The comical time Jeff Bridges saw the Coen brothers argue: “That was the big disagreement”
Over the years, the Coen brothers developed a reputation as a pair so in sync that they were more like a two-headed brain than two separate individuals.
For decades, they directed left-of-centre classics like Raising Arizona, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit with nary a disagreement or word said in anger. Then, out of nowhere, they went their separate ways in an effort to forge their paths as solo directors.
Thankfully, despite the fact that the brothers haven’t directed a picture together since 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, it doesn’t seem like they had a huge falling out that would preclude them from reuniting someday. “After 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been,” Ethan admitted in 2022. “Joel kind of felt the same way, but not to the extent that I did. It’s an inevitable by-product of ageing.”
Before the brothers felt like they needed to stretch their wings as separate entities, though, the people who worked with them often proclaimed them to be so simpatico that it was almost eerie. For instance, Alden Ehrenreich, who starred in 2016’s Hail, Caesar! claimed the brothers barely even needed to say a word to each other after watching a take, because they almost telepathically seemed to know what the other made of it.
“They both give directions, and they’re weirdly in tune with each other,” Ehrenreich told The Independent. “You have the sense after a take that they both have the same opinion of it, and they both know what each other is thinking.”
So, instead of a long discussion about the scene’s intricacies, one brother would tend to say, “Yep, OK, cool”, and then they’d move on. Ehrenreich didn’t discount the idea that the duo potentially disagreed with each other away from prying eyes, but he smiled, noting, “If that happens, I never saw it”.
In truth, the only star who has ever claimed to have witnessed a Coen confrontation is Jeff Bridges, who alleged that Joel and Ethan didn’t see eye to eye on how their laidback star should play a moment during the iconic musical dream sequence in The Big Lebowski that turns Bridges into a human bowling ball.
“I was wondering how it was gonna be directed by these brothers,” Bridges mused to Vanity Fair, “And the only time that there was any disagreement between them was in that scene. It was just about when I was gonna hit my head with those bowling pins.”
At the end of the absurdly elaborate scene, Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski is floating down a bowling lane through the legs of pretty ladies whose top halves are made out of bowling pins. As he gets closer and closer to the ten pins at the end of the lane, though, Joel and Ethan felt differently about what emotion he should convey on his face.
“Joel said, ‘Now, when you’re gonna hit the bowling pins, kind of wince a little bit, because you’re gonna be expecting some kind of pain’,” Bridges recalled, “And Ethan says, ‘No, really—you think so? I think he should be kind of smiling, like this is kind of fun to be a bowling ball’. Joel said, ‘You really think so?'”
To Bridges’ shock, this extremely low-key, quiet argument continued back and forth for a little bit. To anyone who didn’t know them, it wouldn’t have seemed like a big deal, but to Bridges, it probably felt like they were throwing fists. Eventually, though, with no yelling and no fisticuffs, the brothers finally said, “Well, let’s shoot it both ways”.
In the end, Ethan’s take on the situation won, because in the final cut, ‘The Dude’ is 100% tickled pink at being a human-sized bowling ball in his dream. As for the light dispute that barely got above a whisper, Bridges chuckled, “That was the big disagreement”.
