Did Ethan Coen deliver the strangest… | Little White Lies

Festivals

Did Ethan Coen deliv­er the strangest screen­writ­ing lec­ture ever?

19 Oct 2019

Words by Flavia Ferrucci

Two men in suits sitting at a table on a stage, engaged in discussion.
Two men in suits sitting at a table on a stage, engaged in discussion.
The writer-direc­tors maps out the past, present and future of cin­e­ma through its depic­tion of… surgery?

The announce­ment of Ethan Coen’s pres­ence at the 2019 Rome Film Fes­ti­val was accom­pa­nied by a vague state­ment that he would deliv­er a lec­ture on screen­writ­ing – but he had some­thing else in mind. Nobody knew what would hap­pen. In the the­atre where the talk took place, a sin­gle word occu­pied the screen, leav­ing peo­ple con­fused and puz­zled: SURGERY

As it turns out, Coen is gen­uine­ly amused by surgery as a nar­ra­tive device in film. He took to the stage and select­ed clips from a bizarre and var­ied list of movies, rang­ing from the 1940s to con­tem­po­rary Hol­ly­wood. He formed his nos­tal­gia-tinged case to demon­strate how cinema’s approach to the sub­ject has rad­i­cal­ly changed with time, and movie them­selves have changed with it.

What is more absurd than a man who gets surgery to change his face?”, asked Coen. This par­tic­u­lar plot device, a sta­ple in clas­sic-era noir, seems to be the most fas­ci­nat­ing to him. You could have tru­ly pre­pos­ter­ous sto­ry­lines and get away with it, but you can’t do that now”, he sighed. Yet the absurd premis­es of rig­or­ous­ly seri­ous films such as Steve Sekely’s The Scar (1948) and John Frankenheimer’s Sec­onds (1966), per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly, delight him no end. 

The Coens’ own The Man Who Wasn’t There, from 2001, ref­er­ences this bygone era, specif­i­cal­ly when Bil­ly Bob Thorton’s char­ac­ter wakes up in the hos­pi­tal. Coen said they want­ed to achieve a true b‑movie feel­ing, because well, they Kin­da like the old stuff”. Thor­ton is also the pro­tag­o­nist of anoth­er brief inclu­sion of surgery in the broth­ers’ fil­mog­ra­phy, as his char­ac­ter plays a sur­geon in a TV show seen in 2003’s Intol­er­a­ble Cru­el­ty. The pre­pos­ter­ous nar­ra­tives seem to have migrat­ed to soap operas, not­ed Ethan.

Two men sitting at a table on a stage, with a large "SURGERY" sign in the background.

He then showed a clip from Randy Haines’ 1991 The Doc­tor star­ring Mandy Patinkin and William Hurt and not­ed that, while the approach to surgery had become real­is­tic, this is yet anoth­er exam­ple of movies that don’t exist any­more. Just two char­ac­ters liv­ing their lives – not some­thing the stu­dios are cur­rent­ly inter­est­ed in. 

This bizarre lec­ture end­ed with two extreme­ly dif­fer­ent films. When the clip from Takashi Miike’s mas­ter­ful Audi­tion played, loud com­ments, gasps and nois­es rose in the the­atre. After all, one doesn’t expect to see graph­ic ampu­ta­tions dur­ing a lec­ture from one of Hollywood’s most bril­liant screen­writ­ers — who actu­al­ly seemed to enjoy the reac­tions, jok­ing that, lat­er scenes could’ve dis­turbed the audi­ence even more!” (to a swell of ner­vous laughter). 

Coen made a very inter­est­ing, if tongue-in-cheek, case for this 1999 film being more rel­e­vant than ever. It sees a wid­ow­er set up a fake movie audi­tion to find him­self a new wife and get­ting what he deserves. That’s a #MeToo kin­da sto­ry. And see, this is what hap­pens!”. The explic­it con­tent of the clip prompt­ed a brief debate on cen­sor­ship. The broth­ers have nev­er had any­thing cen­sored by stu­dios, but def­i­nite­ly and con­stant­ly cen­sor each oth­er in the film­mak­ing process.

Remem­ber – the director’s cut of Blood Sim­ple is short­er than the orig­i­nal one. Anoth­er one might be com­ing some­time in the future, as Coen said he recent­ly rewatched a Bar­ton Fink scene — the first meet­ing between John Tur­tur­ro and the stu­dio head — and while he found the per­for­mances to be great, he also was alarmed by some cuts that were real­ly loose”. 

The last clip was from Paul Feig’s 2013 com­e­dy The Heat, that fea­tures an ulti­mate­ly con­tem­po­rary” take on surgery: San­dra Bullock’s char­ac­ter reads some­thing on the inter­net and now feels like an expert ready to per­form pro­ce­dures. This more main­stream film led to a few com­ments on today’s land­scape: Hol­ly­wood is not and has nev­er been a dirty word to me”, said Coen. How­ev­er, when the inescapable Scorsese/​Comic Book movies ques­tion arrived, he said he’s inclined to agree with him, not real­ly focus­ing on the qual­i­ty but more that, it’s unfor­tu­nate” that those seem to be the only stu­dio offer­ings these days. 

As the talk came to an end, the con­ver­sa­tion got more relaxed and, between declar­ing his love for Robert Bresson’s hyp­not­ic dry­ness”, he stat­ed that Idiots and things going wrong are what make the dra­ma work” and how the movie of theirs he holds dear­est is A Seri­ous Man because it’s so con­nect­ed to his child­hood and watch­ing a movie is like going to a dif­fer­ent world, so to recre­ate that world that doesn’t exist any­more except for me and Joel and peo­ple like us… there was some­thing very reward­ing about mak­ing it that sep­a­rates it from the others.” 

He also spoke of the film he real­ly want­ed to make but wasn’t able to in the end. He and Joel wrote an adap­ta­tion of James Dickey’s 1993 nov­el To the White Sea, and Brad Pitt was attached to star in it. It’s the sto­ry of a bomber who para­chutes from his burn­ing air­plane into Tokyo the night before the bomb­ing. The film almost got to pre-pro­duc­tion but, as it was going to be a basi­cal­ly silent movie — there’s no dia­logue to be had when you have a lone Amer­i­can in Japan dur­ing WWII — it turned out to be unfea­si­ble to make”. 

Coen described it as Kind of adven­ture, sur­vivor movie where the main char­ac­ter ends up not sur­viv­ing,” and then con­clud­ed, And that might be relat­ed to the fact that we didn’t get it made”. This unusu­al, unex­pect­ed lec­ture couldn’t have end­ed on a more per­fect note than on Ethan Coen real­is­ing the absur­di­ty of his own script.

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