Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, the barber in The Barber Movie.

the barber movie

We don’t think about our movies as having a particular…” begins Ethan Coen, before stopping in mid-sentence and allowing his older brother Joel to finish off the idea.

Which he does - sort of. “We just do what we do,” says Joel. “We just think up the stories we can think up and make that kind of movie. Whatever comes out, comes out. If our movies have anything in common, it’s in spite of what we do.”

Eric Fellner, the British producer who (with partner Tim Bevan) has put together all of the Coens’ movies since The Hudsucker Proxy, confirms this approach. “They have a stock of projects that they are constantly working on,” he says. “Eventually, they decide one is ready and they bring it to us.”

But, when it comes to finding the right subject for a film, Ethan does have at least one important criterion in the forefront of his mind. “We try to make up a story that’s different,” he says. “We’re only interested in it because it’s different from what we’ve done before. That’s sort of what gets us going.”

James Gandolfini as Big Dave Brewster, the barber’s wife’s boss (and lover).

“I mean, just by way of example,” concludes Joel, “it would be sort of absurd for us to have an idea and then think, no, that’s not what we do...”

This time - to use a term which was current at the time their new film is set - they’ve come up with a doozie. It’s called The Barber Movie and it is, unsurprisingly, about a barber. A wielder of scissors, working in a two-chair salon in the summer of 1949, long before there were celebrity hair-stylists. When barbers were barbers, not hairdressers; when they cut hair without shampooing, styling, shaping or gelling it.

It was not a glamorous profession then, but it suited Ed Crane, played in the film by Billy Bob Thornton, looking timid and quiet and a million miles away from the guy who just married Angelina Jolie.

Film noir is all about shamuses and gangsters’ molls and guys on the run, isn’t it? Not for the Coen brothers: their latest film noir is about a barber. Hal Hayes reports.

Ed Crane is Mr Invisible - the man who stands behind you, sometimes making polite conversation (not often, in Ed’s case), snipping round your ears, then holding the hand-mirror up at the end. You could meet him five minutes later and not remember who he was.

Indeed, the movie wouldn’t be a movie if something like that didn’t happen to Ed. Some guy comes in talking about a revolutionary new method of cleaning clothes without having to wash them. Dry cleaning, it’s called. “Remember the name,” he says. “It’s going to revolutionise the laundry industry.”