‘I’ve never seen a movie as fucked up as this’: Inside the wild ride of ‘Drive-Away Dolls’

Tricia cook She was sitting at a lesbian bar called Meow Mix – or was it Cuddy Shack? – When divine inspiration came in the form of a title: Drive away dams. Over cocktails, she and her friend were thinking about their spontaneous road trips. “It was fun to get a car and go wherever you wanted to go in the country,” she says. vanity fair, Decades after the idea first arrived in the 1990s. “I came home and told Ethan,”Marie And I was at the bar and I came up with this great title for the movie.

“It all started with Trish sitting at the bar,” says the Oscar-winning director. ethan coen, To whom Cook has been married since 1993.

“Most things do,” she replied jokingly.

And so began what would become drive Away dolls, A safer-titled iteration of Cooke’s barstool is in theaters now. Margaret Qualley She is a sexually liberated free spirit, who after a dramatic breakup with her ex-cop girlfriend (Beanie FeldsteinShe convinces her powerful best friend,Geraldine Viswanathan) to travel with her in a fast car with a ticket to anywhere, but more specifically, a bunch of gay bars on their way to Tallahassee. During their journey, the dolls become entangled in a scheme involving an unopened suitcase, a severed head, and a horde of criminals tracking them.

Although Cook edited Coen Brothers films such as… Brother, where are you? And big lebowski, This film is her and Ethan’s first as co-writers. It also marks Ethan’s solo directorial debut. He and his brother Joel They stopped making films together after 2018 Buster Scruggs song For Netflix. (Ethan suggested that it was actually just a pause, as the brothers were currently writing something together.) “I wasn’t disillusioned with the film industry, I was just kind of tired,” Quinn says now. “The last two films that Joel and I did were really difficult productions. You hear about people saying they’re exhausted or whatever, that always sounds like bullshit to me, honestly. You sleep for one night and you’re fine the next morning, right? But I was actually… It’s a great honor to say that, it’s stupid, and yet, I don’t know – that’s how I felt.

Quinn was first lured into the director’s chair by a music producer T Bone Burnett, who recruited him and Cook for a 2022 Jerry Lewis documentary. “I was bored,” he admits. “Then, since we enjoyed taking advantage of that opportunity, we moved on to the next opportunity.” Drive away I couldn’t be further away from Joel’s first solo outing of 2021 tragedy macbeth, Who starred in his real life partner Frances McDormand. But it did allow Ethan to creatively explore some aspects of his “unconventional marriage” with Cook, who is known to be eccentric. Plus, Cook says, this title was “too good to pass up.”

The couple had previously attempted to ascend Drive away Early, with Allison Anders He is set to direct and stars from Holly Hunter to Christina Applegate Attached at different points. When they couldn’t secure funding, they shelved the idea and revisited it during the height of Quinn’s pandemic recession. To avoid the appearance of cell phones and social media interfering with the crime plot, Quinn and Cook made the film a 1999 period piece, complete with the year 2000 and the election panic of 2000, and moved on.

“This was the script that everyone wanted to get their hands on, especially for women who like to do comedy,” says Feldstein, who auditioned to play the long-suffering Sookie over Zoom wearing one of her wives. Bonnievanilla. “I really think my eyes got wider with every page turn. It’s unexpected, weird, exhilarating, funny, saucy, refreshing and I felt it all.”

In her own virtual waiting room, Viswanathan, best known for her roles in… Blockers And miracle workers, Securing the role of Marianne, who spends most of the film nursing her “big, easily bruised heart.” The only problem? Qualley was competing for the same part. When she failed to cast, Star maid And once upon a time in hollywood, Quinn emailed. He was disappointed that she did not audition to play the wild-hearted Jimmy. “I can audition for Jimmy, give me two seconds flat,” she replied. “Then he said, ‘Well, the artist usually knows best,'” Qualley says. VF. “And I said to myself: ‘No, I don’t know better, I don’t know anything at all. Give me a chance.’