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O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? |
Universal Pictures and Touchstone
Pictures presents, in association with Le Studio Canal
+, a Working Title Production
Prod: Ethan Coen; Exec prod: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner; Co-prod: John Cameron; Dir: Joel Coen; Scr: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen, based on The Odyssey by Homer; Ph: Roger Deakins; Prod des: Dennis Gassner; Cost des: Mary Zophres; Ed: Roderick Jaynes, Tricia Cooke; Mus: T Bone Burnett.
WithGeorge Clooney (Ulysses Everett McGrill), John Turturro (Pete), Tim Blake Nealson (Delmar), Charles Durning (Pappy O'Daniel), John Goodman (Big Dan Teague), Michel Badalucco (George "Babyface" Nealson), Holly Hunter (Penny Wharvey), Stephen Root (Radio Station Man), Chris Thomas King (Tommy Johnson), Wayne Duvall (Homer Stokes), Daniel Von Bargen (Sheriff Cooley), JR Hrone (Staff), Brian Reddy (Eckard), Frank Collison (Wash Hogwallop).
International
distribution:
Universal Pictures/UIP.
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Clooney did what most actors do when they get a call from the Coens: he jumped.
“The idea of getting a chance to work with guys like this was a thrill,” he says. “They sent the script and, before I read it, I said yes! When I did read it, I thought it was a hysterically funny and smart script. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.”
John Turturro had much the same reaction, with the possible difference that he already knew how lucky he would be. “With these guys,” says Turturro, who picked up a Best Actor award at Cannes for Barton Fink, “I basically would do just about anything. Whether it’s the lead or one scene, it doesn’t matter to me. But I really enjoyed reading this script. It’s very funny and imaginative and there are lots of great characters. It’s an intelligent adventure film.”
“They’re brilliant directors,” sums up Fellner. “They create interesting material and they make phenomenal films. Actors are attracted to that.”
Joel is the older Coen (by three years, born in 1954 to Ethan’s 1957). He’s the one with the dark straight hair and the more defined beard. Ethan is the one with curly hair. And they’ve worked together since Ethan was about eight. Usually, Joel directs and Ethan produces, but sometimes it’s the other way round. They write together, and they edit together, the old-fashioned way, with a grease pencil and film, using the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
They don’t always admit to this last part, and have even invented a biography for Jaynes. It goes:
“Roderick Jaynes (Film Editor) began his career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the thirties. He eventually moved into the editing department, where he worked on some of the more marginal pictures of the British film industry of the fifties and sixties. With the demise of the Carry On series he retired from film, but emerged from retirement to work on Joel and Ethan Coen’s first movie, Blood Simple. He has worked on most of their pictures since. Mr Jaynes resides in Hove, Sussex, with his chow Otto. He is still widely admired in the film industry for his impeccable grooming and is the world’s foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes, many of them drawn from life.”
There are several people called ‘Jayne’ in the Brighton & Hove phone book, but no ‘Jaynes’. Like the ideas which grow into their films - whether a determined female cop from Fargo or a furniture salesman called Nathan Arizona whose wife has sextuplets - Roderick Jaynes actually lives in a country somewhere near America called Coenland.
“I always think that Joel and Ethan write from an imaginary place,” concludes Holly Hunter, who has known the brothers for nearly 20 years, “so the worlds they create are not necessarily based in reality. The South of O Brother, Where Art Thou? is not the one I grew up in. But it’s a very big story. It’s got big scope. What are you going to do? It’s based on The Odyssey.”
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