"Well, it ain't Ozzie & Harriet"

October 4th, 2012
Raising Arizona, (1987)
Nicolas Cage is Herbert "H.I." McDonnough

It's embarrassing to say but the Coen brothers' dramatic movies leave me cold. They're master craftsmen with an eye for great set pieces, an ear for dialogue and an ability to work within any genre, paying homage and subverting it in equal measure. But the key word there is craftsmen. In a 1987 piece for American Film David Edelstein quotes the Coens' acclaimed cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld saying:

"It's not an emotional thing at all. Given any topic, [the Coens] could write an excellent script. Topics are incredibly unimportant to them - it's structure and style and words. If you ask them for their priorities, they'll tell you script, editing, coverage and lighting."

The Coens made an unexpected splash with their independently funded 1985 noir Blood Simple. With their follow-up, Raising Arizona, the two brothers made a point to make a movie that existed on the opposite side of the spectrum from their debut. Where Blood Simple was ponderous and cynical, Raising Arizona was a speedy, big-hearted romp. Edelstein presses Joel Coen on the difference between creating a movie around a murder and creating one around a baby. Joel responds:

"You have a scene in a movie when someone gets shot, right? Bang! And the squib goes off and the blood runs down and you get a reaction, right? It's movie fodder, you know what I mean? And in a really different way, a baby's face is movie fodder. You just wanna take elements that are good fodder and do something different with them."

Both Sonnenfeld and Coen himself are spelling out the reasons that I respect the hell out of movies like Fargo, Miller's Crossing and No Country for Old Men but can't make myself love them. The Coens seem to view humanity from an ironic distance. Reality is messy and emotional and, to my eyes, the Coens' sensibility erases that messiness with an overabundance of control.





Their comedies are a different matter. The very things that make the Coens' dramas feel like exercises in style are what makes their comedies so rare and wonderful. The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona are two of the most unique comedies of the last three decades, shot through with water-tight dialogue that recalls the screwball comedies of the '40s and '50s and that ironic distance that keeps sentimentality at bay. (In an interview that same year with Postif, the brothers defend Raising Arizona's happy ending saying it was written in the context of the Hi McDonnough. "We hide behind the main character!" says Ethan. "We hadn't really measured out the quantity of feelings we wanted to inject into that story, the characters guided us.")

While Fargo, Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men have spawned slews of imitators (some quite good) nobody has even tried to attempt what the Coen brothers did achieved with Lebowski, Arizona or Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? I flat out love those movies and will make impassioned cases for less celebrated Coen comedies like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty and Burn After Reading, too.


I love Coen brother comedies and I love Cage's performance as H.I. McDonnough. It's pitch-perfect. Before the opening credit roll the viewer is brought into the world of Raising Arizona by Cage's lazy drawl for an eleven-minute montage sequence that shows both actor and directors at the best of their abilities. After that the story kicks off, centering around a plot by recidivist H.I. and police officer wife Ed (Hunter) to steal a baby from unpainted furniture magnate Nathan Arizona (Wilson) who has recently lucked into quintuplets. Their own plans are thwarted by two of H.I.'s friends freshly escaped from the joint (Goodman and Forsythe) who steal the baby a second time for their own designs (and fall in love with him themselves).

The control the Coens' exerted on the set of Raising Arizona was a bit of a hard pill for Nicolas Cage to swallow. In the Edelstein piece he comes across as a sullen prima-donna, slumped in a canvas chair with his name misspelled on the back (In a wryly comedic gesture Ethan Coen has placed a Band-Aid over the "h" in "Nicholas" to soothe his temper).

Reluctant to discuss his methods, Cage is clear about his goals. He arrives on set with a ton of ideas; even in the uncomplicated supermarket chase, he proposes a glance at his watch during a tiny lull. Joel politely shakes off the suggestion. Their relationship has been bumpy but respectful. Cage praises the brilliant script and the Coens' professionalism, but he's clearly miffed that he couldn't bring more to the party. "Joel and Ethan have a strong vision," he says, "and I've learned how difficult it is for them to accept another artist's vision. They have an autocratic nature."
A few minutes after the interview, Cage summons me back. "Ah, what I said about Joel and Ethan... with relatively new directors, that's when you find that insecurity. The more movies they make, the more they'll lighten up. The important thing is not to discourage an actor's creative flow."

Yes, that is twenty-four year-old Nicolas Cage condescending to give the world's greatest sibling directing team (sorry Brothers Quay!) a little movie-making advice. I can imagine the movie that would have been if Cage's creative flow had been allowed to run wild and, delightful as that film may have been, the Coens were clearly right to keep him on a short leash. Without the Coens "autocratic nature" Raising Arizona's Looney Toons dynamism could easily have run roughshod over its many subtler charms. Left to his own designs, Cage, too, would easily have distracted from the wonderful performances around him by John Goodman, William Forsythe, Trey Wilson, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray and especially Holly Hunter, who provides a drum-tight yin to Cage's laconic yang.

Despite calling them autocrats there's apparently no bad blood between the Coens and Cage. In fact, in a 2001 interview with Playboy (I checked out a book of Coen brothers interviews from the library. Can you tell?) they say they've even written another movie with him in mind, a "Cold War comedy" called 62 Skidoo in the vein of The Manchurian Candidate. It's been eleven years since that interview so I guess I shouldn't hold my breath but the petition to have 62 Skidoo made starts right here. That movie sounds fucking amazing.