Although Joel and Ethan Coen have been busy in Toronto talking about their newest film Burn After Reading, which opens tomorrow, last weekend the buzz around town was all about small crowds gathering at hotel entrances hoping for a glimpse of Brad Pitt. He definitely steals the movie, which is hard to do considering some of the talent that’s stacked up in this film.
On that note, I’ve gone back and forth on this movie in my own head. At first I didn’t care for it, then I kept thinking about the performances and realizing how good some of them are. George Clooney’s Harry Pfarrer is actually a pretty decent character, especially when he gets paired onscreen with Frances McDormand. Their dinner scene together works with a bit of Cary Grant / Katherine Hepburn spark.
However, despite the strong performances throughout the film, the plot drags on and by the time you come to the end, you find yourself thinking “Is that it?” When the writer and director end up being the same person, there’s not really anyone else you can fault for the final product. Miller’s Crossing is one of my top five films, and I never get tired of The Hudsucker Proxy or The Big Lebowski. Unfortunately Burn After Reading represents, for me, a misstep for the Brothers Coen. Read on to find out what they had to say about the film, winning the Oscar, and an Easter egg hidden on the Fargo soundtrack.
This is a comic film, but there is also a very dark undertone.
Ethan Coen: Sounds like it. I don’t know.
Joel Coen: Yeah, I’m not even sure it’s an undertone. Yeah, they are pretty terrible.
The film is a way of making light of the climate in D.C. Can you talk about that and what inspired you to want to take out that subculture there?
Joel: I guess we sort of wanted to do a spy movie. It didn’t exactly turn out that way. I don’t really think it is a spy movie. That’s how the original idea was structured. Like most of our stuff, it’s not really meant to be a comment on Washington. It’s really about these particular characters. I’m sorry, I lost the thread of the question. Whenever you do these things you want to be specific about the place that your story is set. In that respect you want to see not just the people who are in government in Washington, but also the people who are just sort of ancillary to that, who live in that community. We had an idea of people that we were thinking vaguely about as references for the characters in a way. It wasn’t a specific kind of lampoon of anybody.
What people for references?
Joel: I knew I shouldn’t have said that. When we first started thinking about Frances in the vaguest way, because of the plastic surgery, and we thought ‘That would be interesting to see her play something like that, Linda Tripp.’ And… Don Rumsfeld.
At this point Brad Pitt leans in and jokingly says: You have to stop.
A lot of the anticipation around this film comes after No Country For Old Men. That was a movie that people found very meaningful and very resonant. Now, Burn After Reading goes out of its way to say it’s kind of meaningless. Is it meaningless? Was No Country as meaningful as everybody thought it was?
Ethan: Do you mean, maybe having seen this you would like to take back having liked the previous movie?
No, I’m not saying that at all. I just think it’s a real change in tone.
Ethan: You know, we don’t relate one movie to the other, or any of our movies. Why would we? We are into whatever movie we are working on. They are different movies, they feel different I guess, to the extent that they feel very different. That’s good. Certainly it’s an ambition that you change from movie to movie. You don’t want to repeat yourself. As for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of each of those two movies? I don’t know what to say to that, the characters… I don’t know what to say. The characters are probably leading lives that don’t have a whole lot of meaning. They can still be interesting characters and actors in an interesting story.
Did winning the Oscar change anything for you?
Joel: We had already shot this movie when that happened. The next movie we are doing had already been written and essentially financed. Our story is pretty much the same. We are doing what we would have been doing anyway.
Audiences are used to seeing a lot of the actors you use in dramatic films and you cast them in these very funny comedies. Can you talk about the decision making process that goes into choosing the actors?
Joel: It is true, we don’t necessarily make the distinction between actors and comedians, dramatic acting, and comic acting in that way. If we put actors in comedies that aren’t normally associated with comedies it’s just simply a reflection of our interest in them as actors. We are interested in their ability to inhabit the material the way it’s written. We wouldn’t necessarily think ‘Well, it’s a funny movie so we have to cast comedians’. We like to write, and always have written, parts for specific actors. As we sit down to write it helps us often times to imagine the story. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t.
This was a case where we wrote most of the parts in this were being written for the people who played them. That’s often the way it works with us. We know an actor and want to work with them. Or we don’t know who is going to play it, that happens too, and we simply cast the part. That was the case for instance with Tilda. We didn’t know who, that part wasn’t written with anyone specifically in mind. We hadn’t worked with Tilda before. It’s all over the place.
There seems to be a thread running through some of your movies where, as you say, knuckleheads, or Clooney calls it his trio of idiot roles. Everyone seems to want something they can’t get. They seem to be lacking in intelligence and they set off catastrophic events. Do you think that history is made by idiots rushing into things?
Ethan: Actually, each of the three actors has said this in different ways. I would just second them. It’s not a comment about other people, it’s just a part of ourselves that we would disavow. It’s certainly not about George Bush or anything specific politically, or other people we’re laughing at, or find amusing. We’ve all got the inner knucklehead. It’s again good fodder for stories.
Joel: As Ethan was saying before, we think about these things so specifically. It’s such a narrow context. You sit down, write the story, come up with a story, and start thinking about the characters. It’s all circumscribed by the story. There isn’t a lot, or any really discussion about extrapolating any of it out of the context of the story. That is why, as Ethan was saying before, it’s a funny thing. It’s understandable, when you get in front of a bunch of people who want to talk about it in a larger context. It’s not the way we think about it. It’s not an illegitimate question, it’s just a difficult one for us to answer.
From a creative standpoint, when it comes to a script, what is more difficult to develop, a successful adaptation or something original and unique?
Ethan: They don’t feel much different actually, in terms of the actual process of making a movie. Having just done an adaptation, then doing something that was not, it was not that different. The writing of it is obviously a little different. In certain respects it’s a lot easier doing an adaptation because there is an aspect of the figuring out that has been done for you.
Aren’t there more expectations?
Joel: You know, we could be oblivious to the expectations honestly. We don’t trouble ourselves too much with what people might be expecting from this or that, so I would say no. Not really.
Are you often writing several things at once?
Joel: This one was a little mixed up.
Ethan: The last two films kind of overlapped.
How do you write? Do you write together in a room or separately?
Joel: We write together in the same room. We go in the office and talk each scene back and forth together.
How do you feel talking about a movie after you’ve finished it? Do you think the films should just speak for themselves?
Ethan: It’s just an odd situation. You make the movie because you find something about the story compelling. You find something about the characters. You do think it should speak for itself. Even stronger than that, you don’t have anything to say beyond that because you don’t think about it in other terms, in the way a journalist would think about it. Then here you are sitting in front of a bunch of journalists and legitimately they ask you to say something that isn’t just from the movie. You are stumped and sometimes they think you are being coy or allusive. The fact is that you don’t have anything else to say. A lot of our movies are about dolts. I don’t know why that is either. Maybe its just because it seems to go somewhere in terms of the story. If everybody knows what they are doing in the movie, if they are capable, and everyone is on top of things then what is going to happen that is interesting or fun, or surprising?
Regarding filming on location, how are all the tax cuts effecting filmmakers and does it determines where you make your film?
Joel: Oh yeah. It can mean a lot of money. It’s definitely a factor. Especially if you are making a film on a limited budget. You go where you are going to get the most bang for your buck. If you can make it somewhere that is reasonable, in terms of the resources in the location, and what you are looking for. Wisconsin and Minnesota are different places. They are certainly fungible in terms of movie locations. It makes a big difference. There are a lot of states that will offer tax rebates for local production costs. It’s getting a little bit easier. It used to be just a few states in the south but that’s certainly a factor. Minnesota is a more liberal and generous place. We preferred to make it there for a number of reasons. That’s what we were thinking about in our minds when we wrote the story. Also, we have previous experience there with productions crews and all the rest of the things. We just know that territory better.
Is your film A Serious Man autobiographical?
Joel: No, it’s autobiographical in terms of the context of the story. It’s a context that we grew up in, it’s the Midwest in 1967. The plot or story itself is not in any way autobiographical.
How was it working with a new cinematographer on this film?
Ethan: Oh, it was great. It’s interesting because we had worked with the same cinematographer for many years, many movies. He just lights differently, works differently. It was interesting and stimulating. It was a fun and good experience. In fact we are working with Roger Deakins again in the upcoming one.
Joel: Yeah, it was really a great experience because that is such a close relationship on the set. It’s the closest relationship you have with any of the crew members. Ethan was saying, in many ways they are complete opposites. They both do amazing things by approaching it in such different directions.
Do you direct differently with him?
Joel: A little bit. It’s like any collaboration. Cheebo (Emmanuel Lubezki) had to adjust to the style in which we work and we had to adjust to the way in which he works. You have to play like that, it’s how you work.
Can you talk about working with Carter Burwell, who does the scores for your films, and talk about his music for this one?
Joel: Yeah, Carter has done all of our movies. This was one where he came to us early on and said he thought there should be a lot of percussion in the track. We wanted something big and bombastic, something important sounding but absolutely meaningless.
Ethan: Since we thought that the characters thought they were all in spy movie, for whatever reason he thought the composer should be similarly deluded. Actually the one specific score we talked about was Seven Days in May which is all drums. It really amused Carter because it sounded so important.
Joel: These were a lot of Taiko drums, which are these huge Japanese drums.
Can you give us an idea about what inspired the machine that George Clooney’s character builds in the film?
Joel: The machine, there were two inspirations for it. One was a machine I saw that a key grip made once. The other was a machine that is in the Museum of Sex, in New York City. We actually at one point said to George, ‘We’ll show you the machine if you want, it’s down at 23rd street and Madison.’ George said ‘That’s all I need is to be seen coming out of the Museum of Sex with you two guys.’
Do you find it hard to keep a straight face at times while shooting some of the bizarre scenes you come up?
Joel: There is a scene in ‘Fargo’ where Steve Buscemi was slugging through the snow trying to bury this money and he kept sinking up to his waist. I think even in the finished movie you can hear me laughing at him. We left it in because we thought ‘Well, it kind sounds like Steve breathing.’
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