Steve Buscemi is “incapable of a bad performance”, according to the Coen brothers
Throughout their careers, the Coen brothers have routinely used many of the same familiar faces in their movies.
Going right back to their first film, the sweaty, sinister noir Blood Simple, the Coens aligned themselves with their most frequent collaborator: Joel’s wife Frances McDormand. Naturally, he already had the inside scoop that she was destined to be one of the greatest actors of her generation, so the brothers smartly enlisted her talents in seven more films over the years, including Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, and Burn After Reading.
Other returning Coen collaborators include John Goodman (six films) and Jon Polito (five), while George Clooney and John Turturro have popped up in four each. Fascinatingly, though, there is one other frequent Coen flyer who seemed to be their lucky charm in the ‘90s, as he appeared in all five movies they released in that decade.
The Coens inexplicably stopped working with the star, but it certainly wasn’t because they stopped believing he’s a phenomenal actor. After all, Joel once said, “We’ve used him, I think, in five other movies. Steve is amazing because he’s incapable of a bad performance, I think.”
In case you haven’t already figured it out, ‘Steve’ is, of course, Steve Buscemi, the “funny lookin’” star who lent his squirrelly, motormouthed talents to Fargo and The Big Lebowski, as well as smaller roles in Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, and The Hudsucker Proxy. In fact, the Coens wrote the part of hapless kidnapper Carl Showalter in their Minnesota noir classic specifically for Buscemi because they felt guilty that they’d only offered him minor parts in his first three movies as part of their regular stable of actors. He was just that damn good, and they knew it was time they afforded him a proper showcase for his skills.
“We are aware of his persona in other movies and wanted to push that in a specific direction,” Joel said, hinting at the penchant Buscemi had at the time for playing hair-trigger psychos in movies like Reservoir Dogs and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead. “We wanted to write something substantial because he is so good.”
In truth, though, Fargo is the only one of Buscemi’s collaborations with the Coens in which he plays a scary person. In classic Coen fashion, his other parts are the put-upon Donny Kerabatsos in The Big Lebowski (“Shut the fuck up, Donny!”) and fast-talking oddballs like ‘Mink’ Larouie in Miller’s Crossing, a part Buscemi literally won because he was the actor who consistently rattled off the Coens’ dialogue the fastest.
Even in Fargo, they ensure that Showalter is consistently cut down to size, proving that he’s all bark and no bite on several occasions. They recognise implicitly that, in their universe, Buscemi is one of the best at imbuing his characters with their signature dark comedy and eccentric vulnerability, while also delivering characters who don’t feel like caricatures. Buscemi was one of their most potent weapons, a nuclear bomb of acting that left a devastated audience no matter where he was dropped. And they were grateful to have him.
So, why did the Coens and Buscemi go their separate ways in the ‘00s? Don’t they still want to work with a man incapable of giving bad performances? Frustratingly, there doesn’t seem to be an answer for this question, and there also doesn’t appear to be any bad blood between either party. Buscemi still treasures his experiences with the Coens, as in 2024, he fondly reminisced about watching how sympatico they were on set.
“That’s what always impressed me, was how well they got along and how in sync they were, and how they complemented each other so much, and how much they both enjoyed the process of making films,” he smiled. “Sometimes, during a scene, I would hear either one of them laughing off-camera, and I could never quite tell, ‘Is that Joel or is that Ethan?’”
