[IMG:L]It was more than 20 years ago when the Coen brothers first made their mark with the violent thriller Blood Simple, followed by the outrageously funny Raising Arizona. Staying true to their two genres, siblings Joel and Ethan continued to write, direct, edit and produce a series of comedies and crime dramas including classics such as The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou and The Man Who Wasn’t There.
It was Fargo, the story of a North Dakota crime gone bad, that landed the pair their first set of golden statues for best picture, editing, directing, and writing and now the Coens could be taking home a few more as Oscar buzz abounds for their latest film No Country for Old Men.
The film follows three men as their stories intertwine and a chase ensues across West Texas. First Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an average Joe, stumbles across a bloody massacre and a case of $2 million. Soon an unrelenting killer named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is on his trail in search of the money, followed by the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) who hopes to catch up to Llewelyn before Anton does.
Hollywood.com caught up with the Coens to find out more about the movie that everyone is talking about.
[IMG:R]HW: What made you decide to adapt this novel by Cormac McCarthy?
Joel Coen: We didn’t actually pick it. It was sent to us by Scott Rudin who had acquired the rights to it … so about a year before it came out and he asked us if we were interested in doing it. We had read other Cormac McCarthy books just for pleasure and liked him a lot but this one we thought could make a really interesting movie.
HW: All of your films are very different from each other, but they usually have a quirkiness to them that lets you know this is a Coen brothers film. Did you purposefully try to eliminate that from the film?
JC: Not consciously we just tried to do an adaptation of the book and it was just sort of a straight forward problem from our point of view, which is how do you turn that into a movie?
HW: Are there movies of yours you feel are more similar to each other than others?
Ethan Coen: We don’t really compare them. There is just nothing in it for us you know what I mean? There is some pleasure in doing a movie and thinking about how you are going to problem solve a specific movie, getting a movie made, but once they are done–we don’t look at them again much less relate one to another.
HW: Do you appreciate the process of making the films more than the finished product?
EC: Yeah, it is sort of paradoxical. We are never going to enjoy watching the movie. I don’t know why we do it? Sometimes the process is pleasurable. Yes, on good days it is fun. I guess that is why we do it.
JC: I’m at the point now where I have a hard time keeping them straight. Honestly, chronologically.
EC: There is an interview where someone asks Brando about Apocalypse Now and he says, “Is that the one I was bald in?” [Laughs]
[IMG:R]HW: Why did you choose to shoot in New Mexico rather than Texas, where the film takes place?
EC: The financial incentive. As you know the story takes place in West Texas and we shot for two weeks around based … in West Texas for the stuff where you really see landscape because New Mexico offers spectacular scenery but not of that kind and it is a very different landscape so we shot, as everyone is in New Mexico now really for economic reasons and because it does offer things that while it is not West Texas there were things we could shoot there that we couldn’t shoot in Flemington, New Jersey.
HW: Why Josh and Javier? Why were they right for this?
JC: Javier was cast much before Josh was, Javier and Tommy were cast fairly early on. Tommy first. He was on a short list of people who could really do this part from an age point of view and he’s sort of one of the great American actors of a certain age and he can convincingly sort of be from that area, in fact he is from that area.
EC: Tommy would love to hear that. We asked him to do it because he’s so fucking old. [laughs] “Tommy it’s the title part.”
JC: “But I’m only 59 years old.” The Javier thing is a little more complicated. Look, if you get the chance to cast Javier Bardem in a movie, even if it is a stretch, which I don’t think it was in this movie, you should do it. He’s fantastic.
HW: Josh says that you did not initially pick him after his first audition…
JC: Yes, but he is a notorious liar. [laughs] …The problem was that once we got Javier and Tommy in those two parts–it is a movie about three men each of whom has equal sort of weight in the movie so you’ve got a problem. You got to find somebody who can sort of coexist and be an equal in the movie with those two guys and you know we saw everybody and we weren’t happy with anybody until we met Josh and he came in and read for the part and that was that.
HW: Could you tell he was in pain from his accident just prior to shooting?
JC: No, no, no he wasn’t making it apparent. He had a motorcycle accident about a week or two before we started shooting and then lied to us brazenly about the implications of the accident so we felt completely at liberty to ignore the fact that he was in pain. [Laughs]
[IMG:R]HW: He also said that when he was acting and Javier was acting you guys didn’t offer any feedback or encouragement, but when Woody Harrelson was on set you would be very enthusiastic.
JC: That is because Woody did what we told [laughs]!
HW: Did you create Javier’s look or did he do that?
JC: No, he didn’t…
EC: But he embraced it…
JC: When it was suggested.
EC: Actually, the wardrobe and the hair cut came from–the art department does a lot of research, mainly photo research because it is a period thing, although a recent period. It is 1980 Texas border town, border area. So they don’t make it up from scratch they look at pictures of the time and place. The wardrobe department had actually found a picture of this guy at a bar, at a West Texas bar in 1979 with that alarming haircut and actually that kind of wardrobe as well and we looked at it and thought “Well he looks like a sociopath.” And Javier really enjoyed it as well.
HW: Did you see it as a tonal shift toward the end when it gets more dialogue heavy?
JC: Yes, clearly there was a–and this is true of the novel and was interesting about the novel as well is it does undergo a shift three-quarters of the way through. That’s part of why–the reason for that or what that sort of engenders or what that means and how that works as a story and all the rest of it was part of what was so interesting to us about the novel.
HW: There is so much buzz about this movie right now. Do you pay attention to reviews? Does it make the work more satisfying when it is well received?
EC: It depends on the movie. It makes it easier to a degree that varies from movie to movie. A little movie needs good reviews more than … well we don’t do many big movies. So yes.
HW: What is the new film Burn After Reading about?
JC: The new movie is about the culture of the Central Intelligence Agency and the culture of physical fitness in Washington, D.C., and what happens when those two worlds collide and it is also about Internet dating.
[IMG:R]HW: It sounds funnier than No Country for Old Men.
JC: I don’t know, I guess it depends on how funny you find No Country for Old Men [laughs] or you find this movie.
EC: Somebody might say it is a comedy, where nobody would say that about [No Country].
HW: Can you talk about working with George Clooney a third time and Brad Pitt for the first time?
JC: Well, George loves to play idiots for us. What did he say?
EC: The day we wrapped, just a few days ago he called the wrap on the last day and George was doing his last shot and he said “That’s it; I’ve played my last idiot.” So we told him it was sad that he wouldn’t be working with us anymore.
JC: We always have a really good time with him and we had a good time with Brad too. It was really interesting. They are very funny in the movie.
HW: Is Brad an idiot in the movie?
JC: I think that is pretty safe to say. It is a dueling idiots movie.
HW: You just wrapped shooting the film in New York. Was that a new experience for you?
EC: We live there and we had never shot and then been able to go home at night. So it was strange by virtue of that, yeah.
JC: There are some, yeah it is a little bit different working in New York especially given the fact that it is hard to figure out what was what especially given the fact that we were working with some pretty big movie stars. So you are in a big urban environment with some high profile movie people. We’ve worked with some high profile people before, but not in a big urban environment like that so much. So that was different and logistically shooting in the city was different and then as Ethan was saying, the idea of–in the past when we’ve made a movie you sort of go away from home and to a certain extent you sort of divorce your working life from your home life for a discreet period of time and it is a little bit different in terms of maintaining focus and a little bit easier in a way. So it was an interesting experience.
[IMG:R]HW: What’s next?
JC: We are doing another project in April in Minnesota…It is called A Serious Man…It is a movie about a Jewish community in the Midwest in 1967 a family basically.
HW: Did you always dream you would end up working together like this? Are there added benefits to working with a brother?
JC: I haven’t detected any benefits yet. [Laughs] I don’t think it was an intentional …
EC: We didn’t do it on purpose.
JC: We didn’t really. Shit happens, you know? And then you look back and go “Oh, that’s how it worked out.”
