The Coen Brothers haven’t directed a movie since 2018. Sure, Joel and Ethan have helmed projects separately, but at this point, this is the longest they’ve ever gone without teaming up. So what’s going on between the fellas?
Ethan recently chatted with Collider, where the topic of his and Joel’s movies were brought up. As he put it, it was a combination of burnout and being busy. “After the last movie we made together, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I was like, ‘I can’t do another one. This is too hard. I’m out.’ And Joel went on to do Macbeth. And then COVID happened, and we were locked down — me and Tricia — and we had the opportunity to do this documentary with all archival footage – and that was kind of great. So I kind of got interested again, and we have these scripts, but Joel was working on his thing, so we kind of got out of sync. Now, there was never a decision by the two of us to do movies separately.”
Joel would make his debut with 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, while Ethan made his narrative solo outing with last year’s Drive-Away Dolls and has his latest, Honey Don’t! out this month. (Both are co-written with spouse Tricia Cooke.)
But even Ethan knows that his reason for not collaborating with Joel is a cop-out, adding, “It wasn’t even [physical exhaustion]. I can’t even describe it without sounding self-pitying and stupid. Like, I need a break or have to recharge or whatever. It’s all bullshit. You get a good night’s sleep, and you’re recharged.”
For more than three decades, the films of Joel and Ethan Coen have been some of movie fans’ most anticipated of any given year. Kicking off with the brilliant Blood Simple then debunking the sophomore slump with Raising Arizona, the boys were immediately hot; and it just kept building, with everything from Miller’s Crossing to The Big Lebowski to O Brother, Where Art Thou? to No Country for Old Men to Inside Llewyn Davis, the brothers proved to be some of the sharpest minds the business had seen. Unfortunately, the writing has been on the wall for years that Joel and Ethan might forever be done. But to paraphrase The Stranger in The Big Lebowski, Sometimes, there are men – well, they’re the men for their time and place.
Do you see Joel and Ethan Coen ever collaborating again? What is your all-time favorite film of theirs?
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