“We all play this up”: Are the Coen brothers as weird as everyone thinks they are?
Few filmmakers in Hollywood have as much mystique as Joel and Ethan Coen, more commonly known as the Coen brothers. For the past four decades, the Minnesota natives have forged their own path in Hollywood, making idiosyncratic, odd, and often darkly hilarious movies with an unmistakably singular tone.
During that time, though, they’ve remained largely private about their personal lives and personalities. In truth, cinephiles know very little about either brother beyond surface details and the things that are said about them in the press by actors who have worked with them. More often than not, these actors talk about how strange and unique the brothers are – but is this the whole truth?
Over the years, a huge number of Hollywood greats have worked with the Coens on classic movies like Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country For Old Men. Descriptions of their behaviour on-set have tended to focus on how quiet and unemotional they appear, while other stars have pointed out their wry, deadpan senses of humour. Another common description is that they are so supernaturally in tune with each other that they come across as one brain with two heads, and many stars have tossed around words like “wacky”, “weird”, and “whimsical”.
Naturally, this has contributed to an ongoing belief that the brothers are unapproachable geniuses who are as weird and offbeat as their movies. According to Josh Brolin, though, this is mostly actor nonsense – and he’s been as guilty of perpetuating it as anyone else.
To date, Brolin has worked with the Coens on No Country For Old Men, True Grit, and Hail, Caesar! and he loved his experiences so much that he claims he’d never turn down one of their films. “There’s nothing I would say no to,” he chuckled to The Independent in 2016. “It could be horrendous, and I’d still say yes. They could say, ‘We’re going to do a Walt Disney story about pornography,’ and I’d be like, ‘Great, let’s do it.'”
Amusingly, though, when Brolin was asked, “When other actors have described working with them, they’ve said they’re like one mind in two bodies. Is that the feeling you have working with them?” he finally decided enough was enough. The Sicario star gave a glimpse behind the mysterious Coen curtain when he confessed, “We all play up this thing about how weird and fucking strange they are, and quiet, and all this stuff” before clarifying, “The truth of the matter is, they’re the most pleasant, collaborative, incredibly creative guys I’ve ever worked with.”
Brolin admitted that he and other stars – explicitly name-checking George Clooney – have gotten plenty of mileage over the years from playing into the perception of the Coens as quirky eccentrics who communicate in a language only they understand. In reality, though, they’re just dedicated filmmakers who do their jobs and create a fun, pleasant set, even if they’re not forthcoming with effusive praise for their actors.
Hilariously, Brolin even recounted an occasion when he caught himself on live TV indulging in a spot of Coen embellishment and immediately stopped believing a word he was saying. “You tell the press things like, ‘They’re really weird, and they’re like one mind in two heads,'” and the press thinks, “One mind in two heads, that’s a good soundbite.”
He smiled, adding, “You know you’re doing it. I just caught myself in an interview in front of millions of people, and I died in my own bullshit for a couple of seconds.”
As the perfect cherry on top of this tale of the Coens being relatively normal fellas, all things considered, Brolin confessed that one of the brothers even commiserated with him after watching him come unstuck on live television. The Avengers star laughed when he remembered Ethan slyly telling him, “I saw you on a talk show the other day when we were coming out with Hail, Caesar! and I felt so bad for you.”
