karmattack
04-20-2004, 03:17 PM
I wanted to post this because the flailing-as-of-late Coen Brothers is a subject Efexeye and I have talked about and I wonder what y'all have to say. Moriarty from AICN sums it up pretty well in his open letter to them:
O, BROTHERS, WHERE ART THOU?
I love the Coen Brothers.
I figured I should say that now, since later on in this piece, you may not believe that.
First thing I saw of theirs was RAISING ARIZONA back in ’87, during its first run. I remember reading a fairly negative review for the film in US NEWS & WORLD REPORTS, of all places. In an effort to show just how bad the film was, the reviewer quoted some of H.I.’s voice-over about his wife Ed: “Her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” That one line sold me a ticket. When the film opened on one screen in Tampa, I tracked it down, dragging along my girlfriend at the time. I should have known then that it wouldn’t work out between us. She didn’t smile once. I, on the other hand, laughed from the film’s incredible prologue all the way through that final beautiful dream, and by the end of the film, I was convinced that Joel Coen and his brother were the most exciting filmmakers working.
Film after film, their work has served as a benchmark for me over the years, a standard of excellence to which I could aspire. MILLER’S CROSSING. BARTON FINK. THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. I even love just saying the titles of their oddball masterpieces. FARGO. THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE. THE BIG LEBOWSKI. BLOOD SIMPLE They seemed to effortlessly conjure up great characters and wonderful riffs on genre and these self-contained aesthetically amazing worlds, and I was willing to follow them anywhere.
Christmas of 2000 marked the release of O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, an insane comic Southern-fried reworking of Homer’s ODYSSEY that spawned one of the biggest-selling soundtracks in recent memory. People seemed open to the peculiar personal vision of the Coens in a whole new way, and the script they were preparing to shoot was easily the best thing they ever wrote.
Based on a slim novel by poet James Dickey, TO THE WHITE SEA started as an adaptation by David and Janet Peoples (12 MONKEYS), and that draft was pretty goddamn good in its own right. When the Coens got involved as director/producer, though, they rewrote it, and they came up with something great and terrifying, a script that represented the biggest challenge of their careers. Universal put the film in turnaround, and the Coens rode it over to Warner Bros., where they worked to get it up and running with a $75 million pricetag and Brad Pitt as their star.
What happened next may well be the moment that Coen fans look back on in the future as the end of all good things. In rapid succession, TO THE WHITE SEA got axed, the Coens lost their mother, and the attacks of 9/11 drove them out of New York, where they had just relocated. This was a period of weeks we’re talking about, and that trifecta of tragedy seems to have shattered the Coens. That’s why I’m writing this open letter to them today, speaking as a fan who believes in their enormous and obvious gifts.
Please... Joel and Ethan... stop.
I tried to shake off the feeble slap in the face that was INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. I figured it was a one-time thing. They were recovering from a series of setbacks and decided to make a studio film as a way of warming back up for something great. That’s what I kept telling myself. After all, the thing that has always distinguished them was the way they managed to stand on the edge of the system, making film after film seeming designed to primarily please an audience of two. They made movies that were impossible to categorize. With INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, they seemed to make a creative 180, and for the first time in their career, they made a boring movie. George Clooney grins his way through a hollow farce, trying hard to pump some life into the proceedings, but Catherine Zeta-Jones gave him less than nothing to play off of. It’s not an awful movie. It’s not offensive. But there’s absolutely nothing special about it. In every way, it is just another mid-budget Imagine comedy, no better or worse than HOUSESITTER or FOR LOVE AND MONEY or GREEDY or SGT. BILKO. The real shock, as a longtime Coens fan, was how completely they managed to submerge their personalities. There are only two sequences in the film that feel like the Coen Bros. When Miles (Clooney) goes in to see his boss, everything from the magazines in the waiting room to the way his boss chokes out his message amidst the workings of his various health-related machinery feels like we’re finally in familiar territory. And late in the film, the death of Wheezy Joe is a very funny gag, and well-orchestrated. But that’s it... two sequences in a whole film.
The scary thing is that THE LADYKILLERS makes INTOLERABLE CRUELTY look like RAISING ARIZONA by comparison. The rebound I was hoping for did not materialize. If anything, they’ve moved further in the wrong direction. As much as CRUELTY embodied the spirit of the mediocre Imagine comedy, LADYKILLERS is the perfect realization of just how crappy Touchstone comedies can be, and often are. The visual invention, the eccentric and clever characterizations, the sense that anything might happen at any moment... all the things that make the Coen Bros. who they are... have all vanished without a trace. Even worse, the dazzling cascades of language that have always distinguished their characters have finally dried up, stranding Tom Hanks, who has never looked more desperate to make material work. Hanks is one of our greatest comic actors, gifted with natural timing and unforced charm, and I appreciate the vigor he brings to THE LADYKILLERS. He does everything he can to prop up a script that simply isn’t funny, but I know a drowning man when I see one. Like many modern farces, the film mistakes loud and manic with hilarious, and it ends up playing as dull more than anything, a series of empty moments with no sustained energy. Part of the problem is the casting, which pretty much stinks across the board. Normally, the Coens have a genius for picking just the right person for just the right part and bringing out the best in people. For pissakes, these are the guys who made Tara Reid funny. If that’s not miracle working, I don’t know what is.
How then can one explain the insanely unfunny work of Marlon Wayans or Ryan Hurst, who manages to stop every scene cold just by speaking up? Even the always-reliable JK Simmons comes up dry here as he’s reduced to playing a guy who really, really needs to shit. That’s it. That’s the best this film has to offer. There’s certainly nothing to recommend about the heist that is the film’s centerpiece. It’s so off-hand and limp that it barely deserves to be shown. The “complications” that start piling up are ridiculous, nothing inventive or interesting about them, and the material about the guys trying to kill Irma P. Hall was handled better last year in DUPLEX.
And trust me... DUPLEX [censored] stunk.
So let me offer up the hopes I have for the Coens. I refuse to accept that the bored studio hacks who made these last two films are the real Joel and Ethan Coen. I know that these artists still have the ability to summon thunder. I believe it. But they’ve proven now that doing work-for-hire just doesn’t suit them. When they got chewed up by the process on TO THE WHITE SEA, it seems to have taken something out of them. When you read that script, their hearts are on every page. It’s the most difficult thing about working in the studio system. To write a great script, you have to pour all of your faith and belief and energy into that script, but you have to do so knowing full well that you’ve got, at best, a one-in-five chance of seeing that script produced. You may well be creating art for an audience that will never see it. TO THE WHITE SEA has got to haunt the Coens, and in particular, I wonder about what it’s done to Joel. THE LADYKILLERS is the first film where both brothers have shared the director credit. Up till now, Joel has been the director. Is this shift in billing an indicator that Joel is less involved now? At least that would explain the sudden shift in quality as far as how their films look. There is no way the same person was calling the shots visually on THE BIG LEBOWSKI and THE LADYKILLERS.
I hope the Coens begin to follow their muse again. I hope they write original scripts that allow them to return to their own interests. I hope Joel returns to form as one of our most impressive visualists. I hope they stay miles away from studio assignments from now on.
And failing all of that, I hope that before they make another lousy anonymous studio piece of crap, they just stop. I would rather have no Coen Bros. films than have these heartbreaking misfires. Barton Fink wasn’t meant to write Wallace Beery wrestling pictures, and no matter how much of “that Barton Fink feeling” he gives the thing, the studio will never appreciate him properly.
Find your beach, guys. Sit in the sun. Recharge.
When you’re ready, we’ll be waiting.
O, BROTHERS, WHERE ART THOU?
I love the Coen Brothers.
I figured I should say that now, since later on in this piece, you may not believe that.
First thing I saw of theirs was RAISING ARIZONA back in ’87, during its first run. I remember reading a fairly negative review for the film in US NEWS & WORLD REPORTS, of all places. In an effort to show just how bad the film was, the reviewer quoted some of H.I.’s voice-over about his wife Ed: “Her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” That one line sold me a ticket. When the film opened on one screen in Tampa, I tracked it down, dragging along my girlfriend at the time. I should have known then that it wouldn’t work out between us. She didn’t smile once. I, on the other hand, laughed from the film’s incredible prologue all the way through that final beautiful dream, and by the end of the film, I was convinced that Joel Coen and his brother were the most exciting filmmakers working.
Film after film, their work has served as a benchmark for me over the years, a standard of excellence to which I could aspire. MILLER’S CROSSING. BARTON FINK. THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. I even love just saying the titles of their oddball masterpieces. FARGO. THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE. THE BIG LEBOWSKI. BLOOD SIMPLE They seemed to effortlessly conjure up great characters and wonderful riffs on genre and these self-contained aesthetically amazing worlds, and I was willing to follow them anywhere.
Christmas of 2000 marked the release of O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU?, an insane comic Southern-fried reworking of Homer’s ODYSSEY that spawned one of the biggest-selling soundtracks in recent memory. People seemed open to the peculiar personal vision of the Coens in a whole new way, and the script they were preparing to shoot was easily the best thing they ever wrote.
Based on a slim novel by poet James Dickey, TO THE WHITE SEA started as an adaptation by David and Janet Peoples (12 MONKEYS), and that draft was pretty goddamn good in its own right. When the Coens got involved as director/producer, though, they rewrote it, and they came up with something great and terrifying, a script that represented the biggest challenge of their careers. Universal put the film in turnaround, and the Coens rode it over to Warner Bros., where they worked to get it up and running with a $75 million pricetag and Brad Pitt as their star.
What happened next may well be the moment that Coen fans look back on in the future as the end of all good things. In rapid succession, TO THE WHITE SEA got axed, the Coens lost their mother, and the attacks of 9/11 drove them out of New York, where they had just relocated. This was a period of weeks we’re talking about, and that trifecta of tragedy seems to have shattered the Coens. That’s why I’m writing this open letter to them today, speaking as a fan who believes in their enormous and obvious gifts.
Please... Joel and Ethan... stop.
I tried to shake off the feeble slap in the face that was INTOLERABLE CRUELTY. I figured it was a one-time thing. They were recovering from a series of setbacks and decided to make a studio film as a way of warming back up for something great. That’s what I kept telling myself. After all, the thing that has always distinguished them was the way they managed to stand on the edge of the system, making film after film seeming designed to primarily please an audience of two. They made movies that were impossible to categorize. With INTOLERABLE CRUELTY, they seemed to make a creative 180, and for the first time in their career, they made a boring movie. George Clooney grins his way through a hollow farce, trying hard to pump some life into the proceedings, but Catherine Zeta-Jones gave him less than nothing to play off of. It’s not an awful movie. It’s not offensive. But there’s absolutely nothing special about it. In every way, it is just another mid-budget Imagine comedy, no better or worse than HOUSESITTER or FOR LOVE AND MONEY or GREEDY or SGT. BILKO. The real shock, as a longtime Coens fan, was how completely they managed to submerge their personalities. There are only two sequences in the film that feel like the Coen Bros. When Miles (Clooney) goes in to see his boss, everything from the magazines in the waiting room to the way his boss chokes out his message amidst the workings of his various health-related machinery feels like we’re finally in familiar territory. And late in the film, the death of Wheezy Joe is a very funny gag, and well-orchestrated. But that’s it... two sequences in a whole film.
The scary thing is that THE LADYKILLERS makes INTOLERABLE CRUELTY look like RAISING ARIZONA by comparison. The rebound I was hoping for did not materialize. If anything, they’ve moved further in the wrong direction. As much as CRUELTY embodied the spirit of the mediocre Imagine comedy, LADYKILLERS is the perfect realization of just how crappy Touchstone comedies can be, and often are. The visual invention, the eccentric and clever characterizations, the sense that anything might happen at any moment... all the things that make the Coen Bros. who they are... have all vanished without a trace. Even worse, the dazzling cascades of language that have always distinguished their characters have finally dried up, stranding Tom Hanks, who has never looked more desperate to make material work. Hanks is one of our greatest comic actors, gifted with natural timing and unforced charm, and I appreciate the vigor he brings to THE LADYKILLERS. He does everything he can to prop up a script that simply isn’t funny, but I know a drowning man when I see one. Like many modern farces, the film mistakes loud and manic with hilarious, and it ends up playing as dull more than anything, a series of empty moments with no sustained energy. Part of the problem is the casting, which pretty much stinks across the board. Normally, the Coens have a genius for picking just the right person for just the right part and bringing out the best in people. For pissakes, these are the guys who made Tara Reid funny. If that’s not miracle working, I don’t know what is.
How then can one explain the insanely unfunny work of Marlon Wayans or Ryan Hurst, who manages to stop every scene cold just by speaking up? Even the always-reliable JK Simmons comes up dry here as he’s reduced to playing a guy who really, really needs to shit. That’s it. That’s the best this film has to offer. There’s certainly nothing to recommend about the heist that is the film’s centerpiece. It’s so off-hand and limp that it barely deserves to be shown. The “complications” that start piling up are ridiculous, nothing inventive or interesting about them, and the material about the guys trying to kill Irma P. Hall was handled better last year in DUPLEX.
And trust me... DUPLEX [censored] stunk.
So let me offer up the hopes I have for the Coens. I refuse to accept that the bored studio hacks who made these last two films are the real Joel and Ethan Coen. I know that these artists still have the ability to summon thunder. I believe it. But they’ve proven now that doing work-for-hire just doesn’t suit them. When they got chewed up by the process on TO THE WHITE SEA, it seems to have taken something out of them. When you read that script, their hearts are on every page. It’s the most difficult thing about working in the studio system. To write a great script, you have to pour all of your faith and belief and energy into that script, but you have to do so knowing full well that you’ve got, at best, a one-in-five chance of seeing that script produced. You may well be creating art for an audience that will never see it. TO THE WHITE SEA has got to haunt the Coens, and in particular, I wonder about what it’s done to Joel. THE LADYKILLERS is the first film where both brothers have shared the director credit. Up till now, Joel has been the director. Is this shift in billing an indicator that Joel is less involved now? At least that would explain the sudden shift in quality as far as how their films look. There is no way the same person was calling the shots visually on THE BIG LEBOWSKI and THE LADYKILLERS.
I hope the Coens begin to follow their muse again. I hope they write original scripts that allow them to return to their own interests. I hope Joel returns to form as one of our most impressive visualists. I hope they stay miles away from studio assignments from now on.
And failing all of that, I hope that before they make another lousy anonymous studio piece of crap, they just stop. I would rather have no Coen Bros. films than have these heartbreaking misfires. Barton Fink wasn’t meant to write Wallace Beery wrestling pictures, and no matter how much of “that Barton Fink feeling” he gives the thing, the studio will never appreciate him properly.
Find your beach, guys. Sit in the sun. Recharge.
When you’re ready, we’ll be waiting.