Yesterday Empire Magazine hosted a live webchat with none other than Ethan Coen. Ostensibly it was to discuss True Grit, which is released in the UK tomorrow, but the subject matters were wide and varied. I have cheekily copy and pasted it below but if you prefer to read it au naturel then head over to Empire’s site.

j_clark says: What made you choose to refer majorly to the original text [of Charles Portis’ True Grit] as opposed to the ‘69 film?
Well, I’ll tell you: we saw the ‘69 film in ‘69 so we didn’t remember it very well. The impetus for making the movie was an enthusiasm for the book, and we really only vaguely remembered the movie.

rhysf1 says: Do you find it difficult faithfully adapting a novel and not being able to use some of your classic dialogue and character names?
Character names, that’s interesting, because we actually rewrote a script once as a writing job because we liked one of the character names. The name was basically all we liked from the original script: the character’s name was Gus Petch. We actually ended up making the movie, it was Intolerable Cruelty. But no, we don’t store up names for later use, so we didn’t feel stymied in not being able to use our own character names.

Miles Messervy 007 says: Why ‘Roderick Jaynes’?
Oh, I don’t know. The name came out of the air, I don’t know. We decided he was from Hove, and embittered. Possibly the two things are related. I don’t know where the name came from, though.

Drew 666 says: What makes Joel laugh?
Still searching…

Could you talk about when you bring DoP Roger Deakins in and how his input impacts production? What’re the main things that Roger brings to the process?
He comes in as early as he can, and that’s totally contingent on his schedule. If he’s free, long before we start shooting then what we usually do is a draft of the storyboards without him and then a draft with him. We scout locations with him, again contingent on his schedule. He basically does everything with us from the point he’s able to sign on. Participating in the location scouting and the storyboards is important because it just goes to what the movie looks like, and if he’s shooting something.

Daryn says: Now that cinema tastes seemed to have changed and audiences seem more open to arthouse and experimental movies, is there any chance we will ever see your adapation of To The White Sea?
Oh no. We worked on it with a producer named Richard Roth, and Jeremy Thomas. They’re both great – Jeremy came very close to getting us the budget, which was large given the nature of the movie. But he came up short even with Brad Pitt doing the movie for free. So if we failed under those circumstances I don’t know that we’ll ever succeed. Also, Brad’s too old now.

J.D. DRUMPELLIER says: Would you ever consider making a horror film? I know you’ve dabbled with classic genre horror imagery in Blood Simple and the like, but would you ever consider just making an all-out horror picture in the same vein as Raising Arizona is an all-out farcical comedy?
Funny you should ask. Yes, we’re working on a couple of scripts now; one of which it would be fair to call a full-on horror movie. Frances McDormand is the monster.

thatfilmlover says: Joel and yourself have directed six actors to Oscar nominations, and two of them to wins. Now with Hailee [Steinfeld] and True Grit, what’s your secret to getting the best out of actors?
Not doing anything. We just cast actors who know what they’re doing and who we like working with. Actually, the whole directing actors is a mystery to me. I don’t know that we really do anything. We’d like to take credit for all their performances but…

nickjhp says: I was just wondering what the significance of the first scene in A Serious Man is? Oh… beats me. It’s better with it than without it, right? I don’t know.

El Dukerino says: Charles Portis has been described as “like Cormac McCarthy, but funny”. Do you think that’s fair?
It’s unfair to Cormac. They’re both very funny. Cormac is… I was going to say drier, but that’s not true: Charles Portis is very dry. Maybe we were unfair to Cormac: there were a lot of laughs in the novel No Country For Old Men, as there are in his other books, but we didn’t include any of them. Probably because they’re mostly in the sheriff’s monologues, which are totally absent from the movie.
Rhu says: Are there any of your films that feel more “yours” or more “Joel’s”? Or is everything really 50/50?
No, we write them all together, we talk through each script. There’s no separating even bits of movies, much less whole movies as between the two of us.

TaraReid says: Hi Ethan! When are we starting filming on Lebowski 2? My agent apparently knows nothing but I still have the job don’t I?
This was in the US press – Tara Reid announcing Lebowski 2. George Clooney periodically announces a movie called Hail Caesar that we’re apparently going to do with him. And John Turturro’s been after us for years to do a movie focused on his character in The Big Lebowski, the paedophile.

fakeplasticmax says: What are your thoughts on Lebowski’s immense cult following, with things like The Two Gentlemen of Lebowski and the Church of the Latter-day Dude? Did you in some way expect the Dude phenomenon to take off as spectacularly as it did?
No, I haven’t heard of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Do they actually convene and hold services? No, we didn’t expect that, no.
James Barrett says: Is there a possibility that you may remake the sequel to True Grit (Rooster Cogburn, 1975) in the future?
Yes, if we can get Cate Blanchett to do the Katharine Hepburn part. We’re in negotiations with her people.

Buddy says: Barton Fink is hired to write a wrestling picture. The Naked Man, which you co-wrote, was a wrestling picture (albeit a rather strange one) what can you tell us about their connection (if any connection exists)?
What would be a not-strange wrestling picture? I don’t know, no connection. People like wrestling. There are just some things that people like. People like cows. People like Dutch doors. One just recognises what people like.

Finkblot says: Joel, have you considered working with Sam Raimi once again? Hudsucker Proxy was a revelation, and Crimewave was insane!
No, Sam’s too busy. We’re game. We’re in negotiations with his people.

rolotomasi says: What is your attitude towards film criticism? Do you pay attention to the reviews your pictures get?
Yes, I love reading reviews. I love reading bad reviews. When they’re really nasty they feel personal in a way that you never get in real life, where people are generally polite. They’re really interesting – actually, and I always find it mysterious what gets up people’s noses. Good reviews are not so interesting, because it’s basically people saying, “I really liked your movie,” which they do say in real life.

Mrs. Fink says: Ethan, I have to know… what’s your favourite sandwich?
Oh. Well, OK, prosciutto and mozzarella, a little arugula, oil and vinegar on it. Are you offering?

DavisBrown says: How long did it take you to find the right person to play the character of Mattie Ross? Do you enjoy working with younger people on set?
Many months. Casting people were looking throughout the States for about six months, at least, before we started shooting, and they saw thousands of people – probably 15,000 girls, either in person or through online submissions. 14,990 of them were dreadful. Joel and I saw a tiny fraction of who the casting directors saw, a few of whom were interesting. But we only saw Hailee Steinfeld about four weeks before we started shooting. We were starting to feel some anxiety until we met her. And it’s fun working with young people. The process has been fun for her in a way that it sometimes isn’t for us and the other more experienced actors. And that’s actually contagious on the set.

John Turturro’s been after us for years to do a movie focused on Jesus from The Big Lebowski.

Rhu says: Does it feel weird after the Oscar win, that you now basically are a part of the establishment? It would have seemed incredibly unlikely not that long ago.
Yes, it’s very strange. I was in the Oscar mosh pit last year, looking around thinking, “I actually know most of these people.” It’s alarming. But I don’t think we can be blamed for it; we got nominated for A Serious Man – I mean, who could blame us for that?

lloydwhittle says: What character are you most proud of creating?
Sy Ableman. Fred Melamed’s character in A Serious Man. Best movie monster ever!
Michael Welsh says: I remember reading you basically went door to door to finance Blood Simple – would you give the same advice to aspiring filmmakers today?
I don’t know, I really don’t know. That was more than 25 years ago, so I don’t know how relevant our experience is now. I don’t know what the experience of starting out in the movie business is now.

Mark_It_Zero says: What’s the one thing that you and your brother argue most about?
We don’t really argue. When we’re writing it’s not even like there are opposing points of view; mostly it’s like we’re staring at the wall and any idea is welcome. And once the script is finished the process of writing the script together has us obviously very much on the same page. We have other long-standing collaborators as well and we also don’t argue with any of them – we’re obviously very non-confrontational people.

Marmotman says: Any plans on going into a big-dollar TV series a la Spielberg, Bruckheimer etc? Even if not, any old TV shows either side of the pond that you’d like to remake?
No, hadn’t thought about it.

kathen says: You guys always manage to get your actors to have the best hair, but which hairstyle was your favourite? (I personally think Tilda Swinton’s in Burn After Reading is glorious)
Yeah, that was good. There’s one scene in a restaurant with Tilda and George; the restaurant has copper-coloured sconces that perfectly match her hair. But I think my favourite is John Turturro’s wedge in Barton Fink. Look for Barry Pepper’s hair in True Grit, hair enthusiast.

oamr9792 says: Do you have any plans to write another book of short stories to go with your films?
I’ve written a few stories, but I’ve gotten lazy; not enough to compose a book. And I probably won’t have any time soon.

Sully114 says: I was wondering why Jeff Bridges eye patch in True Grit is on the opposite eye than John Wayne’s?
(Burying head in hands) I’m stumped.

Buddy says: Do you still plan on doing an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Cuba Libre or have you already satisfied your appetite for Westerns?
Oh, we did do a script of that but it was just a writing job, many years ago when the book came out. But it wasn’t something for us to make.

What makes Joel laugh? I’m still searching…

Gringo says: Has there ever been a book that you’d love to see on the screen but you can’t think how to make the adaptation work?
No. That’s a strange, logically imperfect question somehow; the two novel adaptations that we’ve done we did because they struck us as promising movie material. I don’t know how a book would strike us as that and yet seem impossible to adapt into a movie.
andthorough says: What would you say your favourite piece of music is from one of your films?
Boy, I like so much of what Carter Burwell has done; every single movie of ours has been with Carter doing the underscoring. The theme from The Man Who Wasn’t There which we did with Billy Bob Thornton, I really like, and A Serious Man. Those two were original with Carter. Some movies he takes themes he or we have found and adapts them, and the score of True Grit is thematically based on four 19th century Protestant hymns. All his music is great; I actually really enjoy that part of the movie because we have so little input into it that it’s harder for us to get sick of the music than it is for other parts of the film.

Finkblot says: What will your next project be? Gambit? Old Fink? Or something previously unannounced?
Gambit was also a writing job. It seems like the movie is going to get made but not by us; it never was to have been. [As for] Old Fink, the Barton Fink sequel: John Turturro is not old enough yet. And the whole thing may be more a thought experiment than a movie. We don’t really know what we’re doing yet; we’re working on a couple of scripts.

As part of Empire magazine’s massive list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time in which 5 Coen brother’s movies featured, they also reprinted the voting slips from some of the movie industry luminaries who responded (probably just to show off – they do that a lot). Anyhoo, one such slip was that of long-time Coen cinematographer Roger Deakins who is one of, if not the, best in the business. Here are his top ten movies;

1. The Wild Bunch

2. Idi i smotri (Come and See)

3. La Dolce Vita

4. Dr. Strangelove

5. Le Samourai

6. Armee Des Ombres

7. Once Upon a Time in the West

8. Rocco and His Brothers

9. The Passenger

10. Paris, Texas

Now that the Coens’ latest is almost out here in the UK (17 days but who’s counting?) reviews are beginning to appear on this side of the Atlantic. First one I’ve seen is this from Empire magazine…

“Ask Ethan Coen to explain his latest fable, and he will scratch his thinning hair and summarise its strange ponderings thus: “It is about the covert world of the CIA and internet dating.” Ask Joel Coen to unravel Burn After Reading, and he’ll stroke his well-trimmed goatee and define its unusual formula thus: “This is our version of a Tony Scott/Jason Bourne kind of movie – without the explosions.” Indeed, to this previously untapped combo of inert espionage and modern dating rituals, they could add the perils of alcoholism, ’70s conspiracy thrillers, computer malfunction and personal training. Not to forget sexual deviancy. In a career steeped in oddity, this is another polished example of the brothers’ predilection for tossing a pile of wacky ideas and multiple movie references into the juicer to see what flavour emerges.

Following that most un-Coen of eventualities, an Oscar triumph, at first glance you might see their latest as an effort to paddle away from the threatening currents of the mainstream and back into the reassuring calm of the left bank – although, given it was made prior to the release of No Country For Old Men, that would require some nifty clairvoyance on their Brillo-haired behalf. Perhaps they just wanted to reawaken the zany in their filmmaking. Compared to the moody poetry of that classy neo-Western, Burn After Reading has the wild abandon of a punk-rock song – it’s all jibs and jabs, the rope-a-dope moves of a boxer. A slighter, less obviously showy piece that will grow and grow with repeated viewing.

So what’s the rumpus? Ozzie Cox (John Malkovich), a low-level data analyst at the CIA’s voluminous headquarters at Langley, has quit in a fit of pique. He didn’t take too kindly to being demoted. Truth be told, he doesn’t take too kindly to anything. However, a disc of what appears to be his hastily penned revenge memoirs turns up in the ladies’ changing room of Hardbodies Fitness Center. Naturally, personal trainer Linda (Frances McDormand), desperate to fund her forthcoming surgical work, together with her eager-beaver underling Chad (Brad Pitt), decide to sell the intelligence to the Russians. Did we mention overly horny Harry (George Clooney), currently schtupping Ozzie’s wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) and soon preying upon lonely Linda through the avenue of internet dating? We should. He’s relevant. All of it is played at the amphetamine pace of Raising Arizona.

Cut from similar cloth to Fargo and Lebowski, this is not quite a thriller, and not fully a comedy, but it is very funny and plotted to within an inch of incomprehensible – just like their beloved Chandler. God knows, it errs on the dark side, but the noir is bleached out in the leafy sprawl of Washington DC. Members of the anti-Coen club (unresponsive to the Muncie song, indifferent to bowling) tend to cite the superficial glaze of their art; the tart, unlikable characters; and the smug self-satisfaction at their own cleverness. There will be no swaying even the floaters this time round. If anything, Burn After Reading plays right into the calloused hands of the naysayers. It lacks the immediate charm of classical Coen: there’s no Marge or Dude – good-natured if unconventional counterpoints to the monopoly of jerks, saddos and crazies. Here it’s pretty much just jerks, saddos and crazies.

Ethan, always the more talkative of the brethren, would remind us that most of the characters were written with exactly these actors in mind. Malkovich’s pouting arrogance is a perfect fit for huffy clown Ozzie. McDormand’s disjointed smile and genius for body-language are ideal for nervy, jabbering Linda. Swinton’s snooty grace is primed for Ozzie’s untrustworthy spouse. Out of the crowd, however, it’s the pretty boys who enjoy themselves the most, defiantly mocking their swish Ocean’s Umpteen images. Pitt uncorks his hyperactive loon, blissfully ensconced in the hollow brain-space of a gym-cute bubble-head bounding into the world of espionage like a puppy. Clooney has a wonderful line in smarm he reserves for just these Coen-arranged occasions. Harry is a true-blue sleazebag – wait ’til you see what he’s got in his basement – who emerges out of the chaos as near enough the leading man.

This is precision-built madness. Beneath these chattering lunatics and the pinballing plot lies an intricacy worthy of Kubrick. The sound-editing alone is exquisite: the squeak of a wardrobe door triggering a blast of violence; the hallways of Langley reverberating to the clip-clop of fraught footsteps, rhythmically muffled by carpeting in sonic tribute to The Shining’s zooming trike. Regular cinematographer Roger Deakins may have been on his holidays, but replacement Emmanuel Lubezki (a real person) proves adept at tight, shapely frames and creepy angles.

True Coen fanciers can take solace in such familiar comforts as astonishingly bad highlights in Pitt’s sticky-up hair, the smart-aleck language (although it’s got nothing on the charged patter of Fargo or Lebowski) and a leading character wielding an axe in his dressing gown. And, as is the Coens’ curious wont, the film never quite fits its assumed reality: while we’re darting about contemporary Washington, concerned with such recent preoccupations as social networking and gym regimes, it has the lean, grumbly look of ’70s cinema and the dotty bedlam of trouser-plunging British farce, as if Seven Days In May had been rewritten by Alan Ayckbourn. It is also one of those movies that won’t leave you alone. Percolating away in your brain, its off-centre wit will take shape. The day after, even a week later, one of its peculiar set-pieces will spring to mind.

Ethan might remonstrate, but there runs a theory in certain circles that all Coen films are ultimately about American foreign policy. While it takes work to figure out exactly how that fits The Ladykillers, it is written through Burn After Reading like a stick of rock. Curiously, it’s the schmoes rather than the bureaucrats in the firing line. The CIA suits (led by a too-brief appearance from J. K. Simmons) are benign, bemused and rather gormless; it’s the knuckleheaded plebs who are out of control. America’s troubles, it titters, are of their own making.

As Linda tries to offload the improbable secrets to the very confused Russians, the Agency is baffled. Why the Russians?

The idiots simply can’t think of anywhere else. Farce by its nature is a matter of escalation: each stage of the ever-increasing anarchy is entirely logical, but the net result is insanity. What is Iraq, if not a great, big, terrible farce? Then again, it could just be a big joke on celebrity. There’s nothing that tickles those pesky brothers more than casting a gaggle of gigantic Hollywood stars – including one’s wife – as total nitwits. It’s a high old tale about unintelligent intelligence. That’s the Coens for you.

Verdict
If No Country For Old Men was vintage port, Burn After Reading is a shot of tequila: eye watering and hard to swallow, but the after-effect is terrific.” – Ian Nathan, Empire magazine, issue #233, November 2008 – 4/5 stars

Empire magazine’s next issue will be a special one. They’ve polled readers and the movie world’s leading lights in an attempt to name the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. To celebreate their next issue, due out on September 25th will have 101 different covers. 100 will appear on the newsstands (see them all here) with a special edition subscriber only cover also being printed. John Goodman’s Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski makes the grade for one such cover. So, obviously, the Coens will have at least one entry in the 500. Here it is…

Since life does not stop and start at your convenience – you can order this cover specifically from the website (for the slightly inflated price of £4.90) or take your chances at the newsagents. I would, obviously, like this cover but I’m a subscriber so I will receive the 101st one. I will keep my peepers out for the Walter one on the stands though. He did not watch his buddies die face down in the mud for you to choose a different cover!

The UK’s finest and most respected film magazine, Empire, has sent their reporter, Damon Wise, to the Venice Film Festival to blog on all happeneings there. Of course he too checked out Burn After Reading yesterday and, while it doesn’t sound like he had a very nice time, he did seem to enjoy the movie. Here are his thoughts…

“The Venice film festival opened today with its usual farrago: ineptitude and shambles. Luckily, I’d been at the Locarno film festival in Switzerland, on the Italian border, just the other week, so I felt like I’d eased myself into the way of life here, but it still gets some getting used to. For the daily press, the day started with a screening of Burn After Reading, the new film by the Coen brothers, starring John Malkovich, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt (I put them in that order because it pretty much reflects their screentime). For “Periodici” (an Italian euphemism for “Get to the back of the queue and stay there”) media people like me, however, it began with a very weird press conference that, as it turns out, rather perfectly reflected the themes of the film. Because it was such a bunfight, I retired to a quiet area of the press area to watch it on a TV feed. I say quiet because nobody had thought to turn the sound up.

If you’ve never been to a press conference in Venice, or anywhere, they’re frighteningly amateurish. As a journalist, I’m terrified that my friends and family – who don’t know what I do at the best of times – will, for some reason, turn up at one of these things and say after, “Is that IT??? Is THAT what you DO???” Well, for the record, no, I don’t ask George Clooney when he’s going to settle down and get married. Or Brad Pitt whether he’s thinking of having more children. And I don’t, before you even think about it, change into a T-shirt and a pair of shorts and ask Brad whether, if I joined a gym that he might hypothetically own (which he doesn’t), he would chase me. So no, these are not my people, and, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure who would claim them.

Anyhoo… if I’d seen Burn After Reading beforehand, the whole surreal (and not in a good way) affair would have made a berserk kind of sense. As it was, the film was a little anti-climactic, even though it is far and away the most (broadly) anticipated film in Venice this year. I cannot reveal my sources, because Working Title have sniffer dogs, and men in black, and half-octopus nuclear ski-tractor devices (perhaps), but I’d been given to believe that their follow-up to the (excuse my French) fucking brilliant No Country For Old Men was something of a screwball comedy, or perhaps a satire of America’s heightened post-9/11 paranoia. But to me, though, neither of those things rang very true: for a while (about half an hour), all I could see was the film’s bleakness.

The one correct piece of information I’d been given is that it plays like Fargo without a Marge (well, there is the Marge, but she’s not, like, you know, Marge). But the thing about Fargo is that, for a while, it led you down the garden path, and here it seems that there are several garden paths, and whose garden path do we go down? Do we follow that of Osbourne Cox (Malkovich), a fired, boozy CIA agent whose wife is playing away? Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), the lonely hearts-stalking lawman who’s having an affair with Cox’s wife? Chad Feldheimer (Pitt), the dim-bulb gym manager who finds Cox’s less-than-earth-shattering memoirs in the ladies’ locker room and thinks they’re sellable government secrets? Or Linda Litzke (McDormand), Chad’s surgery-obsessed co-worker, who, after failing to blackmail Cox, tries to sell them to anyone who might be interested?

I think you can see from this outline that this film is very much about the games people play, and even after that first half-hour passed I’m afraid I struggled a bit to find much humanity in it. Though there are elements of their other comedies (The Hudsucker Proxy’s “You know, for kids” becomes a filthy “You know, for adults” here), this is more like one of the Coens’ dramas, especially Miller’s Crossing, with which it shares a similarly detached vision of self-preservation in the face of desperation. Stories collide and intertwine, but they don’t add up (this is not a criticism, believe it or not!) or become anything other than strands of a convoluted plot, and even the government, whose secrets these are, don’t seem to care much (as JK Simmons’ baffled CIA chief puts it wearily, “Follow them, watch what they do, and tell me when it all makes sense”).

HOWEVER!

I’m sorry I shouted then, but I had to get your attention: these are just tonal complaints. If I hadn’t seen The Ladykillers I’d say the Coens were incapable of making a bad movie. Now, this may no longer still strictly be the case, but they certainly do know what they’re doing, and what they do in Burn After Reading, they still do very well. Dialogue, as ever, is beautifully written, with an excellent sense of the absurd, especially the insane, hilarious repetition of the name “Osbourne Cox”. It might actually be the sweariest of their films too, outpacing even Mamet and Tarantino with its rat-a-tat f-words and s-words, and the cast, as ever, are outstanding. The Visitor’s Richard Jenkins deserves a nod as Ted Treffon, “the soulful manager of the Hard Bodies gym” (as it apparently said in the script), but though Clooney gives another great performance in the third of his ‘idiot’ trilogy with the Coens (after O Brother Where Art Thou and the unfairly maligned Intolerable Cruelty), for me the standout is Brad Pitt, who totally commits to his nerdy supporting role, stoopid hairdo an’ all.

I don’t want to spoil things, or sound like a US test-screening audience, but I wanted to see more of him, and that hair, and the fragmented nature of the film doesn’t really allow that to happen. Still, like all Coen brothers movies, it’s a deceptively rich feast, and long after they’ve laughed off any suggestions that it’s, like, you know, about something, it’ll become apparent that actually is. But don’t worry, though. As this Burn After Reading sort of portends, we’ll all be long dead by then.”

Interesting to read about the subversion of the Hudsucker line from which this site takes it’s name (“You know, for kids”) and, since I’ve read the screenplay, I know what it’s in reference to and cannot wait to see how it’s applied.

My copy of Empire (July 2008) arrived today and the first article in it (after the reader’s letter page) is a four-pager on the Coen’s next movie, Burn After Reading. It confirmed the UK release date of October 17th and also contains five new images which I will scan in and post on YKFK in the next few days. Here is the text from said article lovingly transcribed by yours truly…

“After the (relative) seriousness of No Country For Old Men, it seems the Coens are back to more traditional turf for their next. It’s a thriller that’s kind of a comedy (or the other way around) born of one of their own brainstorming sessions (and not a famous novel), where the characters go by such typically syllable-torturing Coen-esque monikers as Harry Pfarrer, Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer.

“It’s in the vein of Fargo and Lebowski,” delights Eric Fellner from Working Title, completing his sixth film with the brothers. “Somebody comes across something they shouldn’t, they completely misinterpret what they’ve got, and because they are fairly stupid, everything spirals horribly out of control. Mayhem and dead bodies ensue.”

More precisely, it is a spy caper about boozy CIA operative Ozzie Cox (John Malkovich), so incensed at being fired he writes some inflammatory memoirs, the disc of which he accidentally leaves in a gym. It is discovered by less-than-intellectual instructor Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt), who attempts to blackmail Ozzie, while his boss Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) meets smooth-talking Harry Pfarrer (George Clooneey) via online dating. He’s the CIA lug assigned to clear the whole matter up, who also ends up sleeping with Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton), estranged wife of Ozzie.

“I’m a guy that goes around killing people,” says Clooney, who would happily play a corpse for the Coens. “It looks really fun. This will be my third idiot – the Coens call it my trilogy of idiots.”

Shooting with typical zest (taking only 50 days) between No Country’s debut in Cannes 2007 and its rapturous US release last autumn, the New York boys stuck fairly close to home: Brooklyn Heights and Washington, DC are the main locations. And despite regular cinematographer Roger Deakins missing his first gig since Barton Fink (due to prior commitments) – Emmanuel Lubezki (Children Of Men) replaces him - the production ran as smoothly as ever.

“They are so brilliant, Joel and Ethan, they just know what they want,” continues Fellner. “Most of the techs and craftsmen have all worked with Joel and Ethan many times. There is never a panic on set. You are never running out of time.”

However, the film, which will open this year’s Venice Film Festival (it wasn’t ready for Cannes 2008), finds its makers at something of a crossroads. Does the Oscar victory and box-office success of No Country For Old Men (a best ever $160 million worldwide) mean they are now a mainstream act and no longer the clever-cloging wiseacres only deciphearable by their army of delirious fans?

“That is the issue – how do you sell the Coens?” agrees Fellner. “Our experience at Working Title is that the point where we’re made mistakes is when we’ve not sold the film to the real audience. You have to start with the real audience and then go bolder. With some of their recent films made with studios (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers were both studio-based films not produced by Working Title) , that could be where they went wrong: looking for too big an audience. This is quite mainstream, but not too mainstream.”

The Coens have been very busy of late. They will soon start another comedy, A Serious Man (also with Working Title), which Ethan has claimed will be ever-so slightly autobiographical: “It’s about a family of four in the Midwest, in 1967, and one of the kids is about to be Bar Mitzvahed. Horrible things happen…” After which they will get going on an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a couldn’t-be-more-Coens noir pastiche set in a reimagined Jewish state in Alaska. Meanwhile, Ethan has also found time to write a trilogy of short plays currenlty being staged together off-Broadway under the title Almost An Evening, produced with the help of Coens’ regular composor, Carter Burwell. The plays, one of which involves two opposing versions of God having a scrap, are helpfully described as Camus-meets-Kafka-meets-the Marx Brothers. Definitely not too mainstream.”

So there you have it. I found this article to put my mind at ease about their two next projects, both of which I’m looking forward to temendously, especially The Yiddish Policemen’s Union which, like the article says, is perfectly suited to the Coen brothers. If you haven’t read the book yet, I cannot recommend it enough.

This months Empire magazine has a 13 page article about the Coen brothers movies called, The Complete Coens. There’s a two page interview with our favourite siblings about No Country For Old Men and a page dedicated to each movie (except the last four which get half a page each). In addition there’s a section about the three forthcoming movies, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Hail Caesar. Well worth picking up however, This months Empire magazine has a 13 page article about the Coen brothers movies called, The Complete Coens. There’s a two page interview with our favrourits siblings about No Country For Old Men and a page dedicated to each movie (except the last four which get half a page each). In addition there’s a section about the three forthcoming movies, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and Hail Caesar. Well worth picking up however, for me, there’s too much time wasted discussing subtext.for me, there’s too much time wasted discussing subtext.

Empire Online runs a series of quizzes, their “How Well Do You Know…” series. The latest is How Well Do You Know O Brother, Where Art Thou? Pop over and see how you do. I scored 18/20.

How well do you know The Big Lebowski? It’s time to find out- Empire has posted a fun, 20 question quiz. I got 19/20- I got Larry Seller’s homework grade wrong How well will you do?

Empire Quizes

I meant to post this the other day but the below news was way more exciting. Anyhow, Empire magazine polled it’s readership during November and December of last year as to which were the 201 (it was issue 201 of the magazine) Greatest Movies Of All Time. Well I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that the Coen brothers had a couple of entries there. Coming in at number 120 was Fargo and at the dizzying, nosebleed-inducing height of number 25 was, of course, The Big Lebowksi. The top five reads thus; #5- The Godfather, #4- Star Wars, #3- The Fellowship Of The Ring, #2- The Empire Strikes Back and #1- The Shawshank Redemption. Oh, and the original The Ladykillers came in at #183 which is nice.