Drive-Away Dolls is not so much a Coen Brothers movie, as a Coen Brother movie. Ethan Coen, who for years co-directed with his sibling Joel on such masterpieces as Barton Fink and No Country For Old Men, is back in the hot seat. Only this time, he’s co-creating with his wife and long-time editor, Tricia Cooke, as they deliver a B movie that feels very Coen-like . . . except when it doesn’t.

A raucous and raunchy comedy, it tells the story of the liberal Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and closed-off Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), two lesbian roommates who go on an increasingly deranged road trip to Florida’s capital city Tallahassee, when a mysterious briefcase comes into their possession. According to Coen, this is a classic trope he and Cooke are playing with. ‘The opposites: the free spirit and the uptight person. It’s Felix and Oscar,’ he says, alluding to Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s roles in the classic 1968 movie, The Odd Couple.

Attempting to retrieve the case are two goons, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (CJ Wilson), who feel like extras from Fargo. So far, so Coen Brothers. Except this is a film with an abundance of sex, something the Coens always shied away from. How did that feel? ‘Yeah, letting it all hang out, man!’ giggles Cohen, sitting right next to Cooke. ‘Trish liberated me! I don’t know why that it is. It’s definitely true: me and Joel don’t do sex stuff. It’s . . . urm . . . yeah. Uh-huh. True.’

The script was originally written 20 years ago, which might explain why the story is set in 1999. ‘We didn’t do a lot of pre-planning about which characters would be interesting,’ says Cooke. ‘We had a title we started with; and the title was fun. We wanted to write a movie that would fit the title. And we took our time, there was no deadline. We tried to write at least three or four times a week, for a couple of hours each day.’  

Initially, the plan was for Allison Anders (1992’s Gas Food Lodging) to direct but when it wasn’t funded, the script got shelved. Then the pandemic arrived. Joel disappeared to make The Tragedy Of Macbeth with his wife Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington, while Ethan suggested to Cooke that they revisit their script. Alongside Qualley and Viswanathan, they rounded up co-stars Pedro Pascal, current Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, and Coen regular Matt Damon.

Doubtless the legions of Coen Brothers fans will wonder how Ethan has fared without his sibling. It was ‘much the same process’ working with Cooke, he insists. ‘We started at the beginning, talked the scene through, back and forth. We didn’t outline or anything, as me and Joel do not. And we just talked the movie through from beginning to end: “OK, this happens. Alright, then, what’s the cut? What’s the next scene?”’  

Cooke has worked with the Coens ever since 1990’s Miller’s Crossing when she began as an apprentice editor before graduating to assistant and then editor. But she admits that cutting a film she’s written is a different beast. ‘I found it hard to be objective because I was so close to the material. There were certainly times when I was like “I wish we had a different set of eyes on this.” Just for me. Ethan didn’t feel like that. But occasionally I was like “I wish we could bring someone else in and get their opinion.”’

The film offers a positive and fun portrayal of lesbian culture and much of this is down to Cooke. She recently revealed in an interview that she is gay, and that she and Coen, while still married and raising two children, both have other partners now. ‘Collaborating workwise is a way for us to stay very connected,’ she explains. ‘We see eye-to-eye, we have similar sensibilities artistically. So that made it easy to collaborate.’ 

This being a Coen production, there are plenty of B-movie references swirling around in the film’s cinematic stew. ‘We’ve seen lots of those movies,’ says Coen. ‘We rarely if ever referred to specific ones. But they’re all in there.’ That said, Cooke picks out Poison Ivy, a 1992 erotic thriller which starred Drew Barrymore as a seductive teen. ‘I don’t know if it qualifies as a B movie,’ says Cooke, who reveals they borrowed one specific scene from that film. ‘Asides from that, I think it’s an amalgamation of a lot of different B movies.’ 

When it came to casting the two leads, Coen and Cooke really scored with their choices. While Qualley, the daughter of actress Andie MacDowell, is known for her turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Viswanathan is a rising star who emerged after featuring in 2018 comedy Blockers. ‘They both have really great skills,’ says Cooke. ‘Geraldine has great comedic timing. She can be very funny. She’s very dry. And Margaret’s just very charismatic on the screen.’

Not one to ever pontificate, Coen demystifies the whole process. ‘Sometimes an actor walks in that just wakes you up and you go “OK, then that’ll be fun to watch.” It’s that simple. If it’s a good performer and they understand the script, it’s just a pleasure. And that doesn’t happen a lot. You spend a lot of time casting, and people come in and most of them are capable actors and it’s OK. But then somebody comes in and really lights it up and you go “OK man, it’s definitely them.”’

Typically for a Coen movie, it’s also populated by male idiots (much in the way George Clooney was the brothers’ regular go-to guy to play the buffoon in films such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Hail, Caesar!). ‘Generally the men are idiots. I can’t explain that!’ chuckles Coen.

‘We wanted the women to have agency and be empowered,’ adds Cooke. ‘And we thought it was important to portray the men as incompetent and foolish.’ So where does this long-standing love of male idiocy come from? ‘Yeah,’ Coen smirks, ‘where does that come from, Trish . . . ?’

Drive-Away Dolls is in cinemas from Friday 15 March.