Have you heard of these guys, the Coen Brothers? Apparently they have some new movie coming out about American folk music or something, with that guy from “ER” in it. Yeah, we’re not sure either. But that last movie they did, the one with Jeff Bridges and all the bowling, that was pretty good. Anyhow, to publicize the folk music movie, the BBC have made a documentary about them. But seriously folks, the Coens do have a movie about American folk music about to come out, called “Inside Llewyn Davies” (it made a big splash at Cannes — we liked it a lot) and while you wait for December 6th, you could do a lot worse than revisit this 2000 documentary, made during the filming of “O Brother Where Art Thou?.”
It pushes the “reclusive geniuses” line a bit hard (the Coens have always just seemed like people more interested in making movies than being famous, rather than actual recluses), but it’s a good look at the way two of the most celebrated Hollywood directors of today make their movies. Contributions come from the still fresh-faced George Clooney, their now-legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, William H. Macy sporting a horrendous mustache (hopefully for a role?), and of course, the cheerfully downbeat brothers themselves, casually pointing out that it takes them a few weeks to write a script and that they have dozens of them lying around. One wonders how many of them they’ve put on film in the past thirteen years, and how many more are still to come…
Anyway, if you’ve got 40 minutes to spare, give this one a spin.