Brothers Ethan and Joel Coen have made 18 motion pictures collectively, beginning with 1984’s Blood Simple to 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, creating an iconic filmography of black comedy masterpieces.
Then, with out warning or rationalization, they cut up up. Joel made The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), an austere, black-and-white Shakespeare adaptation that felt as distant from a Coen Brothers film as attainable. Ethan’s first solo venture, in distinction, was Drive-Away Dolls, the story of two lesbian associates (Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley) on the run from dim-bulb thugs after a McGuffinian bag of loot. The queer spin on the Coen-esque crime caper comedy comes largely from Coen’s co-writer, Tricia Cooke, his longtime editor and spouse of 32 years. Cooke is lesbian; the couple have an unconventional marriage the place each have separate companions exterior their marriage. Coen and Cooke have adopted up Drive-Away Dolls with Honey Don’t!, a nutty lesbian spin on a Raymond Carver movie noir, with Qualley as small-town PI Honey O’Donahue, Aubrey Plaza as her butch buddy MG and Chris Evans as a super-shady evangelist preacher.
Honey Don’t! could have its world premiere out of competitors in Cannes on Friday. Focus Features is bowing the movie within the U.S. on Aug. 22. The filmmakers spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about their “queer big dumb movie,” their want to carry again punctuation in film titles and Ethan’s subsequent movie (with Joel!).
So that is the second movie in — what are you calling it — your lesbian B film trilogy?
Ethan Coen It could also be correct that we’ve known as it that. Time will inform whether or not it really is that, I imply, whether or not it involves cross. We mentioned trilogy as a result of it’s dumb in case you say you might be doing two of them, however there are not any particular plans to do a 3rd. Call it no matter you need.
Call it a duology then. What was the beginning of this entire venture?
Tricia Cooke I don’t know. I believe we each actually like style motion pictures, B motion pictures, and we have been at some extent in our lives the place we had youngsters, and Ethan was doing plenty of work on his personal, and so the way in which that we spend time collectively was simply by writing. We wrote Drive-Away Dykes [aka Drive-Away Dolls] first, within the early 2000s, and after we’d written one, we’re like, “Well, we should write another, but it should be a detective movie.” And we simply type of went from there. It was only a approach for us to spend time collectively. I definitely by no means thought something would come of them besides us writing them and the children discovering them someday and being like: “Oh, this is what Mom and Dad did in their spare time.”
Coen I’d reply in another way. I’d have mentioned we noticed an underserved market. But no matter, each are right.
What do you imply by “underserved market”?
Coen Gay, lesbian style motion pictures. They’re not a well-known factor, definitely not this sort. You know, the lesbian detective film. You don’t see plenty of these.
Cooke These style B motion pictures, they’re all very straight, or primarily straight. So we thought: Let’s flip them on their head a bit. Because plenty of queer cinema, particularly lesbian cinema, tends to get a bit heavy generally. We simply wished to do one thing that was type of enjoyable and carefree and didn’t take itself too severely.
Coen There’s additionally a chance to offend individuals. I’m Jewish, and Joel and I’ve had some Jewish characters in our motion pictures that offended Jews. And Trish being homosexual, it opened up a complete new avenue. We might offend homosexual individuals.
Cooke He mentioned that, not me.
With this movie, like Drive-Away Dolls, you may see echoes of your earlier movies, the crime caper comedies like Blood Simple and Raising Arizona. Tricia, the place do you see your fingerprints? What makes this totally different from a “Coen Brothers” film?
Cooke Well, it’s a queer film. I add the gayness to it. Being a lesbian, I carry that to the writing course of, a type of understanding of that world. In Drive-Away Dykes, that type of lesbian bar world. And on this film, simply the dynamics between Honey and MG, a type of butch femme understanding of these characters. Whenever there’s one thing delicate, it’s often as a result of I’ve wished to place it in there.
Coen And each time there’s one thing crass, that was me.
This movie is leisure, however is simply the very fact of doing a queer film right now a type of political assertion? Does it land in another way now, within the midst of the second Trump administration?
Cooke You know, I’ve thought of that, and I’m unsure anymore. It seems like there’s been an actual tradition shift in our nation since Trump was elected. On one hand, it’s presupposed to be an enormous dumb film, which definitely suits into the MAGA world. But it’s a queer large dumb film, so there may be pushback. Maybe that’s presupposed to be off the file.
Coen No, I like that. It’s
complicated. “Queer big dumb movie” says all of it.
Cooke I imply, it’s acquired plenty of intercourse. There’s a bit commentary across the reverend character [played by Chris Evans] and the type of cultlike world that exists there, which is a bit Trump-like, however not a lot.
Coen I do know why you’re asking. It’s an fascinating query. I simply really feel like I don’t know. People’s identities are so entrenched at this level that no person’s going to push it over, probably not. But once more, possibly that’s simple for me to say.
How does your individual private relationship feed into your work? You guys are in an unconventional marriage, the place one is straight, one is queer, each with different companions. How you suppose your your relationship has formed the work that you simply guys do collectively?
Coen I’ll provide the actually sincere reply: I don’t know. We’re probably not self-reflective individuals. I don’t actually know the way our identities have an effect on what we do. Certainly it has to, however we don’t give it some thought.
Cooke Maybe that’s as a result of we do have such an unconventional relationship, even unconventional within the queer world, proper? So poking a bit enjoyable on the queer world is possibly my approach of claiming I’m an outsider in all these worlds — within the straight world, within the queer world. It’s simply the character of our relationship.
About poking enjoyable, what do you suppose these movies carry to queer cinema that’s new?
Coen Well, like I discussed earlier than with a few of the Jewish characters I’ve carried out in just a few cases, they don’t all the time should have dignity. The tiresome factor is when the minority individual must be some avatar of goodness. That’s simply crappy for drama. It’s anti good film.
Cooke We don’t put [our queer characters] on a pedestal. We simply allow them to be as crass or soiled or unhealthy as anybody could be.
Will there be a 3rd movie within the trilogy?
Cooke Well, we have now a title: Go, Beavers!
Coen With a comma and an exclamation level. We like titles with punctuation marks in them. Honey Don’t! has the exclamation level. We made Hail, Caesar! with a comma and an exclamation level. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? had a comma and a query mark. There’s not sufficient punctuation in titles. That’s the primary drawback with motion pictures these days, in my view.
Cooke We’ve acquired a few third of it written, however we’re each doing different issues. Ethan’s written a brand new film with Joel and I’m writing one thing with my daughter proper now.
So Ethan, you’re going to make one other film along with your brother?
Coen Oh yeah. I assume we’ll. We’ve written one thing. My god, it’s not less than a yr in the past now we wrote one thing to do collectively. And we have now an previous factor that we’ve written. And possibly we’ll write one thing new. But Joel is about to begin one thing, so we type of acquired out of sync. But yeah, the reply is sure. We simply should type of get in sync once more, when that occurs.
What are you most pleased with about this movie?
Coen The title sequence.
Cooke That was what we mentioned within the press notes. Then I mirrored, and I assumed, you already know, I’m proud that we’re capable of carry these homosexual and lesbian characters to life. But when it comes to the way in which it appears, the
title sequence was actually enjoyable as a result of we have been very hands-on with that, and it’s a guerrilla type of filmmaking in a approach that the remainder of the film just isn’t.
Coen Not solely have Tricia and I not carried out it earlier than, however I haven’t carried out it earlier than with Joel, both. It was simply enjoyable to do. It’s onerous to explain, but it surely was enjoyable to do. I additionally wish to add concerning the lesbian characters and this being for an underserved viewers. It is, however on the identical time, it’s not only for that market. The intercourse scenes are type of scorching, whether or not you’re a lady or not.
Cooke There are a lot of several types of intercourse scenes, not simply between the 2 title characters. There’s simply a lot of intercourse in it.
Coen And to not spoil something, however the straight intercourse is ridiculous.
