The MTV movie blog has been speaking to the Coen brothers about two of their most enduring Coen created characters played by John Turturro – Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink from, err, Barton Fink. Both characters have long been rumoured to be the source of possible sequels/spin offs. MTV put it to the Coens directly and got the following responses;

Of the Big Lebowski spin off;

“We don’t see it yet,” Ethan said.

“That movie has more of an enduring fascination for other people than it does for us,” Joel added.

Bummer. To the max. No “100 Minutes of Jesus” which, for the record, Joel thinks could be a good name for the movie. They do at least recognize Turturro’s continuing interest in the project.

“Oh, he serious. He’s on board,” Ethan said.

“He’s very serious,” Joel added.

So Turturro, not joking. Coens, not interested. Not right now anyway. Ethan does go as far as saying that “it could happen,” but it’s probably best to put any hopes aside for now and for the forseeable future.

But, perhaps more positively it seems Old Fink is more likely to happen;

“It would be called ‘Old Fink,’” Joel said.

“We did talk to [John] Turturro about doing ‘Old Fink,’” Ethan added. “We want John to be old enough to do it.”

The brothers even have (at least) a baseline idea of how they would from the story. “That’s another 1967 movie,” Joel said in reference to “A Serious Man,” which is also set during that turbulent period. “It’s the summer of love and [Fink is] teaching at Berkeley. He ratted on a lot of his friends to the House Un-American Activities committee.”

“He’s got the George Kaufman hair but he’s going gray,” Ethan said. “He wears a medallion.” As if that explains everything. And it kinda does.

“We told Turturro this is one sequel we’d actually like to make but not until he was actually old enough to play the part,” Joel explained. How old is old enough, you may ask? “He’s getting there,” Ethan said.

To be perfectly honest, I’d happily see either one go into production but personally, I’d like Jesus to get more than 10 minutes of screen time!