BUENA VISTA PICTURES PRESENTS A WORKING TITLE PRODUCTION 'O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?'

GEORGE CLOONEY   JOHN GOODMAN   HOLLY HUNTER   JOHN TURTURRO   CHARLES DURNING MUSIC BY CARTER BURWELL PRODUCTION DESIGNER RICK HENRICHS

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY ROGER A. DEAKINS, A.S.C. LINE PRODUCER JOHN CAMERON EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS TIM BEVAN  ERIC FELLNER PRODUCED BY ETHAN COEN

WRITTEN BY JOEL COEN AND ETHAN COEN DIRECTED BY JOEL COEN

Ronald Bergan went on location with the Coens for their latest movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou? This is what happened in the sweltering Delta

 Monday August 14, 2000

 Joel and Ethan Coen first approached George Clooney with the script for O Brother, Where Art Thou? while he was in Phoenix working on Three Kings. "I was nearing the end of a very tough five-month shoot, really ready to go home, and Joel and Ethan flew into Phoenix and handed me the script," recalled Clooney. "They told me they'd written it with me in mind and asked me if I'd do it. I said yes without even reading the first page." 

Clooney had just ended his five-year run on ER to concentrate on a film career and was amazed the Coens had thought of him. Of their directing style he says: "You think they're both going to direct at the same time. Then you discover they don't direct you a lot. They'll come over and say, 'Yeah, um, let's do it again. Yeah, you know. Yeah.' They play dumb a little, but they let you figure it out. In the morning you get the storyboard, so you know how it'll look. They're open to trying things, and you can suggest things and they say, 'OK, you can try that,' but they've already covered all the bases." 

The filming took place all over Mississippi and was followed by studio work in Los Angeles. It was completed in October 1999. 

When the Coens first talked to director of photography Roger Deakins about the movie, they explained that they wanted it to look "brown and dirty and golden, like a period picture book of the Depression". But when Deakins was told that the film was being shot in Mississippi, he pointed out that it was "one of the greenest parts of the States". So, to get the look that the brothers were after, the whole movie was digitised in order to take the green out of it. "We gave it an ochre feel," said Deakins. "I kept having to say to them: 'Just imagine it'll be all yellow.' " 

Scene 1: The chain gang 

The Coens are preparing the film's opening shot. It is of a chain gang of black convicts in faded striped uniforms, swinging picks in unison against rocks at the side of a road in the middle of the flat Mississippi Delta countryside. They chant Po' Lazarus as they work in the noon sun. 

A few miles from the location, scores of black extras are clustered in a tent in leg irons. Some are drinking Cokes, others are sitting patiently as a make-up woman smears them with "sweat" and "dirt". A few of them walk over to look at the storyboard titled Po' Lazarus Boys. Then a signal is given for all the extras to get up and file out on to a coach that is to take them to the location. 

The men arrive at the location. It is on a levee on the delta in about 100-degree heat. The production managers have to try to keep 200 people from dehydrating. There are little canopies to protect many of the crew from the sun. Ethan and Joel are wearing straw hats and sunglasses. Joel is wearing a grey T-shirt and shorts. Sweat is staining their shirts. They look along the line of extras like prison warders. There is a man with a gun on a horse patrolling the chain gang. 

Joel briefly explains to the convicts what they're going to do. The assistant director shouts, "Playback!" and the singing of Po' Lazarus fills the air, as the extras swing their picks, mouthing the words. Joel watches impassively. Roger Deakins, in a black fedora, dollies along beside them on a special track built for the camera. 

The assistant director shouts: "Cut!" The extras are handed water bottles to slake their thirst. Then the water bottles are taken away and they line up again to break rocks. Ethan grins to himself and strokes his ginger beard. He rarely speaks. The playback of the song, as well as the sound of rocks being hammered, starts up again. The picks swing in rhythm.

 Before the next take, Joel tells them: "The rhythm really has to be on." "OK, chain gang, one more time," shouts the assistant director. Nobody believes the "one more time". Suddenly she notices they are missing a convict. "There's a hole in the line. We have an escapee," she laughs. "Go without him for this take," says Joel. 

Everybody is drinking a lot of water out of plastic cups. While a crane shot is being prepared, Joel sits down in the shade on his director's chair, which is beside Ethan's, both of which are marked with their names and the title of the movie. Ethan takes over the direction for a while or, at least, he is indicating to some of the extras where to move. 

After another take, the assistant director shouts to the "prisoners": "You can sit down if you want. We'll bring you water." Ethan, Joel and Roger Deakins watch the rushes on the monitor and laugh a lot. 

Scene 2: The escape 

The cock-eyed caravan moves on. There are wheatfields on either side of the road on the way to the next location. Sunflowers stare up at the blue sky. The team arrives at a burnt-out forest area. The scene, about 10 minutes into the film, takes place outside a lone farmhouse. Everett (George Clooney), Pete (John Turturro) and Delmar (Tim Nelson), chained together, are advancing on the farmhouse, which belongs to Pete's cousin, Wash Hogwallop. "If your cousin still runs this-here horse farm and has a forge and some shoein' impedimenta to restore our liberty of movement" says Everett, before a rifle shot rings out. On the porch is a grimy-faced boy, about eight years old, in tattered overalls, holding a gun almost as big as he is. "Hold it rah chair!" he shouts. "You men from the bank? Daddy told me I'm to shoot whosoever from the bank!" The trio convinces the boy, who turns out to be Wash Hogwallop's son, they're not from the bank. 

The team is gathered outside the farmhouse. Ethan is wearing the same shirt as yesterday, or rather it has the same pattern. He has a neat haircut and trimmed beard. Joel's beard and hair are unkempt, but he has changed into a clean shirt. Clooney, wearing a brown cap, is tanned, has a five o'clock shadow, a pencil moustache and grey streaks in his hair. They are sitting around talking and laughing with the Coens, waiting for the shot to be set up. They are called for the scene. Scene 12, take 1. The three cons walk towards the shack. Then Clooney misses a line and apologises. Joel pats his star on the back reassuringly. Clooney then goes over his lines again in a huddle with Turturro and Nelson before the next take, while the make-up girl makes repairs. Ethan tells Clooney he must talk like someone who enjoys talking. "Yeah, yeah, got you," says Clooney. On take two, Clooney dries. "Sorry," he says. Turturro and Nelson nod sympathetically. They don't have such convoluted dialogue. Ethan paces up and down. 

The actors gather their chains to advance on the farmhouse once more. They get through their dialogue without a hitch until the shot rings out and hits a bottle on a branch of a tree. After the fourth take, which seems to have met with Joel's satisfaction, Turturro asks for another. In any case, Deakins wasn't sure the bottle was in shot. 

Joel is yawning. "Let's actually do a rehearsal in time. See how it feels." He has a word with the little shaven-haired boy. The boy grins. Joel shows him how to hold the gun to make it seem heavier. Joel knows about guns. After a rehearsal in which everyone is word perfect, the boy gets begrimed by the make-up person for the first take. The boy is great. 

A group of locals have gathered on a grassy knoll, many with cameras, to watch and ogle the short scene where the three cons come out of a store just as a man in a boater emerges from his car and enters the store. Everett waits for the man to disappear, signals to the others and they pile into the man's car and drive off. 

Perhaps there would have been less interest in the shoot if George Clooney had not been in it. He signs hundreds of autographs and poses with people for photographs. "I grew up in a small town in Kentucky where they shot a series called Centennial," he says, "and I followed Raymond Burr around everywhere he went. I know what it's like to see someone in person who you've watched on television or in the movies, and I don't get upset when people approach me." 

O Brother, Where Art Thou? premieres at the Edinburgh film festival on August 23. Box office: 0131-623 8030. This is an edited extract from The Coen Brothers (Orion, £18.99) © Ronald Bergan.

Part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six.

Talking with Joel and Ethan Coen about 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

By Jim Ridley

MAY 22, 2000: Last summer, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona, Fargo) were in Nashville to find musicians for their latest film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? An episodic yarn that borrows from Homer's Odyssey, it stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as escaped convicts on a seriocomic journey through 1930s Mississippi, a flight that includes brushes with bluesmen, bigots, gangsters, crooked politicians, and seductive sirens. (The title comes from Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels It's the name of the movie Sturges' comedy-director hero Sullivan intends as his "serious" picture about the struggles of the Depression.)

Before filming began, the Coens took the unusual step of recording the music first. For the movie's mix of blues, gospel, and bluegrass, the filmmakers and music producer T-Bone Burnett assembled a stellar lineup that includes Ralph Stanley, Norman Blake, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, the Cox Family, and the Whites, and they recorded the music here last year. All those artists and more--plus the Coens themselves--will appear at a benefit show next Wednesday at the Ryman Auditorium, which will be recorded by documentarian D.A. Pennebaker for a concert film.

Soon, the Coens may have even more reason to celebrate. O Brother, Where Art Thou? screened last weekend to strong notices at the Cannes Film Festival, some of which mentioned the movie as a contender for the top prize, the Palme d'Or. If the Coens win, it would be their second Golden Palm (after 1991's Barton Fink). The movie itself will be released this fall. The Scene spoke to Joel and Ethan Coen last week from their home base of New York, where they're practicing their sibling harmonies for the Ryman stage.

How did you choose the music for the movie?

Joel Coen: Well, actually, in the movie we used a sort of mixture of period recordings and rerecorded music. But the stuff that was redone and produced by T-Bone is all featured essentially live--it's music you see performed in the movie itself.

Ethan Coen: It's not background, it's not working as underscoring, it's actually happening on camera.

JC: In other words, it's in the context of the story. At one point, George Clooney sings and records a record that becomes a big hit, a song called "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow." That's all part of the story, so it had to be a combination of prerecorded background instrumentals that the actors or musicians would sing live to on set, or prerecorded with the vocals and then lipsynched.

Which musicians actually appear in the movie?

JC: The Cox Family, the Whites, Chris Thomas King...[John] Hartford was gonna be in it, but he was ill at the time we wanted to shoot his scene. The Fairfield Four are in the movie; they play gravediggers. They do a great version of "You've Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley." Most of Alison's band is in the movie.

Were there any artists you wanted specifically?

JC: A lot of them were people that we knew and like and are fans of, like Alison and Emmylou and Gillian, and obviously we knew Ralph Stanley and John Hartford and all these guys. But they were actually brought in by T-Bone. At an early stage we sort of decided what music we wanted. Then T-Bone brought in a lot of different musicians and sort of collectively decided who was going to do what.

What was the selection process like?

JC: Well, that was great, actually. At one point T-Bone basically had two days where he brought in lots of different people who all sort of played and sang together. And we got kind of a feeling for who was right. But it was a great experience, meeting all these people and hearing 'em play. It was unbelievable.

EC: Ralph [Stanley] coming in was kind of funny. You know, everyone's sort of hanging out and playing, picking, whatever, and then Ralph walked in. It was like they'd wheeled in one of the heads from Mount Rushmore. The whole room just kind of fell silent for a moment.

What are some of the most memorable songs in the finished film?

EC: There are a number of set-piece songs that are almost...not production numbers, because it isn't literally a musical, but have that kind of feel to them. One of the most notable ones is the Ralph Stanley thing, "O Death." Chris Thomas King [who plays a blues musician modelled on Robert Johnson] did a Skip James song, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues." And there's the Jimmie Rodgers song...

JC: ...that Tim Nelson sings. It's really interesting, because he sings that live himself. He's not a trained singer, he's not a recording artist, he's an actor. But he's got this great country-western voice. He's going to sing in the concert, actually.

EC: It's this weird fantasy come true for Tim--he gets to stand on the stage of the Ryman and perform.

We heard something about a sirens' song....

JC: Oh, that's interesting! [The convicts] come upon these three women washing clothes in the river. That's Gillian, Alison, and Emmylou as the three voices. And they're singing this song which is from this old kind of black, bluesy lullaby from the period. Gillian wrote like four or five other verses for it.

She's actually in the movie, right?

JC: Yeah, she is. She's trying to buy the hit record that Clooney has recorded, without any success.

If you have sirens involved, the Odyssey parallels must hold pretty close.

JC & EC: (chortling) Yeah, well...

EC: We avail ourselves of it very selectively. There's the sirens; and the cyclops, John Goodman, a one-eyed Bible salesman....

JC: Whenever it's convenient we trot out the Odyssey.

EC: But I don't want any of those Odyssey fans to go to the movie expecting, y'know...

JC: "Where's Laertes?" (laughter)

EC: "Where's his dog?" (more laughter)

How seriously do you intend the reference to Sullivan's Travels? Your movie sounds more like Sturges than the symbolic movie-within-a-movie that gives O Brother its title.

JC: In a way, that's true. There are things in it that are very reminiscent of Sullivan's Travels, but in a sense I would say "reminiscent of" instead of rip-off. (laughs) In our minds, it was presumably the movie he would've made if he'd had the chance. The important movie. The one that takes on the big, important themes.

EC: And if he'd been steeped in Homeric literature and early country music (laughter).

Aren't they the same thing?

JC: Yeah, that's what T-Bone likes to say. They're both verbal traditions. Oral traditions.

EC: That's about as far as it goes, though.

What are you working on next?

JC: We're doing a movie about a barber in Northern California in the early 1940s. (Pause, then accusingly:) I think I heard a little snicker there. I was in Texas a while ago, and I told that to Ann Richards, the former governor. She looked at me for about 20 seconds and said, "I'm trying real hard to get excited about this."

EC: There's more to it than Joel lets on. He actually is a barber, but he's interested in getting into dry cleaning.

While you're on stage at the Ryman, are you going to favor us with a tune? "The Coen Brothers" does sound like an old-time hillbilly act.

JC: Oh, yeah.

EC: Yeah, I'm bringing my washboard, and Joel's bringing his spoons. (Issues a laugh like a car alarm going off.) Wait for us, we're coming on last!

Thanks to Eric D. Dixon

Double vision

Lovable funsters or tight-lipped enigmas? Jonathan Romney meets the endlessly inventive Coens in Cannes and gets the lowdown on how they updated The Odyssey - without reading Homer

Friday May 19, 2000

The Coen Brothers may not have the strangest film in Cannes this year, but they can certainly boast the drollest promotional giveaway. It's a three-ounce tub of waxy, orange-coloured, sweetly-scented stuff labelled "Dan Men's Pomade". It carries the portrait of a rakishly coiffed George Clooney, looking determined and modelling a convincing facsimile of Clark Gable's moustache.

As promo novelties go, it makes a change from T-shirts and tote bags, and it relates more precisely to the advertised film than is usually the case. In the Coens' new film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Clooney's character Ulysses Everett McGill, an escapee from a southern chain gang, wouldn't go anywhere without a dab of Dapper Dan to sweeten his locks. His flight across the deep south is, you can imagine, rather more facetious than the 30s chain gang movies that the Coens take as their model.

Minnesota-born brothers Joel and Ethan are known for liking their bit of fun, and in their latest film, they haven't stinted themselves. O Brother is several films in one: a tale of three desperadoes on the lam in rural Mississippi; a blues and country musical; and, allegedly at least, a rewrite of Homer's Odyssey. Not that they've actually read the Odyssey, they admit. Fortunately, Ethan Coen says, one of the film's leads, Tim Blake Nelson, is a classicist. "I wonder if he read it in Greek? I know he read it." "Yeah," confirms Joel. "Did he?" Ethan insists. "I don't know if he read it in Greek," says Joel. "I know he read it."

"Between the cast and us," says Ethan, "Tim Nelson is the only one who's actually read the Odyssey." There's little point, then, kicking yourself if you can't place all the allusions. The Sirens are easy enough, a trio of singing Amazons doing their laundry in the Mississippi. And the Cyclops is John Goodman in an eyepatch.

Scylla and Charybdis I was less certain about. "Scylla and Charybdis? Where were they?" puzzles Ethan. The whirlpool at the end, surely? "Oh," the brothers chorus, "the whirlpool." Ethan grins pensively. "Oh, yeah, sure, Scylla and Charybdis." Joel says, "It's very, you, usually know selectively based on the Odyssey." Interviewers often lament that with the Coens, there's no point even asking: they don't give anything away.

They have this reputation as tight-lipped enigmatic sorts who make enigmatic films. And yet the films pretty much speak for themselves; they are flawlessly accessible, even if you don't catch all the references to old movies and pulp paperbacks. The only thing that properly seems bizarre about the brothers' work is the breadth of their imagination: they specialise in pinpointing the kind of images and cultural references that are usually outside the remit of contemporary American cinema.

There's nothing that bizarre, if you think of it, about choosing to set a crime thriller in snowbound Minnesota, as the brothers did in Fargo, and having villains who relax by going to see Jose Feliciano in concert; it's just that it took the Coens to think of it. Every Coen film describes a world so thoroughly conceived that each one is its own fictional micro-climate; in a sense the brothers don't really need to add much commentary. Hence, perhaps, the sense that when they give interviews, they are aware of the futility of the venture.

Here they are in Cannes again, sitting in the casino on top of the Carlton hotel, and although they have visited several times in the past (their Barton Fink won the Palme d'Or in 1991), they don't quite seem to belong. Older brother Joel looks as though he's done all the interviews he wants to in a lifetime, Ethan as though he's never done one in his life. Joel seems to have dressed for the part of the hot auteur in town and then let it all get messed up over a rough morning: shoulder-length hair more scrupulously crimped than previously, in a black jacket that could be either very cheap or very expensive; both the beard and the low mutter are reminiscent of Frank Zappa, and he keeps looking absently around the room as if he's wondering how long it is till lunch.

The friendlier Ethan, in a murky brown plaid shirt, with a scraggy beard and a faceful of freckles, constantly grins broadly, occasionally giving a wheezy laugh, and seems to be relishing various private jokes as if they've only just crossed his mind. Despite the grandiose title, O Brother, Where Art Thou? is as downhome and earthy a film as has come out of recent American cinema, although it lacks the lightness of touch of the Coens' best comedies.

It shares its title with the apocryphal movie planned by Joel McCrea's idealistic Hollywood director in Preston Sturges' 1941 comedy Sullivan's Travels (currently on re-release). Sullivan heads out across America to research his serious Steinbeckian hobo drama, only to conclude that it's a far nobler calling to make 'em laugh.

But the Coens' O Brother is not entirely the film that Sullivan would have made. "It pretends to be a big important movie," says Ethan, "but the grandiosity is obviously a joke. It is what it is, it's a comedy. There is a chain-gang interlude in Sullivan's Travels, but that's it." O Brother is another example of the Coens' partiality to period: Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy all explored past decades, and even their last film, The Big Lebowski, had a certain distance, being set in the early 90s as opposed to 1998.

"We tend to do period stuff," says Ethan, "because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality." Their latest film carries a considerable weight of historical authenticity, not least in the soundtrack of vintage southern music - gospel, Delta blues and early country swing - assembled by singer-songwriter and one-time Dylan collaborator T-Bone Burnett.

One of the film's themes is the congruence of pre-war American pop with history and politics, as the errant jailbird trio encounter various real-life characters, among them gangster George "Baby Face" Nelson and blues singer Tommy Johnson, who, like the better known Robert Johnson, was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for blues prowess. Another real character is Texas governor Pappy O'Daniel, who would go electioneering accompanied by a "stump band", a music show to whip up popular support. "They'd draw the crowds," explains Joel. "People came to listen to the music and then they'd have to listen to the speech."

The film's southern history, musical and political, looks detailed enough to have been thoroughly researched, but the Coens insist it wasn't. "It's all stuff that to one extent or another we were aware of," Joel says. "It was all back there somewhere and filtered up into the script. We weren't going out and doing research and trying to apply it to a story, it's all much more haphazard. It wasn't like we were trying to create a realistic picture of the time and place so much as an imagined world where all those things intersect - real people and made-up people."

Both are keen that the film shouldn't be taken too seriously, even though for the first time (give or take the socialist convictions of their playwright Barton Fink, and the trendy crypto-fascists in The Big Lebowski) they seem to be focusing on political realities in O Brother. "The political undercurrent of the movie," says Joel, "functions primarily for dramatic purposes, because the politics are frankly pretty primitive. The bad guys are racial bigots and KKK Grand Dragons, and the good guys are the heroes of the movie. So it's all kind of a story thing."

Even so, the film pulls off something of a coup in managing to be more politically flippant than American comedies have managed since Mel Brooks's heyday. The scene where the heroes blithely wander into a torchlit KKK rally might, I suggest to the brothers, strike some viewers as being of questionable taste.

"Taste," says Joel, "has never been something we've worried about." "We're not big on taste," agrees Ethan, his grin broadening even further. "And actually, if you don't pander to undue sensitivities then it ends up usually not being much of a problem. In The Big Lebowski, we dumped the crippled guy out of the wheelchair, and no one seemed to mind that." "Everyone was saying, 'You're going to get a huge amount of mail from disabled people about this'. But it's all in the context of the story, and done by the John Goodman character who's clearly an idiot," says Joel, and Ethan cracks up in laughter.

They are among the most film-literate of mainstream US directors - not indiscriminate movie-guzzlers of the Tarantino school, but scholars of a longer history whose films have referenced Warner Bros gangster pics, Busby Berkeley musicals, and even William Faulkner's fraught Hollywood tenure as a hired script hand.

But the only time they directly used other films as a starting point, the brothers say, was in their 1994 film (probably their least-liked, unjustly so) The Hudsucker Proxy. "We knew we were doing a sort of Capra-esque thing," says Ethan, "but even that was not a specific one of his movies, just the whole sort of' just his thing, right?" They no longer consume films so tirelessly, they admit, largely the result of having children (Ethan has two; Joel has one, with his wife and occasional lead actress Frances McDormand). "We don't watch them together a lot," says Ethan, "and neither of us watches as many as we used to. It's actually gotten more and more hit-and-miss - movies that I planned to see and never end up seeing."

It is generally assumed that the Coens equally represent the presiding genius of their films, but while they share writing credits, Ethan is billed as producer and Joel as director. This means that in Cannes, each film is officially billed as "un film de Joel Coen", although their own production notes specify, "A Film by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen." Confusingly, only Joel's photo appears in the O Brother press kit.

Of the two, it's Ethan who has explored outside ventures. He recently wrote The Naked Man, a film by the duo's regular storyboard artist J Todd Anderson, about a character actor who moonlights as a pro wrestler. The film got a critical thumbs-down. "I thought it was very funny," Ethan says. "I enjoyed it, and not just in a pride of ownership, 'cause it's really J Todd's thing. It didn't get a theatrical release, for reasons I can understand. Its nobody's idea of a big audience mainstream movie."

More prominent was Gates of Eden, the short story collection that Ethan published in 1998. It is frustrating, in a way, because it suggests there's much more to his imagination and linguistic prowess than he is necessarily prepared to put into his movies. More striking than the dry squibs and Chandler parodies are the complex, concise character sketches, and the adolescent anecdotes which hint at the personally revealing movie the Coens have yet to make - although in all honesty, it's hard to imagine them coming up with a screen evocation of a synagogue-going Jewish upbringing in 60s Minnesota.

The next Coen brothers film starts shooting in six weeks. Known as The Barbershop Project, it stars Frances McDormand and Billy Bob Thornton. "It's set in a barbershop and is concerned with the minutiae of the barbering trade in the late 40s." Is that why their distributor has been handing out Dapper Dan's pomade - as a teaser? "It's just a coincidence," says Joel. "There's a lot of hair products in this next film." "Actually," says Ethan, "we use pomade in Raising Arizona as well, as a means of tracking the characters. It's a tired old gag." I scan Joel's faintly slicked locks for traces of his own hair-care product. Would he personally recommend Dapper Dan? "I take no responsibility for that pomade," he says.

? O Brother, Where Art Thou, will be released later this year.

There was also an interview with Joel and Ethan where, I was surprised to learn, that neither of them have read Homer's Odyssey! Clooney was also interviewd and revealed that he agreed to star in the film without reading any of the script purely because he wanted to work with the Coen Brothers. He said that actors dream of "joining their stable of actors".

I will try to convert the video footage to MPEG and post it up soon. Needless to say, having  seen these clips I am more excited than ever and cannot wait until it is released.

The Coens tackle the Odyssey. Peter Bradshaw reports from the Cannes film festival

Monday May 15, 2000

At the apex of the Cannes film festival's all-important first weekend, Joel and Ethan Coen's broad and hyperactive comedy of the deep south was unveiled. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a zany Depression tale - claiming kinship with both Homer's Odyssey and Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels - about three Mississippi chain gang prisoners on the run and looking for buried loot. They meet a hitch-hiker called Tommy who claims to have sold his soul to the devil to play blues guitar, and together the outlaws cut a bluegrass record, which becomes a smash hit while the escapees hightail it across the swampy terrain pursued by the familiar lawmen with their traditional reflecting sunglasses and slobbering bloodhounds.

George Clooney is the ringleader, Everett Ulysses McGill, perpetually fussing with his pomade and hair net and sporting a raffish, faintly Mediterranean moustache. It is strange to see him in another three-guys-and-a-treasure-map movie so soon after Three Kings. He is maturing as a comic performer, however, and he carries the picture with virility and brio. Unlike many a TV-bred name, he has somehow developed the mass and dimensions of a big-screen romantic lead or action hero. But sadly John Turturro as Pete, one of his two sidekicks, is a bit dull and unresponsive, his face permanently stuck in a good ol' boy expression.

O Brother takes its Homeric duties fairly seriously, with sirens tempting our boys and Everett finally returning to his faithless Penelope, played by Holly Hunter. But the parallels don't add much and 30s Mississippi is a pretty dry comic landscape compared with, say, 1912 Dublin. The Coens' Sturges homage resides in the chain-gang details, and the moments in the picture show and old-time religion congregation, but it does not exactly match or develop Sturges's view of what real poverty is and what real film-makers can really do about it. That said, O Brother has enormous gaiety and a terrific soundtrack, and deserves its overwhelming position as the "choice of the Croisette" - Cannes's feel-good movie.

They grenaded a rabbit in Raising Arizona. They bath-churned a ferret in The Big Lebowski. And now it appears animal shovers the Coen Brothers have gone and topped themselves by running over a cow for O Brother, Where Art Thou?

According to Ain't It Cool, the duo's latest sent the American Humane Society into a barmy fit-rage when they screened Brother for Disney execs. The AHS rep, present to add the "no animals were injured during the making of this film..." tag, was so aghast at the squelchy realism of a car smacking into a beef-machine that she thought the Coens had "done a Peckinpah" and actually mutilated a moo. She was assured the cow splat was created through digital voodoo, but the rep had to be shown the shot 10 more times before being convinced.

Here's hoping for the Palmes D'Or award!

Click on the links to see better quality versions of the images which have already previously appeared...

Pic ONE and Pic TWO

Click above image for full size image

The stars: George Clooney, John Turturro, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, Charles Durning, Joel Coen (writer/director), Ethan Coen (writer/producer).

The plot: Clooney is Ulysses Everett McGill, a convict on the run in deepest Mississippi during the 1930?s. Along with his two fellow escapees, McGill?s desperate to find his hidden loot, avoid the law, survive various encounters with, strange Southern types and make it home to his wife Penny (Hunter).

The buzz: Plot specifics for O Brother may be few and far between, but what we do know is that it?s a retelling of Homer?s Odyssey, involving a prison break-out in the Deep South. Oh, and a quick flick through the script which drifted our way revealed such bizarrities as shotgun-weilding children and bi-plane-piloting cows. And the title? That?s lifted from the 1942 Preston Sturges movie Sullivan?s Travels, about a film director who decides to live on the streets so he can learn what it?s like to be homeless. Whether that?s symbolically significant, or just some mischievous, Coenish red-herring-chucking remains to be seen. Still, early reports signal a return to Raising Arizona screwball, and it?s good to see Coen regulars Goodman, Hunter and Turturro joined by cooler than cool Clooney. It may not be out until the end of the year, but any self-respecting Coenophile should already be damp downstairs with excitement?

The Net: www.universalpictures.com

12. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?

RELEASED: Autumn/Winter (UK)   IN SHORT: Chain Of Fools...

THE TALENT: Joel Coen directs George Clooney, John Goodman, Holly Hunter and John Turturro.

THE TALE: Loosely based on Homer's Odyssey, the Coen Brothers' latest follows a trio of 1930's convicts who escape and go on the run. Clooney takes the lead, while Goodman is the more unhinged member of the gang.

THE GOOD: The Coens have never made a truly bad film. Especially not one which stars Goodman.

THE BAD: Some feel they peaked with 1996's Fargo. And The Big Lebowski (1998) didn't exactly make mountains of money.

SHOULD BE... this year's Raising Arizona.   COULD BE... this year's Life.

The actor, who is starring in Joel and Ethan Coen's latest comic brainchild, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", has already shaken countless hands and posed for so many pictures one might imagine he's running for office.

But Clooney hasn't sojourned south for politics. The 38-year-old actor is here for another odyssey altogether. "The script for O Brother is loosely based on Homer's Odyssey," says Clooney, who at the moment is boasting a later-than-five-o'clock shadow and a subtle mustache.

Clooney, who plays Ulysses "Everett" McGill in the film, says the character experiences a journey analogous to that of the classic character, Ulysses. "I read The Odyssey after I read the screenplay, and it was amazing to discover the connections between the two," Clooney says. Clooney adds that the strength of the comedy is not predicated on its connections to the classical work, insisting O Brother's plot stands on its own.

Written by comic geniuses Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers who have made an indelible mark in the independent film world with features such as Raising Arizona, Fargo and The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Is the story of three men's odyssey through the Depression-era American South.

McGill, a Mississippi chain gang prisoner, is running from the law with former chain mates Delmar (Tim Nelson) and Pete (John Turturro) in hopes of claiming a small fortune - proceeds from an armored car heist - buried on McGill's land.

"The humor of this story took me back to Raising Arizona," says a mannerly Clooney, free (for the moment) of his shackles and chains. "I enjoy doing comedy if it's well written, and this script is sidesplittingly funny. Joel and Ethan are just so smart."

The Coen's first approached Clooney with the O Brother script while he was in Phoenix working on the upcoming film Three Kings. "I was nearing the end of a very tough five-month shoot, really ready to go home, and Joel and Ethan flew into Phoenix and handed me the script," recalls Clooney, who had never before worked with the highly respected filmmakers. "They told me they'd written it with me in mind and asked me if I'd do it. I said yes without even reading the first page. They both started laughing and asked me if I wanted to read it before agreeing, but I told them that wouldn't be necessary."

And the actor - who only this year ended his five-year run on NBC's hit show, ER, in order to focus on his film career - says he is amazed O Brother fell into his lap. " I get about five scripts a week, and that's after a large screening process by two agents and the studio," says Clooney, thumbing through a few screenplays piled on a table in his small kitchen. "And out of those, I rarely get even one really good one," says Clooney. "I've ended up with a great project here."

The actor commends the cast and crew of the movie, which has been filmed throughout Mississippi - from the Delta to Vicksburg. And Clooney says the directors have cultivated an amiable environment on the set. "In my mind, these are the greatest directors in the business," says Clooney. "On top of being remarkably good at what they do, they're also really nice people who are very easy to work with. That doesn't happen often in an actor's life."

"Most directors insist on doing 15 to 20 takes of a scene. But these guys, because they're so well prepared, they'll do two takes, and that's that. It's unheard of."

Clooney, who is wearing a wedding ring for the part, locates three storyboards for the day's scenes, including one in a box car Clooney shares with four hobos and his two chainmates. Lining up the small drawings, Clooney explains how attuned the directors are to every detail. "All movies have storyboards, but on this film, I get detailed sides each morning, like these pages here," Clooney says, pointing to the shrunken pages of the day's dialogue. "Andy every morning, every single shot has already been lined up. These guys are the most prepared professionals I've ever seen."

Co-producer John Cameron says Clooney's professionalism is equally laudable. "He's a consumate professional, and I mean that sincerely. He's a tireless worker." Clooney's co-star John Turturro agrees. "George is good at what he does, and he's a really nice person," says Turturro, a favorite of the Coen brothers, who have cast him in several of their films (Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski).

An unassuming Clooney, whose baseball throwing sessions during shooting breaks have begun to gather stadium-worthy crowds, says his labors are mere attempts to avoid "screwing up a really great thing."

"I pinch myself every day, and I can't believe I'm here working with such a great cast," says Clooney. "I'd never met Holly (Hunter) before, but she's as talented an actress as I'll ever work with, and she's a beautiful, smart lady," he says of the Oscar winning actress (The Piano) who plays Penny Wharvey, Everett's estranged wife.

"He (Clooney) walks around and talks to the extras as if he's part of our family," says Richard McDaniel of Vicksburg. "I was in a scene with him, and he was entertaining us with jokes and stories. He's a real showman."

Cameron says he can't imagine how many photographs of Clooney are floating around Mississippi. "He's so nice to everyone, rarely turning down an autograph or picture request. Honestly, I don't know if I've ever seen a more gracious actor."

"I understand the interest," says Clooney. "I grew up in a small town in Kentucky where they shot a series called Centennial, and I followed Raymond Burr around everywhere he went."

"I know what it's like to see someone in person who you've watched on television or seen in the movies, and I don't get upset when people approach me, because I did the same thing," says Clooney, who leaves Jackson this week for four weeks of shooting in L.A.

"I've had a great time here in Jackson," says a well tanned Clooney, propping his feet on a counter in his kitchenette. "I've found some great places I can go eat with my friends, watch a ball game, and not feel like a tourist attraction."

Nearly an hour has passed since Clooney has had to face the lurking humidity and the ever-present autograph seekers. But wardrobe sends word he's needed on the set. It's time for him to shed his black T-shirt and gray shorts for slightly more conspicuous, wide striped prison garb. Clooney, who pulls off the dreadful horizontal stripes with surprising appeal, smiles as he makes his way to a nearby box car, just another stop on this actor's already successful sojourn.

By Paige Porter (staff writer)

The story's about three escaped chain-gangers keeping a step or two ahead of the law while trying to score some buried loot. Their leader is Ulysses Everett McGill (Clooney), who, like Homer's mythical hero, is looking to reunite with his wife (Holly Hunter) and three daughters and assume his rightful position as "the damn paterfamilias." John Turturro plays one of the other cons.

Over the course of their journey they run up against a cross-section of mythical Deep South characters  conniving county-seat politicians, black blues singer "Tommy" Johnson (obviously meant to be Robert Johnson), gangster Baby Face Nelson, some Ku Klux Klansmen, a radio deejay, a country prophet, and a local-yokel posse complete with shotguns and hound dogs. There's even a musical sequence or two.

The title, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, is the same that director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) wants to use for a bleeding-heart message picture about man's inhumanity to man in Preston Sturges' 1941 classic Sullivan's Travels. The chain-gang, bum-on-the-lam idea was derived from the final quarter of the film, in which Sullivan finds some rough going as a hobo, and then as a chain-gang worker.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is pure flavor. Joel and Ethan Coen's dialogue sings with backwoods idiom and alliteration. It's classic Americana  funny, outlandish, occasionally surreal  re-imagined as myth. There's never been a Coen Brothers film I haven't at least somewhat liked. I can't imagine O Brother Where Art Thou? not being, if nothing else, amusing. It may wind up operating on levels I can barely foresee. All I know is that the script is self-aware and all of a piece.

"Blues Traveler will be recording a tune for the upcoming Coen Brothers' film. I heard this from a friend of mine who knows the guitarist; they'll be in Seattle this month recording it."