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  • The Coen Brothers: Interviews
  • Tony Osborne
The Coen Brothers: Interviews William Rodney Allen . editor. University Press of Mississippi, 2006. 208 pages; $20.00

Amuse Themselves

Critics are wont to see a great deal of coded meaning in Ethan and Joel Coen's meticulously framed films. In The Big Lebowski (1998), The Guardian took the madcap troupe of German pornographers in black trench coats as a comment on fascism. In Miller's Crossing (1990), the hat blowing in the wind signified a deep recurrent theme for Positif, whose interviewer pressed the Coen brothers for an explanation. They readily assented that the image represents a hat blown by the wind. That it obliged their aesthetic sensibilities explains any deeper significance. Nothing more.

The Coens are decidedly not purveyors of political commentary or hidden meaning. They simply seek to amuse themselves. They made Fargo (1996) thinking that "about three people will end up seeing it, but it'll be fun for us," said Joel. As The Coen Brothers: Interviews makes plain, fun, for the Coens, means never making the same picture twice as they allude to their favorite writers and movies in outlandishly idiosyncratic ways. For Miller's Crossing, which they termed a "shameless rip-off" of Dashiell Hammett, they created the "Thompson jitterbug" montage, a danse macabre propelled by a submachine gun to the strains of "Danny Boy." The choreographed Klan dance in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) was a mélange of The Wizard of Oz, Busby Berkeley and a Nuremberg rally. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) was printed in black and white to evoke the mood and feel of early 1950s science fiction movies and the nuclear anxiety that engulfed suburbia.

Interviews is a volume in the Conversations with Filmmakers Series. Arranged chronologically, they span the Coen's first picture, Blood Simple (1985), through their tenth (as both writers and directors), The Ladykillers (2004). As is de rigueur in the series, the interviews are presented in their original form, unedited. Far from producing a numbing redundancy, the repetition of questions and answers in shifting contexts is precisely what informs this useful and interesting volume. In essence, these interviews represent the least enjoyable aspect of filmmaking for the Coens—publicizing their movies. As such, … Interviews is also a document about the constraints of journalism; how, willingly or unwillingly, celebrities are created and typecast in bouts of forensic sparring. After all those rounds the adjectives leave their marks: "low-budget," "highbrow," "noir," "grotesque," "subversive," "violent," "borderline-tasteless," "tight-lipped," "absurd." Interviews records how facile characterizations of the filmmakers and their films have bled into each other through countless iterations and congealed into the Coen's public personae.

For their parts, the Coens have slipped most punches, countering with humor and magnanimity; Joel professed, for example, to have "loved" the quip about Blood Simple having "the heart of a Bloomingdale's window and the soul of a résumé." Perhaps their friend Holly Hunter explains their stance best: "Joel and Ethan function without their egos . . . . Or maybe their egos are so big they're completely secure with anybody who disagrees with them." Of course, meaningful interviews are predicated on empathy and trust. While promoting O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their hillbilly version of the Odyssey, the Coens told the Nashville Scene they had borrowed only loosely from Homer and joked about excluding Laertes and his dog. Yet just three days prior the erudite pair had told The Guardian they had never read Homer! Putting-on to keep their distance? But in fairness to the fourth estate, feeding at a hospitality suite, cattle trough in Cannes or New York, is not quite the same as a one-on-one interview for Playboy or NPR's Fresh Air.

However, from the very beginning, the Coens have protested the futility and tedium of explaining themselves: there is nothing to explain, they are perfectly normal people who happen to work in an industry outsiders find glamorous. As to their movies, they speak for themselves; their purpose is to entertain. What is there to add? Plenty, actually, that will interest the scholar or aficionado. Such as the shoptalk in … Interviews that sharpens the...

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