Did George Clooney Enjoy Making O Brother Where Art Thou

The Coen Brothers and George Clooney Uncover the Magic of 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' at 15th Ceremony Reunion

Joel and Ethan Coen rarely watch their own films after they've been released, simply they couldn't assistance themselves Tuesday evening equally the New York Film Festival honored the 15th anniversary of their folk-infused hazard one-act, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" Accompanied past stars George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, plus cinematographer and longtime collaborator Roger Deakins, the Coen Brothers joined the audience for every belly express joy and toe-tapping musical number. Over a decade later, "O Brother" and its bandage and coiffure remain only as magical as ever.

READ MORE: The Films of The Coen Brothers, Ranked

"Usually, looking at these things after the fact, especially so long later on the fact, most of what you lot notice is editing [mistakes] I think — editing things y'all would do just a little differently," said Joel near re-watching the film. "I but tin can't assist myself. But I really enjoyed information technology this time. I manus't seen it in a long time."

Taking the stage at Lincoln Center'southward Alice Tully Hall to rapturous adulation, the group sat downwardly for a wickedly funny Q&A and had no shortage of insights and anecdotes to share. Cheque out the best highlights from NYFF's 15th Anniversary of "O Brother, Where Fine art Grand?" below.

The picture show is an accommodation of "The Odyssey," but it didn't start that fashion.

Introducing the screening, Film Order of Lincoln Eye director Kent Jones jokingly remarked the movie was "the funniest accommodation of Homer's 'The Odyssey' ever made." The film has its affluence of winning Homer homages — most memorably a seductive trio of creek-bathing sirens and a Cyclops past style of John Goodman wearing an eye patch — but the directors revealed the origins of the movie didn't begin with Homer'due south legendary text.

"It didn't beginning with that idea," said Joel. "It started every bit a 'three saps on the run' kind of movie, and then at a sure point we looked at each other and said, 'You know, they're trying to go dwelling house — let's just say this is 'The Odyssey.' Nosotros were thinking of it more as 'The Wizard of Oz.' We wanted the tag on the movie to be: 'There's No Place Like Abode.'"

Past the fourth dimension it was ready to bandage, however, the directors were in full Homer mode. Nelson recalled coming together the brothers at Joel's house earlier he even knew about the project. He eyed a copy of "The Odyssey" on his bookshelf. "I guess they were writing information technology because there was a copy of the legend's translation — which was the new translation — and there was a Post-it on top of it and information technology said: Soon to be a motion picture show past Joel and Ethan Coen,"the actor said.

Roger Deakins' digital intermediate work remains revolutionary.

As fans and critics took note of during the film'southward initial release, Roger Deakins' stunning digital intermediate (DI) work on the flick sets a high bar for cinematography. The trio decided to go the road of DI considering the Mississippi location where they were filming was "greener than Ireland," equally Joel put it.

"Nosotros went through the [DI] processes in testing and we tried to do it with film, and it concluded upward being like half dozen different chemical processes and we never got anywhere close," said Deakins nigh his landmark contribution. "The flick 'Pleasantville' had done some DI work, nosotros got word that people were starting to use the technique on niggling sections of their motion picture, so we did a test and it worked out quite nice. It took days and days just to do a single shot when nosotros were testing, but nosotros all agreed that the moving picture wouldn't exist in post-product until about half-dozen to eight months, so nosotros went ahead and took the take a chance with it."

"Somewhen, when we did the DI, it took over eleven weeks, so it still wasn't quick," Deakins connected. "It was all digitized — what nosotros didn't want was a traditional sepia — the guys had told me they wanted the feel of an old, faded postcard and especially to go rid of the greens. Digitally, y'all tin select dissimilar colors, and basically there were a number of selections where you lot could alter whatsoever color in the prototype."

Deakins was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography, and in a career full of notable loses, his snub for "O Brother" remains the most painful.

Folk music made the set unusually fun for a Coen Brothers movie.

Joel admitted that not all of their productions are fun to be on, but that "O Brother" has always been the rare exception. The reason: Folk music.

"It was swell considering of the music," he said. "A lot of the musicians yous run into in the movie were the musicians that were playing on the soundtrack and working with T. Bone [Burnett]. We had worked with T. Bone earlier on 'The Big Lebowski,' but in a different way. Most of the music was recorded before nosotros started and that part was actually fun."

Featuring music from Alison Krause, Norman Blake, Ralph Stanley and Chris Thomas King, amidst many others, the film'southward original soundtrack won the 2002 Grammy for Best Album of the Year and sold over seven meg copies.

Clooney's Uncle Jack rewrote the Coen Brothers.

In the dark'south near amusing anecdote, Clooney recalled being intimidated by working with the Coen Brothers and unsure of how to play his character. To help guide him with the script, the actor turned to his Southern uncle. "When they sent the script they said, 'He'due south kind of a hick." I'thousand from Kentucky, so I sent the script and a tape recorder to my Uncle Jack in Kentucky, and I told him to read all the lines in the tape recorder and send me back the tape recorder," said Clooney. "He did, and I got it back and he was like, 'Well, George, I don't retrieve people talk like that!'"

"The worst role of that is, that subsequently a month or so, I threw the script away and just used the tape recorder. Afterward about two months of shooting, Joel and Ethan come over to me and are like, 'Let me ask y'all something, you say every give-and-take exactly as written, except yous don't say hell and you don't say damn. Why practise you do that?' I listened to the tape recorder, and my Uncle Jack is a Baptist from Kentucky and when he told me folks don't talk like that, he meant they don't say hell and they don't damn. He rewrote the Coen Brothers!"

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The bandage agrees: No directors make movies like the Coen Brothers.

Asked how they would draw their directing way, Ethan hilariously responded, "I retrieve if you visit the set, I think this is how it appears: In that location's a guy who is working and making the moving picture named Roger Deakins, and Roger has two friends who sit around and read the newspaper."

Speaking seriously, Nelson proudly added, "They write an extraordinary script…and zero really changes from the script, it's kind of perfect when you lot get it. It's all storyboarded, so they have planned every single shot and it rarely deviates, and that'south the result of meticulous piece of work with Roger and a storyboard artist, amazing production design, which is besides meticulously worked through, and an environment on set that is kind of like a perpetual rehearsal. You lot feel like you cannot fail. Information technology's so relaxed because and then many decisions have been made ahead of time by really diligent, intelligent, careful, no-nonsense people, that information technology just is this tabula rasa — information technology'southward a blank slate in which you have this incredible script and you can accept the kind of chances that actors alive to be able to take and we rarely tin can. But we can with them because of the atmosphere they create."

"I've never worked with any other directors who hold a moving-picture show so tightly in their head," added Deakins. "These guys have their vision of the film right there, all the way through. You lot can endeavour and trip them up and ask a question most them, only information technology's not possible. Information technology's laid out in their minds. I wouldn't want to be in their heads sometimes based on what comes out! [laughs]"

The river baptism was the hardest scene to shoot, while the Klan rally was the funniest.

For Deakins, the magical river baptism proved most challenging due to the logistics of pulling off the moment'due south ascension crane shot. "We had this crane and had to put railway tracks on the footing because it was a very heavy crane, and past the fourth dimension y'all got all the timing down — considering it starts depression and tracks all the fashion up — all of the actors were up in mud and getting bit by crawfish. Information technology was disgusting!"

"We hired this guy and he came to prepare with a golf club and what he would practise is he would expect around for snakes," added Joel. "If he saw one he would rope it with the golf game club and put it in this bag. I asked him what yous called somebody with this profession, and he said, 'An idiot.'"

Switching gears, Clooney and Joel ended the word past talking about filming the picture show'southward infamous Ku Klux Klan rally. "At that place was a funny moment when we were shooting the Klan scene at nighttime in Los Angeles correct beneath Van Nuys airport. We were trying to motion-picture show what the people in the planes flight over would be thinking."

"What we did was we hired a formation troupe — they were military guys who march," said Joel. "A lot of those guys were black and they said, 'This is the freakiest thing!' The lines to the porta potties had just a bunch of guys belongings Klan hoods."

"Past the craft services, table there would be a bunch of black guys with Klan hoods in their hands!" said George, who erupted into laughter and sent the audience home on a high note.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2015/09/the-coen-brothers-and-george-clooney-uncover-the-magic-of-o-brother-where-art-thou-at-15th-anniversary-reunion-57292/

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