Co-writer and partner Tricia Cooke joins Coen to discuss how their queer road trip movie changed from script to screen '...and a little sex.'
Drive-Away Dolls marks Oscar-winning filmmaker Ethan Coen’s first solo feature film since his rise to notoriety as one-half of the Coen Brothers alongside Joel Coen.
COEN: That's interesting. It's such a weird way to think about it because you send the movie out there, and you let the chips fall where they may. You know what? Here's an answer, since you're writing about this movie, I would say to somebody reading this, The Big Lebowski or O Brother, Where Art Thou? In terms of feel, you kind of go, “Okay, those feel kind of like this one.” You know what I'm saying? I would not refer them to Barton Fick.
COOKE: Oh boy, I guess O Brother, Where Art Thou? started as something that seemed to me to go in one direction and then, with all of the other elements kind of included during the editing process, just the soundtrack and how the movie was timed and all of those things, it changed the most from beginning to end.
COEN: Yeah, it was similar. We kind of go, “What would the beginning of a really good movie be?” Okay, there’s that scene. “What happens next? What makes sense next?” It's the same process, not writing an outline first. COEN: Well, we don't and did not, in this case. That doesn't mean we don't change anything, there are little changes. But we did a major, not even tweak, a rewrite, when—as we said, it was written like 20 years ago—when we went, “Okay, let's actually make this movie,” we subjected it to a kind of serious rewrite. Once we're on the set, it doesn't get changed much.
COOKE: We saw Zola, and it was shot in all these motel rooms, and there are a number of motel rooms in our movie, and we're like, “Oh, this looks really great! We should look into this DP.” And then I think the next day it was just like she also just shot The Power of The Dog, and that was a gorgeous movie, so you know, lucky for us.
COEN: And a little sex. You’ve gotta watch, or watch again, the beginning of Sullivan's Travels, the discussion in the movie executive's office. There's the one guy who chimes in while they're talking about what they want the movie to be, and one guy just keeps repeating, “And a little sex, and a little sex.” [Laughs]
COEN: And it still moves fast. But, you know, in that respect, it's like the same process with Joel; we show it to people for notes just to see what's working. You work on it with such focus at such an atomic level that you gotta actually show it to new people to get feedback about what's actually working and what's not. That's always the case.
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