Denzel Washington’s favourite Coen brothers movie: “I don’t even know why”
The Coen brothers have made a career out of working with the biggest names in the business and pushing them in unexpected directions, but Denzel Washington remains one of the most notable A-listers the sibling duo haven’t gotten their hands on as of yet.
Of course, he’s halfway there after playing the title role in The Tragedy of Macbeth, which marked the first time the Coens had flown solo and taken charge of their own individual features. Joel wrote, directed, and produced the subversive Shakespeare adaptation, which landed three Academy Award wins, including ‘Best Actor’ for Washington.
While he’s technically been part of a Coen production, he hasn’t enjoyed the full experience. The screen icon has charisma to spare and doesn’t get to flex his comedic muscles anywhere near as often as he should, so on paper, he’d be the perfect foil for the brothers’ signature brand of offbeat and acerbic black comedy.
Imagine Washington doing something similar to Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona, Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski, Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers, Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading, or George Clooney in his self-professed “trilogy of cowardly idiots,” and it’s a mouthwatering prospect. Obviously, they’d need to reunite to make it happen, but at least the two-time Academy Award winner is a huge fan.
Speaking of Clooney, it was his first descent into the bespoke madness of the Coen brothers’ world that quickly became one of Washington’s all-time favourites. “You’ll laugh, or you’ll see somebody get their head blown off, possibly at the same time,” he remarked to The New York Times of their style. “O Brother, Where Art Thou? is one of my favourite movies. I don’t even know why. It’s just so weird.”
It’s debatable whether it’s even the weirdest movie Joel and Ethan have made when their idiosyncratic approaches to plot, character, and the essence of middle America have been key to their work since the very beginning. On the other hand, it’s certainly an unusual picture, using The Odyssey and The Wizard of Oz as the jumping-off point for a satirically folksy criminal caper.
Washington has spent his three decades as an A-lister alternating between heavyweight dramas and gun-toting action thrillers, but a farcical comedy outing remains one of the most notable omissions in a storied back catalogue. He’s got star power to spare and has proven that he’s capable of being very funny onscreen, but he’s never quite gone full-blown ham.
Should the Coens ever decide to get back together and resume their formidable partnership behind the camera, if they opt to head back down the more frivolous route defined by O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Barton Fink, or The Hudsucker Proxy, then Washington would be a perfect name to place at the top of their wish-list for the leading role.
