The one Coen brothers movie everyone knew was doomed: “They’ll just crucify us”
Not to state the obvious, but it’s rarely a good idea for any filmmaker or actor to make a movie they aren’t 100% invested in. That’s especially true for auteurs with a distinctive and unmistakable style like the Coen brothers, who typically nurture their projects from inception to post-production.
After spending the first two decades of their shared career making some of the most innovative and acclaimed American films of the 1980s and 1990s, Joel and Ethan clearly fancied a change of pace. In order to refresh or recharge their creative batteries, though, they almost drained them of juice.
The early 2000s were a strange time for the siblings, with their first feature of the millennium, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, reflective of their anarchic comedic sensibilities, while their second, The Man Who Wasn’t There, had all of their Coenesque tricks, techniques, and foibles seeping out of every frame.
After that, they were accused of selling out. Recruiting George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones for the glossy rom-com, Intolerable Cruelty, they hadn’t even planned to direct the movie at all. It was the first time they’d ever worked as hired hands, but when Ron Howard and Jonathan Demme both dropped out, they opted to take the reins themselves, for a solid, unspectacular, and rather forgettable romp.
Their next pivot was even stranger. Once again, the Coens had no intention of wielding their megaphones, scripting a remake of the British classic, The Ladykillers, for Barry Sonnenfeld. Despite having Hollywood’s finest directorial hive mind and Tom Hanks in the leading role, the two-time Academy Award-winning actor had a sneaking suspicion that the film faced an uphill battle to succeed.
“I know that when it comes time to talk to English papers, they’ll just crucify us for doing it,” he admitted to The Guardian. “But ultimately, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like we were gonna remake Jaws. But nor is it Scaramouche. It’s this other kind of thing.” It wasn’t only the British press who had issues, with the redux failing to impress anyone, really.
It’s never a good sign when the people responsible for a movie acknowledge that it didn’t strike them in a moment of creative inspiration, which the Coens did. “In the abstract, we never would have said, ‘Let’s remake The Ladykillers,'” Joel said. Ethan, meanwhile, confirmed that it wasn’t supposed to be their film: “We wrote it for Barry Sonnenfeld, who was going to direct.”
Even Hanks wasn’t sold, apart from the two names calling the shots: “If someone had said to me, ‘Listen, I’m sending you a script that’s a remake of The Ladykillers that Disney is making’, there’s just no way. I never would have got to reading it.” Since it was the Coens, he changed his mind, and everyone’s hesitation was apparent on the screen.
The finished article was a moderate hit at the box office, but it’s also the worst movie the Coens have ever made as a duo. Even the best actors and directors in the business can struggle to elevate something that sounds like a doomed idea from the start, and that was the case with The Ladykillers. On the plus side, their next effort was No Country for Old Men, and it’s an understatement to call that a return to form.
