John Goodman as the
duplicitous bible
salesman Big Dan Teague.
So there is definitely a journey and it is definitely based on Homer. “This project’s been in the works for 3,000 years, ever since Homer started yapping about it,” says Joel. He reckons it’s a very American story. Producer Eric Fellner reckons it’s universal. That’s what you get with the old stories: everyone can identify with them.
Or, as Fellner puts it: “Yes, their stories are quintessentially American, but the quality of their film-making, the quality of the acting and the uniqueness of the stories they tell all travel well.”
It’s a good point. After all, you didn’t have to know much about trailer-life in the desert to appreciate Raising Arizona or be familiar with Minnesota to get Fargo. But it might help to know that, like the former but unlike the latter, O Brother is more of a comedy than not.
“In terms of tone,” says Joel, “it does sort of resemble Raising Arizona more than it does Fargo or Miller’s Crossing. There aren’t any bodies in wood-chippers or people throwing up blood.”
What there is is a chain-gang in thirties Mississippi, linking a petty criminal called Everett (Clooney), a maladjusted guy called Pete (John Turturro, who starred in the Coens’ Cannes Palme d’Or-winner, Barton Fink), and a simple soul called Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson).
| “This project’s been in the works for 3,000 years, ever since Homer started yapping about it”
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Having little to lose and believing buried treasure to lie at the end of the line, the three of them become fugitives from the chain gang and hit the road, where many wonders befall them, usually in the form of an actor playing a cameo. There is New Orleans singer Chris Thomas King as a guy called Tommy Johnson, who (like another Johnson called Robert) is on his way to Jackson to sing on the wireless; Goodman as the bible salesman; Babyface Nelson, who meets them in mid-hold-up and likes their style; and Charles Durning as Governor Pappy O’Daniel, who is on the re-election trail. In the end, the trio get to Ithaca, which is where the treasure is supposed to be.
But beware the words of the blind prophet: “You will find a fortune, but not the fortune you seek.” Life can be like that.
Some of the parts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? were written with the actors in mind, others not. “We always do a combination of writing for specific actors and writing not knowing who’s going to play the part,” says Joel. “Sometimes, mid-way through writing the screenplay, it becomes clear who we want for a part, so it ends up essentially being written for a specific actor.”
“In this instance,” adds Ethan, “we wrote for John Goodman: we knew we wanted him to be the sort of Cyclops equivalent [Goodman had starred with Jeff Bridges in the Coens’ last movie, The Big Lebowski], and we wrote the part of Penny for Holly [who was in Raising Arizona]. And we also wrote the Babyface Nelson part for Michael Badalucco.”
The role of Ulysses Everett McGill was still open by the time the pair had finished writing, however. Until, as things do with the Coens, the name of George Clooney - who had just played a somewhat similar debonair thief in the 1998 hit Out of Sight - cropped up in the conversation. Wait long enough and the right idea comes along. Anyway, Clooney and Everett seemed the perfect fit, so they sent him the script.
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