It was all hush hush. Rome Film Festival artistic director Antonio Monda came to greet us at the press screening of the opening film, Edward Norton’s ‘Motherless Brooklyn’ where he told us Ethan Coen didn’t want to give a press conference prior to his encounter with the public. Why? Because the subject and theme of his conversation was a secret worthy of, it seemed, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI.
So, I waited. I wondered and imagined that Coen, one half of the wondrous brother duo that makes those incredible films full of humor and human tragedy — I’m talking about Ethan and Joel Coen of course — would make the wait worth while and introduce us, the audience, to something utterly wild. And when it came time for his public talk, he did.
“SURGERY!” said the words projected on the big screen. And about medical operations he talked, except not in real life of course, that would have been morose, but on the big screen.
During his encounter, Coen showed a few clips from movies featuring surgery. He started with the 1948 noir ‘Hollow Triumph’ starring Paul Henreid (whom we know better as Ingrid Bergman’s husband in ‘Casablanca’) which the actor also produced. The film used a scar as a plot device and Coen pointed out to the fact that surgery “is an absurd idea, it is always very real, or not as in the case of older movies.” Coen continued by leading the audience to the ending of the film which finds its leading man, who attempted to change his appearance to look like the man with the scar, disfigured on the wrong side of his face, due to a mistake in the printing of the photograph he used as an example. After hearing his chat, I’ll admit ‘Hollow Triumph’ is on my list of must-watch.
Later came clips from ‘The Doctor’ (1991) starring Bill Hurt and Mandy Patinkin, as well as John Frankenheimer’s 1966 ‘Seconds’ starring Rock Hudson — whom Coen called a “very big pretty boy” and continued by saying “he was really good in this!” The filmmaker pointed out that it would be “totally impossible to make a film like this today,” meaning the fact that Hudson’s character is changed completely to look like the quintessential good looking all-American boy through surgery would never be bought by audiences today. Or would it? I mean, we buy a whole lot more these days in blockbusters…
The scene from Takashi Miike’s 1999 film ‘Audition’ was so horrendous, I could not watch a single bit. Except when I eyes slipped and I saw a man lying on the floor with needles sticking out of his eyes. And I heard gurgling blood sounds which made eating later very difficult indeed. Coen admitted picking the particular sequence because “later ones might have disturbed people,” and said this was a “MeToo kind of story and this is what happens” to a man who calls in women to audition for him, when he’s never really got a role to offer them anyway.
Does Coen censor himself as a filmmaker and a writer? “It’s something you do all the time, it’s called editing,” he admitted, and also pointed to ‘Barton Fink’ and said that re-watching, he had felt the film could have used some better editing — “the actors are really great but some of the cuts are really lose.”
But my favorite quote by Coen, which happened halfway through the talk, was when he simply and matter of factly admitted that “Hollywood is not a dirty word to me.” Indeed, American big budget cinema has brought us some amazing works of art. And will continue to do so for as long as the Seventh Art will be around.
The Rome Film Festival — Festa del Cinema di Roma — continues through the 27th of October.