Hail, Caesar! is Joel and Ethan Coen’s homage to the old Hollywood studio system. It takes place in 1950s Hollywood and centers on a studio executive and “fixer” by the name of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who, on any given day, has to put numerous fires and keep the studio’s big stars out of the gossip columns.
But on one particularly bad day, the studio’s big star, the buffoonish Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) goes missing, which is a big deal since he is starring in the studio’s grandest film to date – a sword and sandal epic about a Roman tribune who encounters the power of Jesus Christ. So it’s up to the multitasking Eddie to figure out how to get him back (and it has something do with Trumbo-like writers, all hardcore Communists).
The film also stars Channing Tatum, as Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelley/Donald O’Connor type star who has one helluva a musical number; Scarlett Johansson as DeeAnna Moran, an Esther Williams-type star whose really not all that “sweet”; newcomer Alden Ehrenreich (Beautiful Creatures) as Hobie Doyle, a young Western star ill-fitted to do much else; Tilda Swinton as twin sister gossip columnists (yes, like THOSE gossip columnists of the 1950s); Ralph Fiennes as director Laurence Laurentz who wants to do serious films; and Jonah Hill, as Joseph Silverman, an accountant who’ll do anything for the job, including going to jail or adopting a big star’s baby.
At a recent press conference, some of the boys – specifically Clooney, Brolin, Ehrenreich, Hill and Tatum – chatted with us about working with the very laid back and cool Coen brothers.
Step 1: Get a part in a Coen brothers movie
George Clooney: “After O Brother, Where Are Thou? [the Coen brothers] pitched me this movie called Hail, Caesar! In which one of the characters is an idiot actor – and I wondered why they thought of me – who gets kidnapped by Communists. And the only line they pitched me was Alden’s line, ‘This is bad for movie stars everywhere.’ That just killed me. So they never wrote the script and every time I did press, I’d say, ‘Well, I’m doing a Coens movie next called Hail, Caesar!‘ and then Joel and Ethan would call me and say, ‘Stop saying that! We haven’t written it.’ And then they called a couple of years ago and said, ‘Okay, we wrote it, so let’s go do it.’”
Josh Brolin: “I’ve always spent a lot of time since No Country for Old Men kind of injecting myself into their lives. And even with their other movies I wasn’t involved in, I’d watch them edit because I really enjoy watching them go through their process. Very economical and educational process. And I remember asking them when they were doing Inside Llewyn Davis what movie they were thinking of doing next, just out of curiosity and they mentioned this movie and that [Clooney] would most likely be involved, even though they asked him about it 10 years ago. And I said, ‘Cool,’ but obviously wanting to say, ‘Is there a part in it for me? I really enjoyed working with you again. Maybe you could pay me more next time because you always pay me nothing?’ And then I got a call asking if I wanted to do this thing.”
Alden Ehrenreich: “I just auditioned for it, read with the casting director. Obviously, being the Coens, I loved their films and wanted to be a part of it. And then came in and read for them and they laughed throughout the audition. So then I came back and read for them again. And then the casting director called me and told me to keep my phone on. I thought they were just going to call me and say thank you for coming in and you didn’t get it. Then they whole day went by and nothing and I thought so maybe they weren’t going to even do that. And then the next day I got a call from the Coens and they said, ‘Hi. This is Coen brothers,’ I mean, they said [their names] individually.”
Clooney: “They actually talk like that. ‘Hi, we’re the Coen brothers.’” [laughter]
Ehrenreich: “They said, ‘Have you talked to your agent?’ and I said no, and they said, ‘So you don’t know?’ Know what? ‘You got the part.’ It was really thrilling.”
Jonah Hill: “They had written an email, together, it was one email from the both of them. And it was so beautifully and hilariously written. It was written in their dialogue, as the Coen brothers. They said it’s a very, very small part and I just said yes right away without reading it. I can’t speak for other actors but I can’t imagine an actor who wouldn’t die to work with the Coens.”
Channing Tatum: “I said no a bunch for… like a little while. No, it was a similar thing, I got an email from them. You don’t even read the script before you say yes. You can’t type ‘I’m in’ quick enough.”
[Tatum and Hill then have a little banter]
Hill: “We were on tour together promoting a movie and we both trying to like humble brag, like subtly brag to each other that we were going to be in a Coen brothers movie.
Tatum: “’Dude, it’s great, just got a Coen brother email.’”
Hill: “’Yeah, it’s pretty cool, think I’m going to do it.’ All the time bragging to each other and it was the same movie. But Channing’s part was quadruple the size of mine, so…”
Tatum: “I didn’t know that, actually. I thought we both had small parts. In the script, it only says, ‘Walks into a big song and dance. Then they dance and he does a knee slide to a bucket.’ So I thought you might see like an eight-count or something and then a knee slide to a bucket.”
Hill: “Actually my email said, ‘Are you interested in playing a bucket?’ [Laughter] I don’t want brag, but, I’m probably going to play the bucket.”
Step 2: See if you can get the Coens to argue
Brolin: “They always ask if the Coens argue, and they just don’t. It’s weird. It’s bizarre.”
Clooney: “You try to get them into fights. Joel will come over with a direction and I go, ‘That is so much better than what Ethan just said.’ Nothing.”
Brolin: “’That’s not what Ethan said. He told me not to tell you. You might want to talk to him’”
Ehrenreich: George, when I met you, and you got in the car, and you said, ‘So, which one do you like more?
Clooney: [Chuckling] “And we were mic’d inside the car.”
Step 3: How to change any of the Coens’ dialogue
Tatum: “You pretty much said it how they wrote it and not because you… like, just because you can’t have a better idea than what they’ve already written. It’s amazing.”
Hill: “Greater minds have thought it through.”
Brolin: “With Woody Allen — I worked with him twice — he was like, ‘Whatever you want to change, it’s up to you. If you want to change the words, make them your own.’ Then you get to the set, and you actually maybe ad lib something. And he says, ‘Yes, but that’s not what it says.’ ‘But you said I could change it.’ And he goes, ‘Oh, I know. And that’s great, and you should. But that’s not what it said.’ Joel and Ethan are more like, if you have an idea that fits better than what they’ve come up with and you collaboratively know that because it’s so specific, the foundation of what they want, so if you can actually come up with something better, they’re all for it. So you can change things, but you usually just don’t want to. They have a tough enough time socially so they’re good writers. [laughter] You know? We don’t want to make them more depressed than they already are.”
[Brolin gives a great example]
“There was one moment in No Country For Old Men when Llewelyn opens up the cache or the case with all the money. And I said, ‘You know what? There’s no dialogue for me in the whole frigging movie. I’d like to say something. I like to talk. So can I?’ And they were like, ‘Well… what would you do? And I said, ‘Well, what about just a grunt, just an acknowledgment, whatever that emotion may conjure, whatever noise that emotion may conjure?’ ‘What would it sound like?’ ‘How about emm.’ ‘Okay. Do you have anything else?’ ‘How about like, mmm?’ ‘Anything else?’ And then I started thinking, okay, these guys are fucking with me. This is not real. They did put one of them in – and then every time we saw the movie in the screening, which was five separate times, I always knew where Ethan was sitting because I’d hear [Ethan’s distinctive laugh]. Who knows if they were ever telling the truth.”