Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke know critics may not get ‘Drive-Away Dolls’
For decades, the Coen Bros (Ethan and Joel) collaborated on a wild and heralded array of American films, from Westerns like True Grit and No Country for Old Men to crime comedies The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? But lately the brothers have been branching out, with Joel making the black-and-white Shakespearean drama The Tragedy of Macbeth with his wife and frequent collaborator Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth. Meanwhile, Ethan teamed up with his wife, editor/screenwriter Tricia Cooke, to share writing, editing, and directing duties on the gleefully outrageous road trip comedy Drive-Away Dolls.
In a Zoom interview alongside Coen, Cooke told Mashable, “We wanted it to be kind of playful and sexual,” expanding on what she meant when she called Drive-Away Dolls “a little trashy” when speaking to Moviemaker Magazine. “The trashiness — maybe a better word is juvenile.”
“Or stupid,” Coen suggested. Cooke agreed, noting how the film they co-wrote about two lesbians (Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley) on a road trip also involves dildos, sexcapades, and “jokes that can be a little crass and foul.”
For the pair, who’ve worked together professionally since the 1990 Coen Bros movie Miller’s Crossing before marrying in 1993, there’s a freedom in making a “trashy” movie like theirs. “This doesn’t have to be perfect,” Cooke explained. “It can be a little messy and sloppy.”
Yet for all its trashiness, Drive-Away Dolls comes from a personal place.
Drive-Away Dolls was inspired by Tricia Cooke’s queer youth in NYC.
This kooky comedy begins when uptight Marian (Viswanathan) and free-spirited Jamie (Qualley) snag a driveaway vehicle and head to Florida for an escape from the ruts that have become their lives. Along the way, Jamie navigates them to a series of lesbian bars, seeking hookups and community. While the life-or-death shenanigans the friends find themselves in are pure fiction, Cooke found inspiration in her experiences in New York City’s “dyke bars” of the ’80s, like Cattyshack, Meow Mix, and Henrietta Hudson (where the film’s video junket was held.)
Reflecting on the importance lesbian bars have for queer women, Cooke said, “They were just safe places to go. And it was really nice to be in community even if you weren’t going to find someone to hook up with or whatever. You just wanted to go and spend time with your people and feel comfortable and safe.” She continued, “It was fun to be able to go out and dance and see go-go dancers and watch The L Word. I mean, there would be big gatherings like weekly, for everyone to come together and watch those things.”
Even more personal to Cooke in the creation of Drive-Away Dolls was Jamie, a Southern fried sapphic with a libido almost as big as her mouth. That charismatic character was based on a close friend with whom Cooke frequented gay bars, which made casting the role a unique challenge. Reflecting on the audition process, Cooke noted the real Jamie has a “very strong personality and like no [actor] was matching that” — until Qualley came along.
Coen concurred, saying, “When somebody like Geraldine or Margaret or Beanie show up, you go, ‘Oh, my God, finally! This is great. Her! We’re using her.'”
Do critics give a fair shake to trashy movies?
2023 was a big year for queer movies that were unapologetically trashy, from the ballsy comedy Dicks: The Musical to the bloody, funny lesbian teen comedy Bottoms, to the 10 degrees of WTF that was Saltburn. And Cooke expressed excitement, declaring, “Thank the good lord.” Back when she and Coen first tried to produce Drive-Away Dolls in the ’90s, with Selma Blair being eyed for one of the female leads and Holly Hunter as the cop ex-girlfriend played by Feldstein, it was near impossible to get a mid-budget lesbian movie financed that wasn’t serious or “important.” (Cooke did commend But I’m a Cheerleader… and Go Fish as two treasured outliers.)
Still, both Cooke and Coen — who, though they’re credited as editor and director, respectively speaking, both directed and edited the film together — recognize that critics can be fickle about trashy movies. “Maybe [trashy movies] don’t get a fair shake from critics because maybe there’s some premium on importance,” Coen said. “That’s a negative force field coming off the movie, not a positive one — for me, anyway. But then people do flock to the important movies. So what do I know?”
“I think that both John Waters and Russ Meyer are great examples of that,” Cooke said, referencing two directors who created cult films that were unapologetically provocative, gross, and sexual, like Waters’s Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble or Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. “At the time, they were underappreciated or not appreciated, but over time, everyone was like, ‘Thank God we have these movies!’ I mean, they’re geniuses in a way that doesn’t get appreciated in the moment — because there are other people making whatever art.”
Coen noted Pedro Almodóvar is the rare filmmaker whose trashy films are celebrated by critics when they come out. “He makes really fun movies,” Coen declared, “Movies that just work as movies. You go okay, ‘That’s a great movie.’ But critics do like him.”
“Yeah, they celebrate Pedro,” Cooke agreed, “So I guess it depends. You know, if you put shit stains on underwear and someone is screwing Divine on a mattress, that’s maybe too much? Maybe you’ve crossed the line, and critics don’t like it.”
Coen considered, “In our minds, being trashy — you want to go to a movie, you know what I mean? Like a movie, like you just want to see a good movie.”
Doubling down on this sentiment, Coen shared, “The nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten for a movie — and I don’t even remember which movie it was for — was from our friend T Bone Burnett, the music producer. [He] went to one of our movies and came out and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s just a movie.‘ And he meant it as a compliment, and I thought, ‘Far out, man. Finally, someone understands!”
