The $450m movie that almost gave the Coen brothers their acting debuts: “Not the worst casting idea”
Plenty of big-name directors have dabbled in acting, whether it’s shoehorning themselves in for a cameo appearance or playing a significant role in a movie helmed by themselves or another filmmaker, but it’s not something the Coen brothers have ever been interested in.
The entire sum of Joel and Ethan’s shared onscreen exploits came when they made ‘blink and you’ll miss them’ guest spots in Sam Raimi’s Crimewave and Darkman as a pair of reporters attending an execution and the driver of the Evil Dead architect’s trusty Oldsmobile, respectively.
If they wanted to follow in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock and lurk in the background, they would have done it by now, and there was no chance they’d ever follow in the footsteps of Quentin Tarantino or M Night Shyamalan by giving a string of cringeworthy performances after fooling themselves into thinking they were capable of emoting their way out of a paper bag.
However, the Coens could have played actual characters with dialogue and everything in the most unexpected of circumstances, even if it was news to the film’s director. If one of the main selling points of a production is gathering together as many famous faces as possible, then why not think outside of the box and recruit two of Hollywood’s most celebrated auteurs?
It’s not as if casting them as siblings would be a stretch, either, and that was the initial plan when Steven Soderbergh’s $450 million-grossing blockbuster, Ocean’s Eleven, was seeking its Turk and Virgil Malloy. Luke and Owen Wilson were set for the parts, but scheduling conflicts with Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums ruled them out of the equation.
Casey Affleck and Scott Caan, who look absolutely nothing alike, ended up nabbing the gig, but reports emerged in September 2000, four months before the start of shooting, that Warner Bros were eying none other than Joel and Ethan Coen to fill those spots, in what would have been a strange coup for the picture.
Soderbergh doesn’t remember if they were genuinely under consideration or not, but he suspects that George Clooney, a frequent collaborator of both his and the Coens, may have had something to do with it. “It doesn’t sound like a terrible idea,” he suggested. “And I’m sure George had a hand in that, because he had just worked with them.”
“If it didn’t get shot fairly quickly by one of us, they would have shot it down pretty quickly, I’m sure,” he said. “Hey, it’s not the worst casting idea I’ve ever heard, I’ll say that.” It sounds like he would have been on board with it, but knowing how the Coens aren’t exactly trained thespians, Soderbergh suspected that their scenes would have needed to be captured as quickly as possible; otherwise, they wouldn’t have taken it under consideration.
It worked out for the best, because even if Joel and Ethan had played the Malloys in Ocean’s Eleven, it would be hard to envision them becoming franchise mainstays in the second and third instalments. Still, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fascinating to think about.
