And lo, the forces of boredom and time or what have you separated the Coen Brothers temporarily, and gave us a clearer view of what each brings to the team. First was Joel Coen’s THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, a beautiful but straight forward black-and-white rendition of the Shakespeare jam. What struck me most about it other than the look was how naturally Denzel Washington could say the original dialogue and still sound exactly like the modern Denzel we know and love. I hope some day we get to hear him do that with some Coen dialogue.
Now we have Ethan Coen’s first solo directing joint*, an original piece written with his wife Tricia Cooke, who’s also editor (as she was on THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE NAKED MAN, O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? and THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE). Titled HENRY JAMES’ DRIVE-AWAY DYKES on the credits, this is a goofy lesbian road comedy about a pair of mismatched friends doing a drive-away (getting paid to drive someone’s car one way) from Philadelphia to Tallahassee.
*he says he and Cooke both directed but they didn’t really care about the credits and he was already in the DGA
Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan, BLOCKERS) is an uptight book lover headed to visit her family. She also insists Tallahassee “has live oak and Spanish moss” as well as “good birding”. Jamie (Margaret Qualley, THE NICE GUYS) is her wild southern party girl friend who just wants to leave town because she got kicked out by her cop girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein, LADY BIRD). Probly shouldn’t’ve answered the phone “don’t call me during sex” while cheating.
They hit the road, and Jamie (who alternately calls Marian “honey darling,” “honey babe,” “honey girl,” “honey doll,” and “sugar sweet”) decides her #1 goal is to get her friend laid. So they stop at every lesbian bar along the way, go to a college soccer team’s basement makeout party, etc. It’s a mismatched buddy sex comedy because Jamie has a hard time not hooking up but Marian finds the whole thing distasteful and keeps returning to the motel to read The Europeans by Henry James.
Unbeknownst to them, Curlie (Bill Camp, HOSTILES), the guy at the car rental place, pulled a RED ROCK WEST, mistook them for somebody else he was expecting, and gave them a car with a very particular package in the trunk. So now they’re in the sights of some kind of gangster or something called Chief (Colman Domingo, voice of Unicron, TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS) and his two bickering henchmen, Flint (C.J. Wilson, A VIGILANTE) and Arliss (Joey Slotnick, “Burger Jungle Manager”, IDLE HANDS). The simple but very effective joke with them is that Flint is a normal mob enforcer type who threatens and manhandles people, Arliss always calls him an idiot for not first trying to just be nice and ask people direct questions, and Arliss is repeatedly shown to be correct.
So these guys are coming for them, questioning people who know them, and who they have encountered along the way, but for a while Marian and Jamie have no idea about that, they’re just in a raunchy buddy comedy. A couple of the big names on the credits pop up in small roles, the type that are both funny in content and in the thought of “ha ha, he came in just to do that.” In the case of Matt Damon (TITAN A.E.) it’s not surprising to see him pop in for a cameo or guest role (see: CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND, THOR: RAGNAROK, NO SUDDEN MOVE), but this is a particularly rich one. In the case of Damon’s THE GREAT WALL co-star Pedro Pascal you gotta hope he had a sense of humor about the fact that he gets to be in Coen movie but it’s just this particular part.
As much as I love all the Coen Brothers styles, their broad comedies hit me the hardest, and this is definitely in that category. It has by far the most jokes about dildos of any Coen movie so far, which is a natural extension of the subject matter, but also gives me theories about who wrote a certain part of BURN AFTER READING. It’s an intentionally simple plot just designed to bring together some funny characters in silly situations, so it feels very light and maybe insubstantial. But then again it has an essential sweetness to it in this friendship, the way they’re both a pain in the ass in their own humorous way and you can see them both realizing it and learning to change for each other.
I certainly wouldn’t put it on the same shelf as THE BIG LEBOWSKI or RAISING ARIZONA, but I also don’t think it’s a fair comparison, since those are so meticulously detailed and produced. This is a low budget quickie that happened when semi-retired director husband and pretty-new-to-directing wife decided to dig out an old script as a fun project during Covid lockdown. It’s probly closest to BURN AFTER READING, but with more of a John Waters/Russ Meyer spirit.
Based only on THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH and DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, I gotta assume that Joel leans heavier on the technical directing stuff and Ethan on the writing. There are some touches to this, mostly post-production choices, that I think are very cheesy, which I would not say of MACBETH or any movie the brothers ever made together. They keep using these corny wipes that manage to make an effortlessly hilarious movie feel like it’s trying too hard to be funny. And there are a bunch of not-ready-for-prime-time psychedelic sequences, often set to “Maggot Brain,” to impressionistically represent part of the backstory. I think they were going for the feel of the perfect BIG LEBOWSKI dream sequences, but landed a little closer to a fractal CD-ROM.
It also has more digital gloss to it than any Coen Brothers movie, but that’s me being picky. The exaggerated lighting and colors look pretty and fit the tone well. They hired cinematographer Ari Wegner (IN FABRIC) on the basis of ZOLA, since that also took place largely in a couple different hotel rooms. The production designer is Yong Ok Lee (THE FAREWELL, MINARI).
But despite the different (for good and bad) visual approach, you could pretty much hear any line spoken in the movie and know it was by a Coen brother. To me it’s a constant delight just to hear the odd language choices, the repeated phrases, the quick banter where characters can somehow have one foot on each side of the border between dumb and witty. So it feels bad by the sky high standards of Coen Brothers movies, but it made me laugh more than anything I’ve seen since BOTTOMS, so it was good.
We also now have evidence to support that both Coens are great with actors. Qualley in particular seems like a pantheon Coens character as soon as she starts talking – someone I’d want to see in a movie regardless of plot, I just want to see what she says and does, whatever situation she’s in. Just one of her funny quirks: how she tries to scare Marian about how they’ll be treated in the south but then walks up to the front desk in a small hotel and says, “Hiya. Do you know where the Butter Churn is? It’s a dyke bar. Or do you have, like, a Time Out Wilmington?”
Viswanathan’s role is more subdued, but crucial to the chemical equation. To me she’s the more relatable one, but also I want her to listen to Jamie and have a fun time. Often you have one character who’s outrageous and another character who’s gonna freak out at the outrageousness; Marian works well because she mostly frowns and rolls her eyes. If someone annoys her she won’t give in, even if it’s a cop who’s gonna arrest her for it.
It’s a period piece, set in 1999. I wonder if Jamie or Marian saw THE BIG LEBOWSKI (released in 1998, set in 1991)? There are references to Y2K, Ralph Nader, and same sex marriage only being legal in some states, but apparently there’s no meaning to the choice of time period other than Coen and Cooke wrote the script in the early 2000s, based on Cooke’s experiences in lesbian bars a few years earlier. Knowing only that this was a Coen brother and his wife, I’d wondered if anyone would accuse them of overstepping their bounds in making a movie all about lesbians, but then I read in a Moviemaker article about their “non-traditional” marriage. She identifies as lesbian but they became friends on the set of MILLER’S CROSSING and “the relationship evolved.” They have two kids and have been married for 31 years but have for some time also had separate partners outside of the marriage. They wrote DRIVE-AWAY DYKES (original title) “many, many years ago as a way for us to spend time together,” according to Cooke. In 2007 it was announced with their friend Allison Anders directing, but they couldn’t find the financing. “At that time, it was possible for the industry to conceive of serious gay stories, but not trashy, stupid gay stories,” Coen said.
It’s not for me to decide, but having more room for trashy, stupid gay stories seems like a positive step to me. Even if it’s not, I had a great time with this one. It didn’t set the world on fire (disappeared from theaters too fast for me to see it), but I’m glad Coen & Cooke are already trying to do another one called LET’S GO BEAVERS.
April 17th, 2024 at 3:10 pm
I think “insubstantial” is a good descriptor for this one. It’s fun enough, though. I didn’t find it *as* funny as this review describes, but I thought that final scene with Chief and his henchman was hilarious. The reveal of what the animosity has been about this whole time and then the sudden escalation made me laugh pretty hard.