Like Joel with “Macbeth”, Ethan Coen signs his first solo feature film with “Drive-Away Dolls”: a queer and crazy police comedy co-written with his wife Tricia Cooke and carried by an explosive duo.
What does it talk about ?
Jamie and her friend Marian are looking for a new start, they embark on a road trip but things go wrong when they encounter a group of helpless criminals along the way.
5 good reasons to see “Drive-Away Dolls”
There would be the words used by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke to describe the feature film to our microphone: “Immature, playful, silly, libertine, horny.” Which is totally consistent with the spirit of this lurch. But we can also develop a little more.
1 – Ethan Coen without Joel…
Don’t call them anymore “The Coen Brothers” ! For the moment anyway, because they are preparing their reunion. But, like Joel with his version of Macbeth, Ethan signs his first fiction of his own, after a less than memorable documentary on Jerry Lee Lewis.
A side step whose energy recalls that of the first films made with his brother, four decades ago: “That’s quite right”he tells us. “The first film I made with Joel [Sang pour sang, ndlr] was a lot of fun because it was the first one. It was very stimulating and funny. And it was a bit of the same thing there, because it was the first one we did with Tricia. It was like starting over.”
2 – …but not alone either
“I’m credited as the director of the film, but we co-directed it with Tricia. So it was very similar to my process of working with Joel, but with a different person.” The screenplay for Drive-Away Dolls was indeed co-written by Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke. Who was the editor of The Big Lebowski, O’Brother and The Barber.
Suffice to say that she masters the universe of the Coen brothers. And she is the one who initiated the project: “The story was born with the title, which I had the idea with a friend in a bar”she tells us about this comedy carried by a duo of lesbians.
“I had already taken this type of car [que l’on doit déposer d’un point à l’autre, ndlr] and I’m queer, so it made sense to me. And it was even almost called Drive-Away Dykes [“Les gouines au volant”, ndlr].”
We decided to write a story based on the quirkiness of the title, which was the driving force behind the story.
“I told Ethan about it on the way home, and he also liked the title. Which is an alliteration of where it could go. So we decided to write a story based on the weirdness of the title, which was the driving force behind the story.”
A duo work, from start to finish, which allows them to go against the expression that a film is written three times: in the script, in the filming and in the editing. “It’s true when other people take care of it.”Ethan Coen tells us.
“But for us, it’s the work of directing. When we’re writing a scene, we’re already thinking about angles and cutting. And on set, we’re thinking about editing. For us, it’s one job, no three distinct.”
Universal Pictures International France Geraldine Wiswanathan, Margaret Qualley & Beanie Feldstein
If you liked the very cartoonish aspect of the feature film, know that it very quickly became part of the project. “Some of the wackiest, cartoonish transitions were written into the script”explains the director. “Not all of them, but we knew that in a film like this, the scenes would flow like this.”
“Sometimes we had to know how a scene would start and end”adds Tricia Cooke. “These shots were very specific so they had to be noted in the script, which is a big part of the cutting. It was about knowing, from the beginning, how to move from one scene to the next. But that was part of the writing process.”
3 – A colorful comedy
It’s not just the editing that’s cartoonish in Drive-Away Dolls. At the crossroads of comedy, road trip and thriller, the feature film fully embraces its crazy side. And we challenge you not to laugh while trying to summarize the why and how of the detective intrigue into which the two heroines find themselves drawn.
At times, the whole thing almost resembles a parody of a Coen brothers film, which is offset by its generosity, its humor, its duet (we’ll talk about it again soon) and the feeling of seeing a rare film, the likes of which we rarely see in this moment : “Focus Features was incredibly supportive throughout the process by agreeing to tell this story today that couldn’t be produced in the 2000s.”rejoices Tricia Cooke.
Cyril Moreau / Bestimage
Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival
“They never seemed nervous about the project. The question of the sexual identity of the two heroines was never put on the table. I don’t even remember that we talked about it . They just said they liked the script.” A script in which the influence of the Coen brothers is obvious, but not only that.
“We couldn’t have made this film if John Waters hadn’t done his before. It’s a real source of inspiration. He started out and was very daring by making trashy, promiscuous and super transgressive films. I don’t know if he was a direct influence from Drive-Away Dolls, but maybe he inspired us in the sense that someone was doing it and giving us the opportunity to do it too.”
We couldn’t have made this movie if John Waters hadn’t made his first.
“This kind of freedom that we found in B-series noir films like In Fourth Gear”adds Ethan Coen. “These eccentric exploitation films that blew us away. Fast and free, a little crazy, with something refreshing. But it’s more in retrospect that we see this as an influence.”
“We love the energy of films like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or those of Doris Wishmanwhose freshness comes in particular from the fact that they are made quickly. We wanted to find that on the set, that there is the same disorder as at home”, concludes Tricia Cooke on this aspect. And this spirit is not only found in the staging or editing.
4 – A brilliant duo
There was Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter in Arizona Junior. The killers played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare in Fargo. The Dude Jim Lebowski and Walter Sobchak. O’Brother’s not-so-smart brothers. The list is long, but for the Coen brothers, casting is a way of life. It’s not with Ethan that things change, and prepare to fall for Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Wiswanathan.
Daughter of Andie MacDowell, the first is not really an unknown, she who distinguished herself with Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), Claire Denis (Stars at Noon) or Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Creatures). Those who have not seen the Miracle Workers series will, however, discover the second, expected in Marvel’s Thunderbolts in 2025.
Universal Pictures International France
Margaret Qualley & Geraldine Wiswanathan
Together, they form a formidable and complementary comic duo. Because the energy of Jamie (Margaret Qualley), always looking for a gay bar and a new conquest, responds to the white clown side of Marian and the blasé expressions of Geraldine Wiswanathan. And their chemistry is all the more incredible because they didn’t audition together.
“Geraldine was in Los Angeles and Margaret came to New York from Paris, where she was filming a film”says Ethan Coen. “Each did readings with another actress so we didn’t get to see their chemistry at work until we cast them. We love when an actor comes in and is immediately brilliant, understands the character and makes the scene instantly awesome. That’s what we felt with them.”
We love when an actor comes in and is immediately brilliant, understands the character and makes the scene instantly great.
“Margaret is very free-spirited”Tricia Cooke then tells us. “It’s the energy that emanates from her when she enters a room. She is flexible, moves a lot, is very cheerful.” “The same can be said of Geraldine”continues Ethan Coen. “She’s also very easy, fresh and fun. But she plays this stuck-up character that she knew how to make warm.”
If you too are sensitive to the crazy energy that they bring to this Drive-Away Dolls, know that one of them will meet Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke shortly.
5 – Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke are back soon
“We are about to start shooting another movie, shooting starts in a month”, they tell us when we speak to them last February. At the time when Drive-Away Dolls is released in French cinemas, shooting for Honey Don’t!, as that is the title, must be underway.
“Margaret Qualley will play the lead role and it will be another trashy lesbian B-movie. It will be a detective story in which she plays Detective Honey O’Donoghue who tries to solve a case. Chris Evans And Aubrey Plaza also play in the film. Which is not a comedy. But you can always laugh if you want to.”
And we will be there, probably in 2025, if the film does not come out by the end of the year.
Comments collected by Maximilien Pierrette in Paris on February 19, 2024