Ethan and Joel Coen, writer/directors of No Country for Old Men, consistently make unique and strange films that manage that feat that much of Hollywood can't manage - the ability to not only stand up to repeated viewings, but to actively entice them. John Goodman screaming his head off and pounding the roof of the car in Raising Arizona will never stop being funny. George Clooney's pause after Tim Blake Nelson says they need to get a frog to a wizard to change it into John Turturro in O Brother Where Art Thou? will always be hysterical. Jon Polito ranting about ethics in Miller's Crossing will always be fantastic.
They don't talk much about it, though, so when the LA Times gets them to sit down and show us a little bit of the life of the mind, it's definitely worth noting.
Some notable quotes after the jump:
On international influence:
"This is the biggest-grossing movie we've ever had. And even at that, it doesn't approach the kind of business and influence, in terms of people's perception of American culture, that big, Hollywood studio movies do."
On Oscar nominations:
"I have to say that there were other people who saw early versions and predicted it," says Joel, corroborated by Ethan. "So the reasons may be transparent to some people but they're certainly not to us. We don't understand it."
This, from filmmakers who tried for some time to adapt James Dickey's World War II novel, "To the White Sea," into what they described to Time magazine as "this expensive movie about the firebombing of Tokyo in which there's no dialogue," and which would have starred Brad Pitt.
On Burn After Reading, starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt:
Clooney, who just completed the upcoming "Burn After Reading," his third film with the directors, says there is lots of laughter as filming progresses. "You can hear them . . . it'll actually screw takes up," the actor says.
"We wrote down a bunch of actors we wanted to work with," says Ethan: " 'What kind of story would these people be in?' "
They wrote parts for Clooney, Pitt, [Frances] McDormand and John Malkovich, all of whom are in the film along with Tilda Swinton. But those roles aren't exactly star turns.
"All the characters in 'Burn After Reading' are numskulls," says Joel, "which Malkovich had no problem with; Clooney has never had a problem with . . . " Both laugh. "Brad was initially taken aback. He's very funny in the movie. He grew to love it as much as George does. Each character is dumber than the next. But they're all lovable.
"The original idea was sort of a spy story and does still have the residue of that, in that Malkovich's character is an analyst at the CIA who is fired in the first scene and starts writing a memoir. His story intersects with Fran and Brad, who are, respectively, the assistant manager and trainer at a gym in suburban Washington. So it's about the CIA and physical fitness."
"After we finished shooting 'Burn After Reading,' I think on the last day, George said, 'OK, that's it, I've played my last idiot.' So we said, 'I guess you won't be working with us again.' " They laugh for a while.
On A Serious Man, their expected next project:
"That's about a Jewish community in the Midwest in 1967, which is sort of reflective of the place we grew up in," says Joel. ". . . That's a hard movie to kind of synopsize." They laugh again, raising suspicion, and Joel pronounces, "It's a 'domestic drama.' "
On the Oscar competition:
"Any time you see great stuff, it's heartening," says Joel. "It makes me feel much better about the state of the industry and the possibilities that exist out there both for seeing more stuff like that from other people, and being able to do interesting work yourself. I actually think it's an indication of how healthy the business is."
"In a totally selfish way," adds Ethan, "forgetting about them, that there's an audience for that -- that Julian [Schnabel] gets money for a blinking movie about a blinking guy's locked-in syndrome, that's kind of great, you know?"
