lauren_wilford on the other site
anyway my husband and I wrote a book on Wes Anderson if you’re interested in more about his process. I interviewed him a few times. He’s worth studying and we learned so much doing this t.co/4PcIOGDrbV
https://www.amazon.com/Wes-Anderson-Collection-Isle-Dogs/dp/1419730096
t.co
June 11, 2025 at 7:10 PM
“Nobody’s ever told me I have anybody’s anything.” He also has such a knack for these types of lines— simple language, a little jumbled, the kind of real-life musicality that you might hear once in a blue moon in real life. And then he’ll repeat it at key moments to make it mean something different
June 11, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Anderson has an ear for the funny phrases people use in real life when they’re trying to communicate and not getting it quite right. His dialogue is a monument to how silly this all is. And the characters take themselves so seriously as they do it
June 11, 2025 at 7:08 PM
It alternates between comically direct and comically indirect. People talk over each other, around each other, and then directly at each other. They use words kind of incorrectly. They repeat themselves, or repeat something they heard recently from somewhere else
June 11, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Anderson’s visual style has been analyzed and parodied to death but his dialogue style is never parodied correctly. People don’t seem to get it. It’s a sort of parody of/love letter to people’s verbal foibles, the way we fail to properly communicate
June 11, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Anderson as a screenwriter is fascinating because he’s operating on multiple levels— he does usually follow traditional screenwriting beats, but he also loves playing with language and gives himself interesting and unusual patterns and constraints to work with
June 11, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Threapleton just gets it. There’s a line she delivers (it might be the last in the film) that gives me goosebumps to remember. And it’s because it’s well-written, delivered simply but knowingly by somebody who really gets it. Anderson is criminally underrated as a screenwriter
June 11, 2025 at 7:04 PM
when it’s done really well, it can make the meaningful moments— the dialogue motifs coming back around, the planting and payoff—feel even more soulful than “realistic” acting. But you have to know how to stay alive and limber as an actor even within the technical constraint
June 11, 2025 at 7:04 PM
some actors get tripped up with the technical assignment of it— getting the basic rhythm right, which may not be in their wheelhouse— that they forget to re-insert the soul into it. It’s about the light behind the eyes, even as the inflection patterns get tighter and more clipped
June 11, 2025 at 7:04 PM
to elaborate: Wes Anderson’s dialogue requires something unique from the actor on a technical level. You have to be able to deliver the lines fast, and still have people get the joke. You have to know when and how to pause and hold within the heightened rhythm
June 11, 2025 at 7:03 PM
amazing new Halloween costume for girls just dropped
June 11, 2025 at 7:03 PM
The Phoenician Scheme’s Liesl is actually my new favorite religious character— beliefs sincerely held, but not naive, and willing to make the right compromises for the greater good. Also funny and cool
June 11, 2025 at 7:02 PM
every time I go in a new-to-me building, I think, “So this has been going on in here all this time, and no one knew.”
June 11, 2025 at 6:54 PM
I am constantly looking at buildings and wondering what’s going on in them. Entire lives are being lived with (given building) as the main “arena.” Who knows what it’s like in there

It would be totally different in a more alfresco, “agora”-centric society of the past
June 11, 2025 at 6:54 PM
the question, as always, is how to get the nutrients without the anti-nutrients
June 9, 2025 at 2:47 PM
what I liked about the films is that they make the observer-protagonist understand what attracts and nourishes people about village life, but they equally illustrate why we have mostly left it behind (social cohesion this tight comes at a sometimes stark human cost)
June 9, 2025 at 2:47 PM
we watched two really instructive films on the concept of “village life” this year— Zorba the Greek (1964) and Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979). Both follow a 20th century city intellectual into an intact rural “village” culture and watch his reaction
June 9, 2025 at 2:46 PM
and I just think it’s funny that these moments—that some of us think of as transcendent, happiest-of-my-life moments of presence—used to be truly normal. Working outdoors with your body, and then chilling around a fire under the stars with your people. That was just life itself
June 9, 2025 at 2:46 PM
I was thinking about what camping does for people— the physical, communal work of setting up camp/hiking/fishing/cooking, the evening campfire eat/sing/talk with loved ones, seeing the stars. All of that stuff we have to seek out to get used to be baseline human experiences
June 9, 2025 at 2:45 PM
I think that’s the basic formula, and it seems like we had many thousands of years where most lives were simply provided with these nutrients. Now they describe an unusually good life
June 9, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Go for it
June 4, 2025 at 6:29 PM
but don't kid yourself (as I once did) that being cold is some kind of radical act of being "less fake." It's a cop-out. There's something much more important going on here.
June 4, 2025 at 5:09 PM