The shot-for-shot remake the Coen brothers are desperate to direct: “It’s a dream project”
Despite their well-deserved reputation as two of modern cinema’s most unique, inventive, and original voices, the Coen brothers aren’t against the idea of repurposing pre-existing material.
After all, the siblings enjoyed the greatest success of their individual and collective careers when the Cormac McCarthy adaptation, No Country for Old Men, recouped its budget almost seven times over at the box office and won four Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
Joel and Ethan also followed in John Wayne’s footsteps by mounting a new take on Charles Portis’ novel True Grit, remade the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, and used Homer’s The Odyssey as the launchpad for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, to name several prominent examples.
While their filmography leans more heavily toward originality than anything else, the Coens have nonetheless shown a knack for taking something that already existed in either literary or cinematic form and twisting it into something that was evocative of their signature style as writers, directors, and editors.
However, the white whale the duo have been chasing their entire professional lives has yet to manifest, or at least that’s what they want people to think. There’s always been an air of mischievousness to the Coens that makes it difficult to gauge whether anything they say is supposed to be taken seriously.
And yet, the prospect of them emulating one of the most pointless exercises in cinema and applying it to a classic rom-com would be nothing if not fascinating. “So far, it’s just a thought experiment,” Ethan revealed tentative plans to give 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner a do-over. “A kind of Gus Van Sant shot-by-shot remake.”
“It could be an exercise in pure style,” Joel chipped in. “So that’s the pitch. We haven’t found a lot of enthusiasm for that.” Are they joking? As always tends to be the case with the Coens, it’s hard to tell. Even if they were, there probably aren’t many studios or production companies in Hollywood lining up to let two of the best in the business spend time and money on a shot-for-shot remake, especially when the film had already been remade.
“It’s a dream project we’ve talked about a lot,” they reiterated to Entertainment Weekly. “I think we could bring a new twist to that.” Does that mean Ashton Kutcher has technically torpedoed the Coens’ directorial dream by starring alongside Bernie Mac in 2005’s Guess Who? Maybe, which is as fascinating as it is completely and utterly random.
With the Coens currently in the midst of what Gwyneth Paltrow would call a “conscious uncoupling,” it remains to be seen if they’ll ever make another movie together, a shot-for-shot remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner or not. If and when they do eventually reunite, it’s reasonable to expect it won’t be the picture that brings them back together.
