Do the Coen Brothers want to put their wacky spin on the Greek mythology tale of Hercules? Or are they just fucking with us?
Anythings possible, right? They did transform the story of the Iliad into “O, Brother Where Art Though.”
In a NYTimes profile of the very odd-duck directors (if you’ve ever met them in person, you know they’re extremely socially weird) this past long weekend, the siblings talk about their youth which leads them to claiming they’ve always wanted to do a Hercules movie.
“There wasn’t HBO or movies on demand. There wasn’t a lot of choice,” Joel said, adding that they watched “a lot of Hercules movies” and that they and [George] Clooney have wanted to do a Hercules movie for years.
Knowing them, it’s actually true. It wouldn’t be so odd if the twosome didn’t laugh their asses off every time the subject came up like they were in on some dumb in-joke. Talking the low cost of their movies, which in turn is low stakes for studios, they once again mentioned the idea.
“Even our Hercules movie would not be terribly expensive,” Joel Coen said. (The sound of laughter is again heard.)
Again, anythings possible. If they had Clooney in mind, surely it’d be a screwball-like take on the Greek tale, or one would assume anyhow.
Tangentially, and nothing to do with the above subject, the rest of the interview is kind of annoying in that it has that tried and true projection that journalists always do. “Burn After Reading,” can’t possibly just be what it is, a fun comedy, right? It has to be a response to the seriousness of “No Country For Old Men,” right?
Nope. “It was nothing like that. To tell you the truth, we started writing down actors we wanted to work with. We’ve never navigate anything,” Ethan said. We sort of love these guys for this. At the “No Country For Old Men,” press conference at the NYFilm Festival last year, the brothers shot down all kinds of far-too-analytical looks at the film like a shooting gallery and it was rather amusing.
Well, the reality of this is that the Coen’s were trained by Sam Raimi and he’s team back on the 80’s, they took his visual style and they took his funnys ideas you know the whole Three Stooges thing from the Evil Dead movies (have you seen Clooney doing Bruce Campbell in O brother?).
Back then Raimi talk a lot about his desire to do a revival of Hercules, a wish that came true in the 90’s with his Hercules TV series, funny, campy stuff…So it’s not a surprise to me.