The “nightmarish” actors who made life miserable for the Coen brothers: “That was a pain”
If an actor impresses the Coen brothers, then there’s a decent chance they’ll have a semi-regular job for life, with the filmmakers’ repertory having gradually continued increasing over the years.
There’s Frances McDormand, obviously, who’s been part of the family since Blood Simple, with the likes of Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, George Clooney, Jon Polito, John Turturro, Warren Keith, and more becoming regulars in Joel and Ethan’s world.
While the siblings wouldn’t go so far as to openly disparage someone they’d collaborated with, unless their name is Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, if they discover that a certain performer isn’t on their wavelength or perfectly attuned to what they’re trying to accomplish on set, then it’ll be a one-and-done gig for them.
One of the most famous sayings in the entertainment business is that you should never work with children or animals, advice the Coens completely disregarded. Needless to say, the Academy Award winners did not have the best time trying to wrangle over a dozen babies to play the quintuplets in Raising Arizona, and they didn’t have much luck with cats, either.
The symbolism, meaning, and significance have been the subject of endless debate, as always tends to be the case whenever the Coens make anything, but one incontrovertible fact is that the three cats who played Oscar Isaac’s feline companion, Ulysses, in Inside Llewyn Davis were a cumulative pain in the arse.
They knew they’d need more than one cat for the duration of the production, only to discover that they were all equally disagreeable. Depending on the scene, different cats were required for different things, whether it was running up stairs, lounging around, irritating the shit out of its owner, or anything else.
Alfred Hitchcock once tried to wrangle 100 cats for a film shoot and failed miserably, as anyone who’s ever been near one could have predicted before he’d bothered to try, and even though they were only working with a fraction of that number, the Coens had an equally frustrating time.
“The whole exercise of shooting a cat is pretty nightmarish, because they don’t care about anything,” Ethan offered. “They don’t want to do what you want them to do.” Again, not a revelation if you’ve owned a cat or spent any amount of time with one, making them long for the days of True Grit, where a trained vulture was the worst of their problems.
“That was a pain, and that was even, by vulture standards, probably a stupid vulture, and that was frustrating,” Ethan reflected. “But I would take a vulture over a cat. The cat was just horrible.” They wrote Ulysses into the script, so at the end of the day, the Coens only had themselves to blame.
