The only actor who “posed problems” for the Coen brothers: “A bit of a pain in the ass”
For the last 40 years, the Coen brothers have gradually been expanding their troupe of regular actors, safe in the knowledge that if they’ve done the job once before, they’re more than capable of doing it again.
It’s one of the most tried-and-trusted methods for guaranteeing a harmonious set, with virtually every high-profile filmmaker in cinema history having at least one actor they’ve worked with multiple times, and the Coens have amassed a stronger talent pool than most of their contemporaries.
Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, George Clooney, John Turturro, Josh Brolin, and Richard Jenkins are all objectively great actors who’ve worked with Joel and Ethan at least three times, if not more, while Billy Bob Thornton and Tim Blake Nelson are another pair of proven talents who are part of the two-timers club.
If they like the way somebody works, then there’s a high chance the Coens will work with them again. Of course, with a career that spans four decades and spanned 18 features before they went their separate ways, the siblings aren’t beholden to their personal favourites, which means any newcomer has the potential to get under their skin in the worst possible way.
On paper, pairing the Coens with Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona was inspired, with two of Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic auteurs teaming up with one of the industry’s most enigmatic and eccentric actors. It was inspired in execution, too, although there were some disagreements between them during shooting.
It wasn’t the human meme generator that caused problems, though, but a supporting player who wasn’t even an actor by trade. Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb was cast as the bounty hunter and biker Leonard Smalls in the 1987 classic, and while it wasn’t his first dalliance with the silver screen, he made life difficult for the Coens.
A former professional boxer with over 50 fights to his name, Cobb had appeared in a smattering of movies and TV shows before being cast in Raising Arizona, and the Coens hinted that offscreen issues may have been responsible for his unwanted status as the one onscreen collaborator who caused them issues.
“Tex Cobb, who played the biker in Raising Arizona, is the only person we’ve worked with who posed problems,” Joel revealed to Playboy. “He’s not an actor, and he was going through some shit at the time. He was a bit of a pain in the ass.”
While it wasn’t specified what the “shit” was that he was going through, Cobb was divorced from his wife, Kathy Krakauskas Morin, in 1986, right around the time that Raising Arizona was in production. An educated guess would suggest that his off-camera troubles may have followed him onto the set, which could well have been the main reason why the Coens found him so difficult to work with.
He’d continue racking up acting credits in things like The X-Files, Jim Carrey’s Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Liar Liar, Chuck Norris’ Walker: Texas Ranger, and the third Naked Gun movie, but he’d never work with the Coens again, which is fair enough: if Joel and Ethan didn’t have the fondest memories of their first time hiring Cobb, then there’s no reason why they’d have the slightest interest in doing it twice.
