A Play is Not a Movie: Ethan Coen Discovers the Stage

No one does macabre and quirky like the brothers Coen. I’ve been a fan since their very first film, Blood Simple, back in 1984. I love the comedy of Raising Arizona, the poignance of Inside Llewyn Davis, the grim high seriousness of No Country for Old Men, the sheer goofiness of The Big Lebowski. I particularly cherish Fargo (1996) as perhaps the most superlative blending of the Coens’ various moods and talents.

Given that both Coens have so spectacularly succeeded (over the last 35 years) as writers, directors, and editors of motion pictures, it’s not surprising to see them branching out in other artistic directions. Recently Ethan Coen has been trying his hand at playwriting, exploring a new medium that’s perhaps not as flexible as film. The Mark Taper Forum, a semi-adventurous theatre space at the Los Angeles Music Center, has recently premiered a suite of Coen’s short plays, under the umbrella title, “A Play is a Poem.” The city’s number-one theatre critic, Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times, came down extra-hard on this effort, essentially advising Coen to stick to movies and suggesting that the theatre was wasting time and money by giving one of its coveted slots to a production because it was fronted by a big Hollywood name  I myself was somewhat less critical, and yet I can’t deny that the five playlets are slight indeed, mostly skits of various degrees of interest united by no common theme or thread.

The Coen film most recently in theatres is 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a collection of six vignettes, some of them based on existing tales of the Old West by such authors as Jack London.  Maybe this is part of a new trend for the Coens: producing short, punchy dramatic pieces rather than making the effort to sustain a longer, more complex narrative.  But though the episodes in Buster Scruggs reflect different moods, ranging from the comic to the eerie, they are unified by their western setting and by an ongoing fascination with the abrupt end of life. A Play is a Poem is a far different matter. Each of these plays takes place in a different environment and requires a different (and often cartoonish) accent. “The Redeemers” is a dark, gruesome tale featuring some hillbilly yokels and leading the audience to a collective groan as the lights go out. “A Tough Case” is a kind of film noir parody featuring a fast-talking detective à la Sam Spade. In “At the Gazebo,” the accents are 19^th century Southern, and the dialogue is so repetitious that (I admit it!) I nodded off midway through. The Southern belle and her would-be beau of this playlet are replaced in “The Urbanes” by New Yawkers struggling with their kitchen-sink lives (I did love the rattle of the El repeatedly going by their grimy window.)

The last of the plays, “Inside Talk,” was my favorite, because it trades upon Coen’s inside knowledge of the ways of Hollywood. Its central figure is a movie exec contending with two would-be producers trying to sell him on their various projects. One proposes “Das Boot on a Boat,” overlooking the fact that the original took place on a World War II submarine. The second hypes “Sobibor, Mon Amour,” a romcom with flashbacks to the Holocaust. Priceless to me was the exec’s disdain for the screenwriter’s perspective on all this: “What does the writer know? If he knew anything, he wouldn’t be a writer.” This casual dismissal of the writer as unimportant is classic Hollywood thinking. As, of course, the Coens know all too well. 

Buster Scruggs: The Ballad of Oscar Morning

The morning of the Oscar nomination announcements always brings its share of surprises. This year, as always, gives us plenty of delights and disappointments: I’d personally bring more attention to First Man, and not forget about Widows so completely. But it’s a good list, marked by an international flavor that’s rather new. Look at all the love for Roma, a foreign-language film that’s both spectacular and, well, arty. Not only was first-timer Yalitza Aparicio nominated as Best Actress (along with beloved veteran Glenn Close), but the relatively unheralded Marina de Tavira was singled out for her complex portrayal of the mother of a Mexican family held together by its nanny. I’m also surprised by the attention given to a Polish film, Cold War, whose Pawel Palikowski was nominated in the Best Director slot that most had considered reserved for Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born).

Among my favorite nominations: Spike Lee, a first-timer who has long deserved Academy recognition, has finally gotten it for BlacKkKlansman. And I’m gratified that the expected acting nods for Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? are augmented by a nomination for Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whity’s smart, witty adapted screenplay. In the same category, there’s a delightful surprise: Joel and Ethan Coen have been nominated for adapting several short stories for their mostly-original compilation film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

The Coens, who’ve been writing, directing, editing, and producing movies since 1984’s Blood Simple, are perhaps best known for Fargo and No Country for Old Men. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is one of their lesser efforts, which hardly means it’s without merit. The Coens are capable of being hilariously funny. (See one of my all-time favorites, Raising Arizona.) But their sense of humor tends to be dark, and they also have a real affinity for the grotesque. (Wood chipper, anyone?) It’s the grimmer side of their work that shows itself off in Buster Scruggs. The opening tale in the film, featuring a sweet-singing, fast-drawing cowpoke, has its ludicrously funny side, as when its hero lives out the thrust of its Oscar-nominated ballad, “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings.” But the laughs soon become more hollow as each succeeding vignette seems more ominous than the one before. The ending of “Meal Ticket,” about an impresario touring the old west with his unfortunate main attraction, is sad, and Zoe Kazan in “The Gal Who Got Rattled” just about breaks your heart.  By the film’s final segment, “The Mortal Remains,” we’re in haunted territory, with a fadeout that’s eerie and unforgettable.

Most of us have, at some point in our lives, listened to spooky tales around a campfire. Such tales can raise the hair on the back of your neck, and make you wonder what’s lurking in the shadows. Ghost stories are disturbing, and yet we must admit we enjoy getting the shivers, contemplating our mortality in ways we wouldn’t do in the light of day. Sitting in the dark of a movie theatre is another great way to safely experience the more ominous side of life. That’s one reason horror films have never gone out of style. My former boss, Roger Corman, knew that fact well, as did the makers of movies like one of 2018’s most effective (and pretty much Oscar-ignored) movies, A Quiet Place. Back in 1945, a British compilation film called Dead of Night gave a lot of people the creeps. (Its most famous segment features a ventriloquist and his all-too-human dummy.) The scares in Buster Scruggs are quieter, but won’t soon be forgotten.

Barton Fink in Hollywood, Where Writers Sink Slowly in the West

When actor John Mahoney passed away earlier this month at the age of 77, most commentators mentioned the popular sitcom, Frasier, in which he played Kelsey Grammer’s blue-collar dad. I have to thank my colleague, Carl Rollyson, for reminding me of Mahoney’s very different role in the Coen brothers’ outrageous 1991 Hollywood saga, Barton Fink. Carl, a prolific biographer now researching literary giant William Faulkner, loves Mahoney’s portrayal of W.P Mayhew, a celebrated novelist-turned-Hollywood-hack who (with his Southern charm and ever-present whiskey flask) is an obvious Faulkner clone.

In Barton Fink, Mayhew/ Faulkner represents the way the movie industry uses and abuses writers. With his talent squandered on scenarios for unworthy entertainments, he might as well be dead—which is why he behaves as though he already were. Fink himself (as played by John Turturro) also suggests a familiar literary type. His character reflects the career of Clifford Odets, a 1930s Broadway darling whose gritty kitchen-sink dramas (like Awake and Sing!) chronicle the triumphs and failures of the common man. Barton Fink is first seen on the evening of his greatest theatrical triumph, being feted by nightclub-goers who celebrate his contributions to the New York stage. The applause may be grand, but Fink’s agent advises that it’s time to cash in: he’s been offered a lucrative Hollywood screenwriting contract, and it behooves him to make some real money, before returning to Broadway with his wallet fattened and his dignity intact.

Except that things don’t go as planned. Barton’s time on the coast in fact comes to seem something like Dante’s descent into Hell, with horrors multiplying at every turn. The studio houses him in the seedy Hotel Earle, where the paper is peeling off the walls, a creepy Steve Buscemi seems to be the only staffer, and the motto for guests is “a day or a lifetime.” (The Hotel Earle is surely a 1940s version of Hotel California, but by no stretch of the imagination can it be called “lovely.”) Even when Fink enters swankier surroundings, like the office of the Hollywood mogul who hired him, the atmosphere remains nightmarish. His new boss and the lackeys who surround him barely let Barton get a word in edgewise, and he spots the great W.P. Mayhew vomiting in a toilet stall. Worst of all, he can’t get started on the wrestling picture he’s been assigned because his creative juices seem to have dried up for good.

I won’t get into the film’s unexpected twists and turns except to say that they somehow include his one new-found friend, a jolly insurance salesman  played by John Goodman. Let’s just note that Barton Fink’s California sojourn goes from bad to worse, until he’s faced with an unspeakable tragedy. Years ago, when I saw this film in first-run, I didn’t know what to make of it. This time around, because I’ve spent so much energy pursuing the life of a writer, I’ve found myself focusing on the implications of Barton’s writer’s block. I know what it’s like to be stymied at just the moment when you need to be most brilliant. I know what it feels like when the words don’t come. One detail I’m sure I overlooked back in 1991: it is only when Barton is faced with the grimmest, the most grotesque, of real-life circumstances that he can turn his back on the world, approach his typewriter, and begin happily pounding out a story. The whole film, then, can be seen as an elaborate metaphor for the act of creation: it’s only when life is at its harshest that the imagination kicks in.