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Wes Anderson is an American film director and screenwriter. His most recent movie is “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

Q.

Unrest in Baltimore. Crises in Nepal. Executions in Indonesia. Today’s front page describes a place very far away from the world you create in your movies. What did you read with greatest interest?

A.

A weird near-haiku from the Baltimore police commissioner: “We tried to deploy smoke. With the winds shifting, it blinded us at the same time.” Baltimore Rev. Donte Hickman Sr. sounds like a powerhouse and some kind of saint. I am intrigued by the strange idea of the Orioles game tonight in an empty stadium. I want to go down there and scalp a ticket, except I think it would undermine the concept.

On the website, we can study locations in Katmandu in February and March versus this week in 360-degree panorama. A depressing time machine.

Q.

Are there stories you follow with special interest? Kinds of articles you regularly skip?

A.

I skip more or less the entire Sports and Business sections.

Q.

What article did you find most disturbing? Most amusing? Most surreal?

A.

The story about the firing squad in Indonesia is greatly disturbing reading material today. The story about Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin takes us into surreal. The photo of a sad playground inside prison walls in Wyoming gives us, maybe, all three sensations at once.

Q.

Favorite headline?

A.

Any headline with the word “enchilada” in it (Page D6) immediately grabs my attention.

Q.

Do you read the paper straight through? Or skip around? Favorite sections? Obits? Food? Style?

A.

I skip around all over. I always read the Obituaries. Son of Herman Mankiewicz, Don. A famous hockey player, a famous cinematographer, the youngest daughter from “Partridge Family.” Yesterday, a fascinating obit on Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 93-year-old Auschwitz survivor.

Pete Wells’s restaurant review in today’s Food Section makes me want to go to Minton’s (Page D5). She-crab soup and grits. I’ve never known the gender of a crustacean I ate before, but this one sounds good to me.

Style is tomorrow. Was it Bill Cunningham who arranged for the upgrade in the paper quality of this section in recent years? He runs the littlest of the pictures.

Q.

You have been described as an “amateur crossword puzzler.” Are you?

A.

I do the crosswords. If I’m busy, I save them and eventually do a binge.

Q.

“The Nigerian Army asserted in a Twitter post that it had rescued 200 girls and 93 abducted women in the Sambisa Forest.” There are stories in the paper that read like terrible fairy tales.

A.

Possibly the character-number-limitation proves inadequate for this story. I’m glad not to be reading the Boko Haram Tweets-of-the-Day, but subsequent messages may paint a more complex picture?

Q.

“Ex-Resident Kills Director of Bronx Shelter.” It’s a particularly grim news day. Thoughts on reading unrelieved bad news?

A.

Skim.

Q.

As someone who spends a lot of time out of the country, do you depend on The Times for a sense of the state of things at home?

A.

I used to read The Herald-Tribune, but now it’s The International New York Times. I liked the old name. Either way, it’s a very sharply focused publication.

Q.

Do you rely on the Arts section for news about the arts?

A.

Always. Especially, the theater.

Also, today, we have Manohla Darghis on a new and, I suppose, final Al Maysles movie, “Iris.” This one I will clip and save.

Q.

Ever watch video on the Times site or have thoughts about different ways the paper could tell stories with film or video?

A.

One thing I like very much on the website, which I think is quite recent: “From the Archives.” Old news. International NYT/Herald-Tribune short paragraphs. One hundred, 75, 50 years ago have always been a favorite.