The Coen brothers 'Burn' up : movies : ColoradoDaily.com Boulder, CO
source: http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2008/sep/11/coen-burn-after-reading-pitt-clooney/
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Joel and Ethan Coen know their idiots.
They've written every sort of bonehead, nitwit and lamebrain imaginable in both comic and tragic form in such films as "Raising Arizona," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
Yet they may have topped themselves for siring simpletons with the dark comedy "Burn After Reading," which stars usual Coen suspects George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins and new pals Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton.
They're like the Hole in the Head Gang, this bunch that blunders its way through the motions of a spy game touched off by a missing computer disc with some modestly sensitive CIA secrets.
It's a farcical about-face from the Coens' last film, the bleak "No Country for Old Men," which dominated the 2007 Academy Awards, the Coens winning for best-picture, director and adapted screenplay.
Does the Coens' penchant for dopes say anything about what they think of humanity as a whole?
"Jeez, I don't know," Ethan Coen, 50, says in an interview alongside his brother with The Associated Press a few hours before "Burn After Reading" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. "It's a fair characterization of these characters, but boy, bringing it to real life is kind of a strange thing. You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general."
"Right," Joel Coen, 53, continues. "I don't think we would draw or extrapolate anything from those things into generalizations about people or how we feel about people."
The Coens say dummies often just make for good characters and stories.
this is interesting
They've written every sort of bonehead, nitwit and lamebrain imaginable in both comic and tragic form in such films as "Raising Arizona," "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
Yet they may have topped themselves for siring simpletons with the dark comedy "Burn After Reading," which stars usual Coen suspects George Clooney, Frances McDormand and Richard Jenkins and new pals Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton.
They're like the Hole in the Head Gang, this bunch that blunders its way through the motions of a spy game touched off by a missing computer disc with some modestly sensitive CIA secrets.
It's a farcical about-face from the Coens' last film, the bleak "No Country for Old Men," which dominated the 2007 Academy Awards, the Coens winning for best-picture, director and adapted screenplay.
Does the Coens' penchant for dopes say anything about what they think of humanity as a whole?
"Jeez, I don't know," Ethan Coen, 50, says in an interview alongside his brother with The Associated Press a few hours before "Burn After Reading" premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. "It's a fair characterization of these characters, but boy, bringing it to real life is kind of a strange thing. You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general."
"Right," Joel Coen, 53, continues. "I don't think we would draw or extrapolate anything from those things into generalizations about people or how we feel about people."
The Coens say dummies often just make for good characters and stories.
this is interesting
