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Tag: Tricia Cooke

  • Aubrey Plaza and Margaret Qualley on How They Shaped ‘Honey Don’t!’ Characters

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    Writer-director Ethan Coen has a reputation for not wanting actors to change the dialogue in his films.

    But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t open to collaborating with the stars in his latest movie with wife and co-writer Tricia Cooke. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at a New York screening of Honey Dont! earlier this month, Aubrey Plaza, Margaret Qualley and Charlie Day all detailed how they helped shape their distinctive characters in the neo-noir dark comedy detective movie.

    Plaza, who plays Qualley’s character’s love interest MG Falcone, praised Coen and Cooke for being “very collaborative” and said that though she’d heard of Coen not wanting to alter lines, “He did a little bit on this one, which I thought was cool because he wanted to be open to all ideas.”

    Once Plaza was cast, her character changed in a “subtle” way, she recalled.

    “I think once Margaret and I started rehearsing and got into a rhythm there were just certain power dynamics that we wanted to address and make sure to dial them in — make sure the nuance and tiny changes along the way all made sense,” she said. “And I think Margaret and I are really open and willing to play around.”

    Qualley, meanwhile, said she was eager to work with Coen and Cooke again after starring in the first film in their self-proclaimed lesbian B-movie trilogy, Drive-Away Dolls, because of her experience working with them on their “fun set.”

    “I love learning from them and collaborating with them,” she said. And on this project, Qualley, who plays the film’s eponymous small-town private investigator, Honey O’Donahue, and studied classic noir films and books, indicated she played around with altering her voice to make it sound more like honey.

    “I tried to sound a little bit like Lauren Bacall or Humphrey Bogart,” Qualley said. “I read Lauren Bacall’s autobiography and she talked about lowering her voice. And she said that she would climb a mountain and just scream until she lost her voice. I didn’t exactly do that but I tried it.”

    Coen, it seems, has been influenced by both Qualley and Plaza, with the filmmaker saying meeting Qualley on Drive-Away Dolls was key for this film.

    “She was so right for this,” he said. “The obvious way that [Drive-Away Dolls] informed this one and the big way that it informed this one is Margaret.”

    And Plaza recalls Coen saying, when she wrapped Honey Don’t!, that he wrote the off-Broadway play she’s set to star in with her in mind.

    “When I wrapped Honey Don’t, Ethan came into my trailer and said, ‘I wrote this play and I think I wrote it for you and I didn’t even realize it. Would you do it?’ I said, ‘I’ll do anything you ask me to do, basically.’ I loved working with him. So I’d like to continue that creative collaboration,” she said.

    And Day, who was eager to learn from Coen and Cooke, maintained that he “didn’t change a comma” but appreciated the “loose” vibe on set.

    “They really know what they want so it’s just a matter of feeling that as long as I deliver what was scripted, we’ll be in good shape,” he said. “But it’s a loose set; it’s very happy-go-lucky and a lot of good energy.”

    Coen and Cooke previously said they weren’t sure if there would indeed be a third film in their genre trilogy, and they remained noncommittal at the Honey Don’t! screening.

    “I don’t know. There may well be. Actually, we’re working on a couple of things, the third one being one of them. You work on movies and see what happens next,” he said.

    Cooke joked that she has an easy way to complete the trilogy.

    “We’ll just call whatever movie comes next the third one,” she said.

    Focus Features’ Honey Don’t!, also starring Chris Evans and Billy Eichner, is now in theaters.

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    Hilary Lewis

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  • ‘Honey Don’t!’ Filmmakers Ethan Coen & Tricia Cooke On Detective Genre Gender Norms, Next Female Rowing Crew Pic & Potential Joel Coen Reteam – Crew Call Podcast

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    Why haven’t the Coen Brothers worked together for seven years?

    “He borrowed the lawnmower, brought it back and never cleaned the blades. This is bullsh*t!” jokes Ethan Coen. Joel and Ethan Coen’s last movie together was the Netflix multi-story feature, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which for the latter was an epic project to shoot up there with the scope of True Grit and No Country for Old Men.

    Actually, life is what happens when two brothers are making their own projects, separately. Actually, Ethan Coen nearly retired from the craft while Joel Coen continued on making movies like The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington. However, Ethan was then pulled back into filmmaking by his spouse and longtime Coen editor Tricia Cooke with the documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. They tried to make the caper they co-penned, Drive Away Dolls (Ethan prefers the original title Drive Away Dikes), over 20 years ago with Gas Food Lodging filmmaker Allison Anders. Ultimately, husband and wife took on the production themselves.

    Honey Don’t! their second movie with Focus Features, reteams the duo with Drive Away Dolls‘ star Margaret Qualley. The comedy, which closed the Cannes Film Festival, hits theaters this Friday. Qualley plays lesbian private eye Honey O’Donahue, a small-town private investigator, who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church led by Chris Evans’ sex crazed preacher.

    “There aren’t enough lesbian genre movies,” says Cooke, who looked at Honey Don’t! as a way to “switch the gender norms” in the detective movie and have the lead be a “classic femme fatale, kind of sultry, very seductive detective. We wanted to do a butch femme thing playing around with the gender norms of classic detective stories.”

    Cooke and Ethan Coen have a third collaboration in the works which they’re penning: the ten-year reunion of a women’s crew team.

    Coen teases that the project is about “the wilderness of life, roll down the river, which is life — ya, get it?”

    “…meets horror film” adds Cooke.

    We also talk with the duo about their writing shorthand, the state of moviegoing and their approach to testing movies.

    And don’t worry, the Coen Brothers will assemble once again behind the camera.

    Says Ethan, “We’ve written one to do together. I’m sure we’ll do. We got to kind of get on the same schedule page again.”

    Our conversation can be heard here:

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    Anthonypauldalessandro

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  • ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: A Queer Road Trip Without Forward Motion

    ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: A Queer Road Trip Without Forward Motion

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    Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan in Drive Away Dolls. Working Title/Focus Features

    Over the years, the Coen Brothers have developed a distinctive, compelling style of filmmaking, culminating in 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Since then the directors have gone their separate ways—artistically at least. Joel Coen helmed The Tragedy of Macbeth in 2021, an evocative, unsettling take on the iconic Shakespeare play. Drive-Away Dolls marks Ethan Coen’s debut solo feature (he also directed documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind in 2022), offering a glimpse into the filmmaker’s personal creative ambitions and inspirations. 

    DRIVE AWAY DOLLS ★★1/2 (2.5/4 stars)
    Directed by: Ethan Coen
    Written by: Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke
    Starring: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon
    Running time: 84 mins.

    The film, originally titled Drive-Away Dykes, a far better name for the resulting effort, is a collaboration between Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, who co-wrote and edited the movie. It’s got an intriguing premise, paying homage to B-movies from the 1960s and ‘70s, but the storytelling itself falters, often mired in shock value for the sake of shock value. Visually interesting with committed performances, it doesn’t quite stick the landing. 

    Geraldine Viswanathan plays Marian, a young lesbian with a dull job and an uptight demeanor. Her unlikely best friend Jamie, played by Margaret Qualley doing quite the accent, is the exact opposite, a sexed up live-wire who cheats on her cop girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) in the opening minutes of the film. The pair head out on a road trip to Tallahassee by borrowing a car from the local drive-away, which rents people cars if they relocate them for the owner. The girls accidentally end up with the wrong car, which holds a mysterious briefcase and the frozen head in the trunk. A group of criminals are hot on their tail, although they are none the wiser. 

    In theory, it’s a fun story. In execution, it’s a series of scenes and set pieces that never quite gel. Marian and Jamie stop at various locales along the way to Florida, with Jamie encouraging Marian to let down her hair and get laid. This results in hijinks like an all-girl make-out party in someone’s basement and Jamie saying “honey darling” in a Southern accent a lot. By the time they get to Tallahassee, having discovered the contents of their trunk, Jamie and Marian’s relationship shifts, inciting a romance that doesn’t feel earned or true. Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon play small roles, but despite Pascal’s high billing he is barely in the movie. Kudos to Coen, though, for a scene that recalls the actor’s most famous Game of Thrones moment. 

    Pedro Pascal in Drive Away Dolls. Wilson Webb/Working Title /Focus Features

    On the plus side, Drive-Away Dolls is extremely gay. There’s a lot of sex, all of it between women, and Coen never exploits the girl-on-girl action or makes it feel voyeuristic, although some of it is purposefully wild (see: shock value). Cooke identifies as queer, which clearly helped the film’s authenticity, and the film smartly doesn’t attempt represent all lesbian experiences or tastes. The tone is light-hearted (although critics in my press screening didn’t find the movie particularly funny), and Cooke has said she wanted to make a queer film that isn’t over serious or dramatic. It’s a great addition to the queer movie canon with actresses committed to telling the story. 

    Drive-Away Dolls never sets itself up to be realistic or grounded—the colorful psychedelic interludes add to this effect—but even in its own version of reality there’s just something missing. It’s stylish with witty dialogue, but for a road-trip movie there’s not much forward motion. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is just a whimsical trip with quirky characters and little depth. Maybe we’re never supposed to really understand or care about anyone’s motivation or background. There are great moments and a great idea here. Without that connective substance, though, the car gets stuck in neutral.

    Observer Reviews are regular assessments of new and noteworthy cinema.

    ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: A Queer Road Trip Without Forward Motion

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    Emily Zemler

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  • Ethan Coen teams up with wife Tricia Cooke for road trip comedy ‘Drive-Away Dolls’

    Ethan Coen teams up with wife Tricia Cooke for road trip comedy ‘Drive-Away Dolls’

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    click to enlarge

    Focus Features

    Margaret Qually and Geraldine Viswanathan eye the MacGuffin in the trunk.

    One of the many pleasures — and occasional frustrations — of the Coen Brothers is their predictable unpredictability. From the outset of their career — which began with the markedly dissimilar (and remarkably accomplished) quartet of Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, and Barton Fink — Joel and Ethan Coen have refused to conform to anyone’s expectations other than their own.

    That principle has long guided the Coens’ work: More than 25 years ago, when I attended the junket for The Big Lebowski, the brothers were asked whether they fretted about following up the relatively naturalistic Fargo and its multi-Oscar-winning bona fides with a project so wildly different in tone. Ethan blithely dismissed any anxiety: “It might be a worry if we worked consistently in one genre, made one specific kind of movie and then leaped to something else. But that’s not the case with us. We do different kinds of movies, to the extent that this might disappoint or please people who had seen our previous movies. It’s never really an issue. In our minds, they’re all just too different.”

    Given such a defiantly iconoclastic approach, Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls therefore shouldn’t surprise, but even dedicated Coen-heads can be forgiven if they’re a bit taken aback by the comic thriller’s queer content and playfully exuberant sex — neither of which is evident in the filmmaker’s previous work. Because I purposely chose not to read about Drive-Away Dolls in advance, I found the centrality of lesbian culture in the film entirely unexpected, and an uncomfortable thought kept intruding: Is the presumably hetero Coen really the appropriate director for this material?

    As it turns out, I needn’t have worried: Coen’s wife, Tricia Cooke, although only credited as co-writer and editor because of Directors Guild rules, actually served as the film’s co-director, and despite their longtime marriage, she continues to identify as queer. As the couple explained in a joint MovieMaker interview last year, Cooke told Coen that she was a lesbian when he first asked her out, but they eventually established a polyamorous relationship, with both having other partners. Normally, this gossipy backstory wouldn’t have relevance in a review, but knowing that Cooke was a primary driver of Drive-Away Dolls helped mitigate my concerns over Coen’s potentially leering male gaze and the authenticity of its portrayal of the queer experience.

    Of course, Drive-Away Dolls isn’t particularly concerned with realism in either its farcical plot or its colorful details. Early in the proceedings, a comically wall-mounted dildo clues us in to the film’s fantastical bent: The phallus makes for an undeniably funny (and prescient) gag, but — and I’m speculating here! — it would also seem somewhat, um, impractical.

    Proudly featuring a trash aesthetic, the film consciously emulates the exploitation films of the ’60s and ’70s, with Cooke and Coen citing the works of John Waters, Russ Meyer and nudie specialist Doris Wishman as inspirations. (The filmmakers’ preferred title, Drive-Away Dykes, further speaks to its transgressive spirit.) Cooke foregrounds the film’s deliberate cheesiness with outlandishly over-the-top editing transitions, and enigmatic flashbacks periodically interrupt the main storyline with tackily retro psychedelic imagery. There’s a clear risk that some of these devices will read as simple filmmaking ineptitude, but once we recognize their winking intent, they add to the film’s parodic fun, which includes nods to Tarantino’s signature car-trunk shots and to the mysterious briefcases in Kiss Me Deadly and Pulp Fiction.

    In fact, this film’s briefcase — whose contents I’ll resist revealing — is the engine propelling Drive-Away Dolls. When Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a talkative, carefree Texan, cheats on lover Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), a volatile cop, she’s booted to the street. The newly homeless Jamie opportunistically seizes on uptight lesbian friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and insists on accompanying her on a planned road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, Florida. Quickly finding a “drive-away” car bound for their exact destination, they sign on to pilot the vehicle south and hit the road, but their seeming good luck proves a case of mistaken identity: The actual intended drivers — a pair identified collectively in the credits as the Goons (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) — arrive shortly after to pick up the car only to find it already gone. Dispatched by their apoplectic boss (Colman Domingo) to track the women and recover the vehicle, which has the aforementioned briefcase stowed in its trunk, the amusingly squabbling Goons begin a pursuit complicated by Jamie’s highly indirect path to Florida — a circuitous route largely planned around visits to lesbian bars, with the goal of getting glum, sex-deprived Marian laid.

    Although Drive-Away Dolls is the first narrative film that Ethan Coen has made without his brother (he also directed the 2022 documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, which recently began streaming on Amazon Prime), the film’s mix of comedy and crime obviously recalls such previous collaborations as Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Ladykillers, and, especially, The Big Lebowski. Cooke’s influence, however, seems clear, not just in the queer subject matter but also in the film’s engaging looseness, its free-spirited lack of inhibition. In that respect, the film harks back to the Coens’ earliest films, shot by Barry Sonnenfeld, which delighted in pushing hard at extremes in their formal inventiveness.

    But as much as I appreciated many aspects of Drive-Away Dolls — including abbreviated appearances by Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon, and an unbilled Miley Cyrus, and a droll performance by the seemingly ubiquitous and always exemplary Bill Camp — I ultimately found the film only fitfully funny. I did laugh uproariously at a confrontation between the Goons and a volcanically angry Sukie, who has no hesitation in narcing on her former girlfriend, but Drive-Away Dolls lacks the astonishingly sustained highs of the Coens’ best comedies (Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski), even if it avoids the lows of such misfires as Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Given the highly personal nature of humor, your own laugh mileage may vary, but the ride provided by Drive-Away Dolls remains worth taking.

    Film Details

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    Cliff Froehlich

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