Asteroid City: UFO secrets exposed

In a classified location out in the American desert, in an open-air classroom, a boy named Dwight (Preston George Mota) has written a song about a visiting alien. His teacher has doubts, but a troupe of Western musicians stroll into shot with their instruments and begin to play. Framed against a bright, sugar-blue sky, the boy puts his hands together as if in prayer and he sings… 

Dear alien, who art in heaven, 

Lean and skinny, ’bout six-foot-seven; 

Though we know ye ain’t our brother: 

Are you friend or foe (or other)? 

Howdy-dee! That’s our cue to dance and be spacemen. Welcome to mid-1950s America seen through the eyes of filmmaker Wes Anderson. It’s the time of returned soldier dads with untreated PTSD, the Cold War nuclear arms race, the race to the moon, and a national obsession with alien invaders. “There’s some quality that connects those things, something about the Eisenhower era and its xenophobia,” muses Wes Anderson.

Like the Wizard of Oz, Asteroid City is set in two worlds. In one world, which we see in black and white, a troupe of performers rehearse a stage play about a tiny desert town named Asteroid City. And in the colourful world of the story, we are in Asteroid City. Built around the site of a meteor crater and neighbour to some top secret nuclear testing grounds, it is set to host the five young inventors from across the country who’re arriving for the Junior Stargazers awards. But when another visitor arrives unexpectedly from outer space, Asteroid City is placed under quarantine (Wes Anderson wrote the film during the lockdown phases of the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020). And the Junior Stargazers become determined to dodge the media blackout and spread the truth to the outside world. 

Stream Asteroid City now.

The Americans are invading!

Production designer Adam Stockhausen (Oscar winner for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel) led the construction of the Asteroid City sets not in the US, but in Spain. Production levelled a farm the size of a football field on the outskirts of Chinchón, a desert area on a flat plane, which gave the crew unobstructed views into the distance, clear skies, and plenty of natural light.   

Asteroid City’s key sets, including the luncheonette, the garage and the motel, were all constructed as real buildings in what would become a functioning mini-town during production, while the rest of the set seemed to sprawl out across the desert – thanks to the use of forced perspective. The set builders even gave nature a hand, constructing everything from the mountains, to the boulders and rocks, allowing the team to film without using green screens to block out backgrounds. 

Producer Jeremy Dawson reveals, “Experientially, we wanted that feeling that you're actually in Asteroid City. With the opening pan, you see in every direction. The car chase went right down the road, almost a kilometre long. You saw the set everywhere. The most transported I have ever felt on a film set, because of the scale … When you look off in the distance and see the ramp of the highway and the mountains off in the distance, they're pieces of scenery, and well over 1 000 feet (about 25-and-a-half metres) away. Some are five, six stories tall.” 

To shoot the black-and-white sections of the film, which take place in a theatre in New York, the production team took over nearby real-life theatres to stand in for the Tarkington Theatre,  its adjourning alleyway, an actor’s studio classroom, and the playwright’s beach house. “In each town near Chinchón, there is a tiny theatre,” explains Adam Stockhausen. “We took those as locations, and all of the backstage shots, the scene introducing the actors, were all set up there. The opening broadcast stage is one of those theatres with everything ripped out, the control booth that the camera pushes through is bolted onto the balcony as a little constructed item. For one set, we were in literally a garlic warehouse. It's kind of a nice smell but a bit overwhelming, it is 10 tonnes of garlic.” 

Close encounter: Jeff Goldblum

With the stage set, it was time for the alien to arrive … played by Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park). Kind of. Both the alien’s hexagonal, clear-bottomed spaceship and the meteor crater in which he makes his first steps on planet Earth, were constructed as model miniatures, while the spindly, googly-eyed alien itself required a fair amount of cross-border collaboration. 

In the stage play about Asteroid City, the alien is played by actor Jeff Goldblum, who was perched on stilts concealed in his alien costume, designed by Mark Coulier, to extend his height from  6’4” to 7’ (1,95 to 2,13m). 

But in Asteroid City itself, the alien is played by a stop-motion animated model.

London-based model maker Andy Gent (Who worked with Wes Anderson on The Fantastic Mr Fox and Isle of Dogs) created a fully articulated three-foot (0,91m) model alien – which is massive for a stop-motion figure. And in France, animator Kim Keukelerie manipulated the alien model and created the endearing performance for the 20-second stop motion animated sequence.

While the encounter is over in a flash, it leaves a lasting impression on the townsfolk of Asteroid City, the Junior Stargazers, and the somewhat baffled cast of the play. And now, as the audience of the film, we get to experience some of that confusion, too. Did it really just … strike a pose with that meteorite? 

Stream Asteroid City now on Showmax.