Talking with Joel and Ethan Coen about O Brother, Where Art Thou? By Jim Ridley
MAY 22, 2000: Last summer, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona, Fargo) were in Nashville to find musicians for their latest film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? An episodic yarn that borrows from Homer’s Odyssey, it stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as escaped convicts on a seriocomic journey through 1930s Mississippi, a flight that includes brushes with bluesmen, bigots, gangsters, crooked politicians, and seductive sirens. (The title comes from Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels It’s the name of the movie Sturges’ comedy-director hero Sullivan intends as his “serious” picture about the struggles of the Depression.) Before filming began, the Coens took the unusual step of recording the music first. For the movie’s mix of blues, gospel, and bluegrass, the filmmakers and music producer T-Bone Burnett assembled a stellar lineup that includes Ralph Stanley, Norman Blake, Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, the Cox Family, and the Whites, and they
