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A week in the life of a young singer as he navigates the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961.
Coen Brothers: Ethan Coen Reveals Why He Quit Making Movies With Brother Joel
In 2019 Ethan Coen, one half of the Coen Brothers directing team, stepped back from filmmaking entirely. At the time, he explained that he was taking a break so that he could pursue other interests. But now Coen is back with his first documentary, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, and he's also opening up about why he quit making movies with his brother Joel and it turns out the reason is nothing dramatic. He just wasn't having fun anymore.
Speaking with the AP (via The Wrap), Coen explained that filmmaking had become more of a job than a passion and that's why he needed to step back.
"You start out when you're a kid and you want to make a movie," Coen said. "Everything's enthusiasm and gung-ho, let's go make a movie. And the first movie is just loads of fun. And then the second movie is loads of fun, almost as much as the first. And after 30 years, not that it's no fun, but it's more of a job than it had been.
Coen further clarified that "it was the production experience" that had stopped being fun, noting "It was the experience of making a movie. More of a grind and less fun."
Over the years, the Coen Brothers have made a number of iconic films, including Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and True Grit. But as for Coen's first solo film, the filmmaker explained that making the Jerry Lee Lewis documentary ended up being a project that came at the right time at the start of the COVID pandemic.
"What changed is I started getting bored," Coen said. "I was with Trish [Cooke, his wife] in New York at the beginning of the lockdown. So, you know it was all a little scary and claustrophobic."
Coen explained that his friend, T-Bone Burnett asked if he and Cooke would be interested in making the documentary using archival footage and it turned out to be the perfect project for Coen to do at home. Now that the film is done, Coen hasn't really decided what he plans to do next, but it sounds like he's not fully ruling out making movies with his brother again.
0comments"None of the decisions are definitive," Coen said. "We might make another movie. I don't know what my next movie is going to be after this. The pandemic happened. I turned into a big baby and got bored and quit, and then the pandemic happened. Then other stuff happens and who knows?"
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