Joel David Coen may not ring any bells to the majority of the public, and I tend to believe that the same would happen if someone uttered the name Ethan Jesse Coen. But the apparition of the Coen Brothers would make an entire cinema audience Hail! in admiration. This means neither that the two names are to be taken into consideration as creative minds only when united, nor that the public I refer to might be somewhat narrow-minded or ignorant. This is how I make my point: one of the most interesting personal quotes of Joel Coen refers to something said by his brother, Ethan Coen, who once described the way they work together: ‘’one of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat. That’s why there needs to be two of us – otherwise he’s gotta type one-handed. That’s how you <<collaborate>> with someone else’’.
The Coen Brothers are humorously named ‘’The Two-Headed Director’’ and the above quotation supports the epithet entirely. Such being the case, their directing should rank double in quality. Word-wide public and judges seem to follow this belief, as the Brothers were not once or twice congratulated with Oscars, Golden Globe, AFI or BAFTA awards. Film names which pertain to this category are Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007) or A Serious Name (2009).
The Coen Brothers’ upcoming cinematic production, Hail, Caesar!, is said to be released two years from now. Although such a time lapse might seem discouraging, fans will cheer at reading that the shooting of the movie will start on Monday, 10 November 2014. Filming locations include Los Angeles studio and city surroundings. The plot of the movie is set to take place “during the latter years of Hollywood’s Golden Age” and “follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer who is presented with plenty of problems to fix.” The ‘’fixer’’ in the description matches the profile of real-life Eddie Mannix, an American film studio executive, born in 1891, who became general manager and vice-president of Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. Nonetheless, Slate.com is not very certain of this hypothesis and considers it a mere possibility. On the other hand, Hollywood Reporter reads that the movie ‘’tells the comedic tale of Eddie Mannix, a fixer who worked for the Hollywood studios in the 1950s. The story finds him at work when a star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming’’, targeting the upcoming Coen Brothers’ artistic work as a mixture of old school comedy and police novels.
The cast of Hail, Caesar! definitely includes George Clooney, probably the actor who collaborated the most with ‘’The Two-Headed Director’’ and who plays the part of Baird Whitlock. The list of actors cites names such as Tilda Swinton (recently seen in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel), Scarlett Johansson, Ralph Fiennes, Josh Brolin or Patrick Fischler. The release date of the Coen Brothers’ movie is 5 February 2016.