Wes Anderson Reminisces on New York City

Film director Wes Anderson recently took a break from the release of his new film, The Phoenician Scheme, to see his friend, the photographer and documentarian Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. During his visit, Anderson sat for a quick portrait and picked up a long-promised print of Greenfield Sanders’ portrait of Orson Welles taken in 1979.

Anderson shared the following recollections for PAPER:

About 20 years ago, I arrived home to New York, having been away for some months. When I reached my building, I noticed a peeling off poster pasted onto the front wall. It had been up for some time and has seen rain and weather. It was a poster for a Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ photography exhibition, with a large photograph of Orson Welles. To me it felt like such a great New York moment, to see this on my building.

I obviously knew Timothy’s work, and had in fact been photographed by him. I loved arriving home, welcomed by Orson Welles, so I took a photograph of the poster on the wall. I shared that with Timothy, and eventually he gave me an actual poster from the exhibition… and even more recently, a print of the photograph! It was a twenty-year process.

To me, Timothy’s photograph of Orson Welles represents another era. It’s the New York I experienced when I first moved here. It also is the sense that l and so many of us share, which is an admiration for the generations before us. I’ve discussed with Timothy how Bette Davis and Alfred Hitchcock directly inspired him and even taught him with their time on a personal level.

I have had my own flashes of inspiration. For instance, I had a remarkable moment when I was assigned to drive Lauren Bacall to her home, and had the greatest conversation with her from Venice Beach up into Bel Air. I got a full dose of the Bogart years. Another moment was when Bob Balaban and I had dinner with Stanley Donen…which was quite unforgettable.

I used to see Peter Bogdanovich very often and we were good friends. Peter, in a way, was the best of the keepers of the flame of the earlier generation of movie people. Peter obviously knew Alfred Hitchcock well, but also John Ford and Howard Hawks. He and Polly Platt interviewed probably dozens of the great Hollywood filmmakers, including Sidney Lumet, Henry Hathaway, George Cukor, Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan. This list goes on, but maybe more than any other legendary director it was Peter’s stories about Orson Welles that told us — and me — so much about the man, Los Angeles, and even about New York.

Now they are all gone, but getting this print of Orson from Timothy on this recent visit was a perfect way to close the twenty-year circle that started with the poster on my building’s wall. And, to me, it’s a symbol of what makes this city, New York, so special.

— Wes Anderson, June 2025