The news of John Turturro reviving Jesus Quintana from “The Big Lebowski” in the upcoming “Going Places” took many by surprise, chiefly because despite the actor’s persistent desire to return to the character, the Coens have been famously cool on the idea. However, it seems Turturro finally found the right vehicle for Jesus in a remake of Bertrand Blier‘s 1974 French film “Les valseuses,” and it was something the sibling directors themselves agreed was an inspired route to go.
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Chatting with Screen Daily, Turturro promises the upcoming film will give the character a greater complexity than we saw in the 1998 flick, and reveals that he was already working on “Going Places,” and figuring out the script, when he realized the lead role would be perfect for Jesus.
“I was calling him JC, and it reminded me of this character I’d done in a play many, many years ago that had inspired Joel and Ethan [Coen] to write the character of Jesus Quintana,” the actor and director said. “So I thought, ‘Wow! We’ve talked about doing something with Jesus Quintana but it was always silly.’ I started playing around with it and I thought we could be on to something with his irony and the irreverence of the character.”
With that in mind, he explained his approach to the Coens, and they loved it. “It kind of blew their minds,” Turturro said. “They thought it was a great idea and told me, ‘We’ve taken a character inspired from a stage play and now you want to put him in a movie which is a French movie, which was inspired by American road movies.’ ”
The movie, which co-stars Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tautou, and Susan Sarandon, is now being edited, and will show much more dimension and humanity to the perverted bowler. “You see his past, how he thinks, and there’ll be a lot of surprises,” Turturro shared. “He still has his robust side to him, but without giving away the movie, he’s not walking around like this angry guy – he wants to enjoy life a bit.”
There’s no distribution deal locked down for the movie just, but I’d guess we’ll see it at a festival quite soon. Perhaps Sundance?