The one movie the Coen brothers plagiarised for 25 years: “The only film we rip off left and right”
For the last 40 years, the Coen brothers have developed, honed, and refined an approach to cinema uniquely and identifiably their own, to the point their name has been adjectivised as a way to describe any off-kilter black comedy that bears a passing resemblance to their work.
Plenty of films have rolled off the Hollywood production line and been branded as Coenesque, but that’s an oxymoron in itself. No matter how hard any filmmaker tries, they’ll never be able to replicate the eccentricities, idiosyncracies, and indescribable intangibles that make Joel and Ethan who they are.
On the other hand, maybe the siblings are nothing more than a couple of ripoff merchants. Before any furious cinephiles begin sharpening their pitchforks: that comes from them. As usually tends to be the case, though, there’s a hint of at least one Coen tongue being planted in cheek when casting that aspersion over the bulk of their career, even if it’s not wildly inaccurate.
“All we’ve been doing for the last 25 years is remaking The Wizard of Oz,” Joel suggested to GQ. “It’s true. Sometimes consciously, and sometimes we don’t realise until after we’ve made the movie. Consciously in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Oz is the only film we just rip off left and right.”
The Coens’ musical dramedy definitely carries the most obvious shades of Judy Garland’s trip to the home of the Yellow Brick Road, but it’s arguably not even the most pronounced influence on the film. If 100 people were asked to envision what an amalgamation of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Wizard of Oz would look like, Joel and Ethan would probably be the only ones who’d come up with George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson’s buffoons on the run.
There are also several similarities between The Big Lebowski and Victor Fleming’s Technicolor classic, but they’re not quite as overt. While the Coens’ mischievous nature does present the possibility they’re merely pulling everyone’s leg by claiming The Wizard of Oz inspired everything they made over a quarter of a century, what’s equally impish is for them to say they don’t even rate it as a work of cinema.
“I don’t even think it’s an especially great movie,” Ethan offered as Joel concurred. “It’s not. We just saw it on television too many times.” It’s always hard to tell exactly where the truth lies whenever the Coens open their mouths, even if it’s not outside the realms of possibility that they don’t think too highly of The Wizard of Oz.
They’ve definitely seen it plenty of times, which – as they intimated – subconsciously filtered into their filmography whether they wanted it to or not. Two of their pictures carry noticeable hallmarks, but maybe it’s time to comb through the back catalogue and look for the rest.
