O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Unspooled – “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Hosts: Paul Scheer & Amy Nicholson
Release Date: August 13, 2026
Film Discussed: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
Main Theme: A deep dive into the Coen Brothers’ genre-bending musical odyssey, examining its oddball humor, American myth-making, layered references, and evolving critical legacy.

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Episode Overview

This episode of Unspooled centers on the Coen Brothers’ 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, exploring its blend of comedy, bluegrass, adventure, and myth. Paul and Amy analyze the layers of allusion, Americana, character performances (especially George Clooney’s), and why this film, initially polarizing, has grown richer over time. The conversation touches on politics, popular culture, the transformative power of music, and how both critics and audiences perceive the Coens’ intent.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Making & Context of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

[04:54–07:56]

• The film was made after Fargo and The Big Lebowski, marking another genre and tone shift for the Coens.
• Described by Amy as: “A Great Depression bluegrass musical comedy inspired by everything from Preston Sturges to The Wizard of Oz to The Odyssey. Not that they are big fans of The Odyssey.” (05:12)
• The Coens claim not to have read The Odyssey, but drew on its narrative structure. As Paul notes: “They then went out and got the classic comics version of The Odyssey because neither of us had read it and still haven’t.” (05:34)
• The film stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as three convicts searching for a supposed treasure—an allegory loosely based on Odysseus’s journey but filtered through American folklore.

2. Layered Allusions: From Homer to Preston Sturges

[12:15–14:55]

• The title is borrowed from Sullivan’s Travels (by Preston Sturges), where a director aspires to make a serious film called O Brother, Where Art Thou? about “the suffering of humanity, but with a little sex” (13:01).
• The film’s self-referential humor and allusions also invoke The Wizard of Oz, Moby Dick, and more.
• “There’s so much in this ... stew of big literary and filmic allusions. Everything is kind of larger than life, but also incredibly pointed and real.” – Paul (15:40)

3. Satire, Performance, and American Myth-Making

[16:42–18:51]

• The film skewers American archetypes — the charming con-man, the political huckster, the mythic outlaw — while playing with how stories and legends are made in the media age.
• The transformative power of performance is central: “We have prisoners ... who become heroes because people love their song. ... It’s like the power of persuasion in the media.” – Paul (19:28)

4. The Politics of Popularity

[19:50–21:40]

• Amy highlights how the film anticipates today’s image-driven politics, with politicians leveraging the Soggy Bottom Boys’ musical popularity.
• “Neither one of them feels like I would enjoy voting for them to be my governor. But they’re both using the popularity of the Soggy Bottom Boys as, like, pro or con.” – Amy (21:07)

5. Ritual, Pageantry, and the KKK

[23:47–26:09]

• The Klan rally scene is discussed as an example of American ritual and spectacle masking the underlying evil: “I understand how people blindly follow organizations that seem like they have their act together ... the pageantry ... hides the villainous side of it.” – Paul (24:00)
• Amy notes the Coens’ comic yet unsettling portrayal: “Much of it is choreographed but clumsy ... they are acting a lot like trained monkeys really cracks me up too.” (25:24)

6. Perception, Sight, and Performance

[34:14–36:42]

• The film’s recurring motif of blindness: The radio station owner, the Cyclops (John Goodman), and parallels to Homer, the "blind prophet".
• “This movie is a lot about sight ... the radio gives people an idea of the Soggy Bottom Boys that isn’t actually true.” – Paul (34:14)
• The notion that myth is shaped as much by performance and perception as by truth.

7. George Clooney and Ensemble Performances

[36:28–41:54]

• Clooney’s comedic, clownish turn—rubbing dirt on his face, obsessing over hair pomade—subverts his movie-star image.
• Clooney’s Uncle from Kentucky recorded the entire script on tape for Clooney to mimic the accent—leaving out swear words! (37:07)
• “He turns himself into just this charismatic buffoon.” – Amy (37:53)

8. Music as Narrative and Cultural Power

[41:54–61:48]

• The bluegrass soundtrack, curated by T Bone Burnett, won Album of the Year at the Grammys.
• “The power of music and popularity” is likened to the siren song of myth—running through the film’s plot and political themes alike.
• Amy shares the folk roots of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” including a story about prison inmate James Carter, whose real 1950s chain-gang recording was rediscovered and brought belated royalties: “It gave me a piece of money I wouldn’t have had if I hadn’t sung it. Put a smile on my family’s face.” – James Carter (60:40)
• Music as a living thread in American history, connecting politics and myth.

9. The River, Fate, and Transformation

[41:54–45:31]

• The river operates on many symbolic levels—baptism, fate, cleansing, progress, and mythic journey.
• “Water is really interesting here ... it can kind of wash away your sins, can kind of give you rebirth,” notes Paul (44:35).

10. Cycles of History and Myth

[62:08–66:12]

• The Coens revisit the past to explode the idea that things were ever simple or pure: “They often go back to the past, and ... it was all there: money troubles, status anxiety, rituals, everything.” – Paul (62:39)
• Amy reflects on how distance (retrospective settings) helps audiences see themes more clearly, even if they missed the satirical points at release.

11. The Film’s Legacy & Rewatchability

[66:02–66:55]

• Coen Brothers films, says Amy, “never get worse” on rewatching — they reveal new depths over time.
• Paul compares their films to Kubrick’s in demanding, and rewarding, careful attention.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Coens’ process:

  • “In interviews, it is really hard to know when the Coens are being serious.” – Amy (06:09)
  • “We realized that it was essentially sort of an episodic story about the main character trying to get home. So that sort of suggested the Odyssey to us.” – Paul (05:34)

• On American Myth-Making:

  • “We like theater ... the pomp and circumstance.” – Paul (23:47)
  • “The sense that this music is alive, even that the people who sang this music was still alive when the movie came out, is just amazing because it feels ancient and new at the same time.” – Amy (61:21)

• On Politics and Popularity:

  • “This is a movie about two people running for governor ... but the fact that nobody cares if one person’s in the KKK or not. They just care that you like the band that they like.” – Amy (21:07, 23:24)

• On Art, Comedy, and Suffering:

  • “When you're miserable, you might just want a comedy ... I have just no bandwidth for [miserable films] right now.” – Amy (13:54)
  • “A great movie will always hit differently in the different times that you watch it.” – Paul (64:55)

• On the Film’s Unresolved Ending:

  • “He went from one chain gang to another. His kids all in that chain gang. ... He wants another lifelong sentence with a master he can’t please.” – Paul and Amy (50:16–50:43)

• Music & Legacy:

  • “Man From Constant Sorrow gets picked up by Bob Dylan, and then Miley Cyrus ... Songs that are kept alive because they still mean something.” – Amy (59:21)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [05:12] – Amy introduces the film’s complex tangle of influences
• [09:06] – Amy ranks the film in her Coen Brothers’ hierarchy
• [12:15–14:55] – Connecting O Brother to Sullivan’s Travels and the idea of “movies about suffering”
• [19:27–23:24] – Political satire, the Soggy Bottom Boys, and media-image manipulation
• [25:24–26:09] – Satirizing the KKK and rituals of hate
• [34:14–36:42] – Sight vs. perception: Blind prophets, the Cyclops, and American myth
• [37:07] – Clooney’s accent and method for the role
• [41:54–45:31] – Water/river as motif: fate, redemption, transformation
• [51:31–53:09] – Sirens, song, and the mythic pull of music
• [59:21–61:08] – The folk lineage of the film’s music
• [62:08–63:57] – Historic cycles, nostalgia, and the Coens’ approach to the past
• [66:02–66:55] – On Coen films' legacy and why they merit repeated viewings

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a cinematic stew: Homeric myth, Southern musical traditions, American pop-culture, and political satire all jumbled together.
• The hosts praise the film’s layered construction, “equal opportunity pranksterism,” and the Coens’ refusal ever to make the same film twice.
• Ultimately, the film’s ambiguity – about faith, politics, performance, storytelling – and its joyful embrace of myth and music, remain evergreen.
• The movie’s rewatchability is highlighted as a hallmark of the Coens’ depth and craftsmanship, with new elements revealing themselves with each viewing.

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For Further Discussion

• Unspooled’s listeners are encouraged to reflect on the evolving happiness/comedy debate in film, the persistent relevance of folk music, and the ways in which both politics and nostalgia are shaped by collective mythmaking.
• Join the conversation on Unspooled’s substack or YouTube channel, and revisit the other Coen-focused episodes for more context.

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Transcript

[Paul Scheer]

The years 2000.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Wait a minute. Who elected you leader of this outfit?

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Well, Pete, I figured it should be the one with the capacity for abstract thought. But if that ain't the consensus view, then hell, let's put her to a vote.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Suits me. I'm voting for yours truly.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Well, I'm voting for yours truly, too.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Okay, I'm with you, fellas.

[Paul Scheer]

The movie. Oh, brother. We're out now.

[Amy Nicholson]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Unspooled.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must sees, and in. In case you missed EMS, we've covered

[Amy Nicholson]

the AFI top 100, and now we are checking off movies from three major lists. The Letterboxd top 250 films with the most fans, the IMDb top 250, and the New York Times 1000 essential films.

[Paul Scheer]

And while today's film might be on those lists, the reason why it's on this show today is because everyone is talking about the Odyssey. Hell, even you, Amy, are talking about the Odyssey on this show. Great episode about a movie that I am patiently waiting to see when I can see it in 70 millimeter in IMAX in the center. I have children and I did not get my tickets four months ago. So I am patient because I know that the only thing coming into IMAX and 70 millimeter is Dune 3. So it's gonna be there for a long time and I cannot wait. But I gotta see it the right way.

[Amy Nicholson]

You gotta see it the right way. And you gotta see it in time for us to do a summer wrap up. Cause there's no summer over movies.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

I will.

[Paul Scheer]

I'm catching up. I'm catching up. I'm catching up on everything. I am Paul Schro. I'm an actor, writer and director, and, you know, a fan of Dapper Dan's hair gel. Or I was.

[Amy Nicholson]

I'm Amy Nicholson. I'm the film critic for the Los Angeles Times. I've actually been getting into hair gel this year.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, really?

[Amy Nicholson]

I use four at once right now and I kind of like it. It's a lot. I'm very behind my hair, by the way.

[Paul Scheer]

You always look fantastic. But I don't even know how this is working. I need to see it all. But by the way, if people haven't checked it out already, Amy and I have a brand new series on YouTube. It's just like the show, but different. We're not just recording. Amy and I doing a long form chat about a film. We're doing something a little bit more concise. Something that's actually very visual and fun. It is on YouTube. It is just YouTube.cometunspooled check it out. I think you will like it. Our first episode is about the Dark Knight Rises and the connection between Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey and the hero's journey of the Dark Knight.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, it's fun and we've got some fun plans of where I think we're gonna take this, so I'm looking forward to it. And if you happen to live in LA and are listening to this podcast when it comes hot and fresh out of the podcast oven, you might know that every year the American Cinema Tech does a Friend of the Fest Podcast festival where podcast hosts come out and get to program something we love. Last year we did Waterworld, which is very fun. This year, come Tuesday night, 10pm August 25, Los Feliz 3 we're going to be doing a movie that we hailed on the show that is on the Letterboxd Top 250 Forgotten Gem climbing its way back to prominence one screening at a time like this one. Secret Life of Walter Mitte, the Ben

[Paul Scheer]

Stiller classic I cannot wait. And you will see a very cracked out version of me because I will be just getting back from Africa. God knows where my time zone will be at that 10pm showing. I might be ready to go or I might be asleep at the wheel. Who knows. Thankfully it's close enough to my house that I don't have to drive.

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[Paul Scheer]

on school all right Amy, let's talk about this film. The years 2000 Joel and Ethan Coen are basking in the afterglow of making two genre bending back to back hits, the comedy thrillers Fargo and the Big Lebowski. Both which we have done here on the show. You can listen to our episodes. One of. Actually two of my favorite episodes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, yeah. And if you've listened to them or if you're just a human in the world who loves movies, you know that Fargo was a serious Oscar contender. Lebowski was a funny cult hit. But their next film is going to be an even stranger combination of tones. It's a great depression bluegrass musical comedy that is inspired by everything from Preston Sturges to the wizard of Oz to the Odyssey. Not that they are big fans of the Odyssey.

[Paul Scheer]

It started out with these three guys escaping from a chain gang. And as we sort of got further and further into the script, we realized that it was essentially sort of an episodic story about the main character trying to get home. So that sort of suggested the Odyssey to us. And we then went out and got the classic comics version of the Odyssey because neither of us had read it and still haven't. Okay, what do you think is going on here? Because, I mean, they had to have read it, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I don't think so, honestly. I mean, I know that in interviews, it is really hard to know when the Coens are being serious. You know, like when O Brother debuts at Cannes. The Cannes press keeps asking them about the movie's influences. Cause they're on the screen right there, really obvious. And Joel kept pretending he had no idea what they were talking about. He was like, you guys have seen more movies than we have. But I think that Ethan is being serious when he says they just thought it was funny to do a silly comedy that had a grand, significant title like, oh, Brother Wore Art Thou. And a witness did show up at their house and saw that they had a copy of the Odyssey lying around with a post it note on it that said, quote, soon to be a major motion picture by Joel and Ethan Cohen, and that it just made them laugh. And that that is probably why they did it.

[Paul Scheer]

Okay, well, more will be revealed. Or maybe it will never be revealed. And that's maybe the beauty of this movie. A movie that stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as three Mississippi convicts Ulysses, Pete, and Delmar, who slip away from their chain gang in order to claim a hidden stash of $1.2 million.

[Amy Nicholson]

Now Ulysses really just wants to make it back to his wife, Penny. That's Holly Hunter, before she marries her bona fide suitor, a campaign manager for one of two crooked men running for governor.

[Paul Scheer]

Now, this trip that they're on, this Odyssey, if you will, forces the gang to cross paths with politicians and bank robbers and clan members and sirens and even a cyclops played by John Goodman, as well as angry sheriffs who seem to have godlike powers.

[Amy Nicholson]

And they form a band, the Soggy Bottom Boys. There is so much catchy bluegrass in this movie that the soundtrack to O Brother Where Out There won album of the Year at the Grammys, beating out both Bob Dylan and Outkast Dankonia.

[Paul Scheer]

Now, when O Brother, Where Art Thou? Was released on December 22, 2000, it had cost 26 million, and it makes 72 million more than Lebowski in its initial release. Although critics were kind of polarized, some thinking it was a genius comedy and others thinking it was kind of a snide and condescending, you know, look at the South.

[Amy Nicholson]

Still. George Clooney won the Golden Globe for best Comedic Actor.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

My job was just to stay out of their way, basically, and not screw up. I got to work with a great cast and a great crew, and I'm very proud to be. To be a part of any film they do, and I'll show up for anything. Although they aren't really brothers. That's a lie. That's all a lie. And I, while we're confessing, I am actually the illegitimate love child of John Ashcroft. I don't want that out there. I don't want that to affect any kind of voting.

[Amy Nicholson]

Alas, he did not get that Oscar nomination, but Wild did get nominations for screenplay and Roger Deakins cinematography. This was, by the way, the very first non fantasy film to be completely digitally scanned and color tweaked so it would have that rustic Southern beige.

[Paul Scheer]

Now, Amy, I guess I'll start with the hardest question. Where does this rank in your favorite Coen Brothers movies? Is it in the top five? Top three, Bottom five. Like, you know. You know where.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Where.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I'd put it maybe at the low end of the top five or. It's hard. I've wrestled with this movie a lot because when it came out, there was almost nothing I was looking forward to more because I was just hardcore getting into film. I have always been into the Odyssey. I was in love with Preston Sturgess. I had just discovered the movie Sullivan's Travels a few years ago. So the combination of Coen Brothers. Homer, Preston Sturgess could not have been more excited. And I remember sitting down at this movie and being like, there's not quite enough Odyssey in here. There's not quite enough Preston Sturgess. I don't know what I make of this. Like, I thought you were about everything I love. I'm not sure what you are. Are you kind of slight? Are you kind of weird? And then my disappointment has faded with every watch. Every watch, I just find it lighter and lighter and more and more fun.

[Paul Scheer]

You know, to me, this is the battle I go through with every Coen Brothers film. I watch it with the highest of expectations. I am immediately let down. But I liked it. I just am like, oh, it wasn't what I wanted it to be. And then it just continues to grow and grow and grow. And you know, when I rewatched it for the episode this week, I was like, oh, I like this movie a lot more than I remember liking it. And to your point, every single time. But I think the reason why their movies have this kind of appeal is because they're jam packed. I mean, this is, you know, a comedy film. It's a comedy road movie. It's also, like you said, it has these like, literary illusions, but it's also about like faith and the future, right? They're talking about, like modern times and getting the south into this new version of the south, you know, but it's also kind of about like how the media can turn people into legends. And there, there's so many big ideas at play that I feel like on first viewing you can't even appreciate all of them. It's sort of like you're getting hit with Tommy gunfire. It all fits together as a great film, but you start to see all these layers every single time you rewatch it.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, I think that's exactly it. I think that's exactly it because they don't come out and say, here's what my movie's about, or here's what was interesting to us. They're playing with the audience all the time. You know, they want to act like they don't care. And they, in all the interviews from when the movie came out, they're like, it's just a romp. We just want to make something fun. It's just a dumb comedy. We started by writing a comedy that was like three idiots on the run. And then we were like, eh, it's an odyssey. Let's just call it an odyssey. Why not? And they act, you know, they act like it's nothing in plain sight, but then underneath it, you know that they have these churning ideas that they're going to make you pull out. They're not going to even give you a big speech about what the movie means. They want you just to kind of sift through it. And find the treasure.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, Ito, I think that the title is really interesting if you're a film fan, to Amy's point, you know that this is a reference to Preston Sturge's Sullivan's Travels. And in that, you know, movie, you have this disenchanted. He's a director, right? Yeah, the disenchanted director who is trying to tell the perfect story about the south. And it sounds so lame. And he wanted to title it oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

And yeah, this is him describing it. Right.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

I want this picture to be a commentary on modern conditions, dark realism, the problems that confront the average man, but with a little sex. A little. But I don't want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity, a true canvas of the suffering of humanity, but with a little sex. With a little sex in it.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

How about a nice musical?

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

How can you talk about musicals at a time like this, with a world committing suicide, with corpses piling up in the street, with grim death gargling at you from every corner, with people slaughtered like sheep.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Maybe they'd like to forget that.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

Then why do they hold this one over for a fifth week at the Music Hall? For the ushers. They died in Pittsburgh like a dog. What do they know in Pittsburgh?

[George Clooney (character voice)]

They know what they like.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

If they knew what they like, they wouldn't live in Pittsburgh. That's no argument.

[Amy Nicholson]

And, yeah, that's exactly the kind of movie the Cohen's never want to make, Right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, I love that movie. And it's funny because the director's misguided, right.

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He.

[Paul Scheer]

He wants to stop making comedies. He wants to show the real people. But what he finds in going on that journey is that the real people have, you know, they're not just sitting around being melancholy, Right.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

They.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

They.

[Paul Scheer]

They have a life. They have joy. And he kind of reinvents what his idea of the movie even should be because he actually sees that these are real people. Right.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

And.

[Amy Nicholson]

Right. And that when you're miserable, you might just want a comedy. Like, even as a critic, I'm having a hard time wanting to see movies that make me miserable. I feel is unfair. There's probably some great movies that are miserable right now, but I have just no bandwidth for it.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, 100%. I mean, one of my favorite moments in that film is, you know, a bunch of Chang gang members watching a comedy and laughing. And that really is the moment he sees that he has worth making comedy Right. Like that, you know, and that's how the Coens feel.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes. And that movie, Preston Sturges film, is doing something really interesting. They're telling a story about the south, but also showing that there's, you know, yes, there is poverty, there is racism, there is violence, but there are also humans there. It's a human. It's. It's. I love. Like I said, I think it's a really astute observation of the way that Hollywood glamorizes or. Or not glamorizes, but kind of patronizes, maybe. Yes, yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Well. And that's what I found so weird about going back and reading original reviews of oh Brother or Art Thou is critics. The uniform kind of take on them was like, the Cohens are really patronizing. The Cohens are really insulting to people of the South. The Cohens are really snobby. The Cohens think they're smarter than everyone else for some reason. I don't feel that when I watch this movie, I see people who. I see filmmakers who are curious and kind of equal opportunity pranksters.

[Paul Scheer]

Absolutely. And I think that they're having fun in trying to tell this grand tale by pulling little things from the biggest epics that we have. Like the Odyssey, like Moby Dick. Right. Even the wizard of Oz. There's so much in this.

[Amy Nicholson]

There's so much wizard of Oz.

[Paul Scheer]

It's amazing. And they're just kind of making this, like, just stew of big literary and filmic allusions. Right. So you start to feel like we're in this world where, like, everything is kind of larger than life, but at the same time, it's also, I think, incredibly pointed and real.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I mean, this is a movie that I feel like is in love with being a movie with that. That whole digital use of turning things sapien was just to even bring you inside and be like, this movie's fake. Ish. It's a fantasy. We're playing with the format. You know, this is like a documentary by any sort of means. Please don't pretend that it is and that it's just. I don't know, there's something in a movie where when you sit down, even if it feels like a shallow story, it's made with so much care. There's so much effort into it, into the pacing, into the dialogue, into, like, the set design, into just beautiful recreations of the south that no matter if it feels like a romp, you know that you are in good hands.

[Paul Scheer]

Absolutely. Every choice in this movie is completely thought out. And I think at the same time, lampooning or paying homage to, like, classic American storytelling. It's a prison movie. It's a road movie. It's a musical. It's political satire. You know, it's an adaptation of things that we know and we feel. So it's kind of even playing on our expectations of what all those things are and subverting them at the same time. And I think that that gives you that uneasy nature or that polarizing nature of the film. Cause, like, oh, you're giving me something that looks like pizza, but it doesn't taste like pizza. Like, wait, wait, hold on. And it's confusing, right?

[Amy Nicholson]

It's confusing to me. It's brought to you by Paul just eating a piece of pizza.

[Paul Scheer]

I am eating pizza right now. But you know what I'm saying? It has that thing where I think that that familiarity is. Is one of the reasons why it's making people frustrated. It's not. It looks like the thing I want, but it's not the thing I want.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, I was sort of frustrated definitely the first time I watched it. Like, engage more with the Odyssey. Right. But now I'm thinking about it, especially post seeing Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, hearing all the discourse about how. How, oh, gosh, odd, strange, refreshing, pointed. It was to watch an ancient classical mythological tale told not in that uniform British English of, like, right. Zeus, you will thunderbolt all people. Oh, how. That's my brilliant British accent.

[Paul Scheer]

I love it.

[Amy Nicholson]

Pretty much told through, like, American dialects. People saying mom and dad and transplanting the Odyssey to, I think, in Nolan's world, like, an American statement on what's happening with this country right now. What's happening with this world right now, by making it feel so American. Over the route, though, regardless of the fact that they didn't even read the book. I think Joel maybe read the Iliad once. Uh, it's doubly American. This couldn't be more American. It couldn't sound more American. The accents couldn't be more American. It is an American story. And you do get the feeling of, like, going on a journey through all of the different corners and monsters and creatures and godlike tyrants of this country.

[Paul Scheer]

And I also think it kind of breaks America into this idea of two types of people, right? There are people who can speak a good game and, you know, and they can kind of manipulate you with their speech. And then this idea, that song is maybe the biggest unifier. I do feel like this movie is centered by these two types of storytelling. We have these, you know, these prisoners These bad guys who become heroes because people love their song. They don't even know what they did right. And when they get this kind of pardon at the end.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

But.

[Paul Scheer]

But because we love their song, we're kind of letting them off the hook, like, it's okay. Well, you create a good art, and it's like the power of, you know, persuasion in the media, like, who you are. And I think that's a conversation that's really interesting to have at this time in 2000. Like, you know how. You know, like, how we can let some people off easy just because we like what they do.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's the part that popped out to me that had never popped out so strongly before, because right now we're living in a time where everything is politics and. And manipulation. Almost nobody even brought up the political element in reviews of this time, really, you know, in Feedback, no, they talked about the music. They talked about how it was or wasn't that Odyssey, like. But the fact that this is a movie about two people running for governor, one of whom is, you know, Pappy O'Dannnell, who is this manipulator. He's the. He's the current governor. And the other one is this, like, rebellious reform upstart who sounds like he's a good guy but then winds up being in the Klan. I mean, this reform candidate, his name is Homer. He's very good on a stage. He's very good at performing. This is him saying why we have to get rid of Pappy o'. Donnell.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Yeah. Now, I know the Sunnysiders would agree with me when I say that the great state of Mississippi cannot afford four more years of Papio Daddy. Four more years of cronyism, nepotism, rascalism, and sight to the enemy. The choice, she's a clear.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

Yeah.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Abby o', Donnell, slave of the interest. Homer Stokes, soil of the little man. Ain't that right, Little fell?

[Amy Nicholson]

He ain't lying. So you have these two candidates. Neither one of them feels like I would enjoy voting for them to be my governor. But they're both using the popularity of the Soggy Bottom Boys as, like, pro or con. One of them is like, I'm going to turn against the Soggy Bottom Boys because they are an integrated band against, like, my morals. And I'm gonna play up to the Southerners and try to get, like, the racist vote. The other one is like, I love the Soggy Bottom Boys. I love you guys so much that if you, you know, vote me for governor, I'm gonna turn them into My brain trust. And from everything we've been around, these guys are morons. It should not be a brain trust.

[Paul Scheer]

Exactly.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

If they're rambunctious and misdemeanoring is behind them, it is, ain't it, boys?

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Yes, sir, it is.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Well, then I say, by the power vested in me, these boys is hereby pardoned. In the second Tapio Daniel administration. These boys is going to be my brain trust.

[Paul Scheer]

What's that mean, Everett Elmer?

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Means that you and me and Tommy are gonna be the power behind the throne, so to speak.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, okay.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

So without further ado, and by way of endorsing my candidacy, the Soggy Bottom Boys is gonna lead us all in a chorus of you Are My Sunshine.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Thank you, boys. Telling us one of our favorites. You're gonna go far.

[Paul Scheer]

You see the power of the media, right? This idea of, you know, I'm just gonna ride out what is popular, and popularity kind of trumps everything. You know, all of a sudden, we go from this. This governor, like you said, who is bad. I mean, look, he is the lesser of two evils. But I think even as an audience member, I'm falling into that trap, too, and going like, well, but I think that this is the right choice. But he's also bad, right? So, you know, we get into this argument all the time, like, well, you know, people are like, I don't want to vote because I don't like either of them. You know, it's like, well, this has been going on for a very, very long time.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Or even the crowd who's there cheering and clapping for the Soggy Bottom Boys being so excited to vote for whoever likes the Soggy Bottom Boys. They're like, hey, this guy Homer's in the kkk. Nobody cares. The people do not care if one person's in the KKK or not. They just care that you like the band that they like or don't. You know, you just see who's a better. Who's better at being a shrewd political animal.

[Paul Scheer]

And I also think this idea that, like, it doesn't even make a difference about what you stand for. We like the pomp and circumstance. And I think that that's something about America. Like, we like. We like theater. Like, when you look at that Klan rally, and I've seen many Klan rallies in film, but I would say that this Klan rally is so kind of beautifully shot, and the ceremony of it is so, you know, ritualistic that it feels like, oh, I understand how people blindly follow organizations that seem like they have Their act together. Right. I'm not saying I have nothing to say about what the kkk. I do have a lot to say about what the KKK's thinking. But I'm just saying. But, like, I'm not talking about that. I'm just saying the idea that the pageantry of the KKK is just, like. That's what people are kind of following into, right? This idea, like, everyone is there. And when you look at it in this way, I was like, oh, that choreography, those costumes, right? That is as much as theater as anything else. And that is, like, what gets people on your side there, is there. It kind of hides the villainous side of it to a certain extent.

[Amy Nicholson]

I could not love more how you're articulating that, because this movie also got a lot of hits at the time for trivializing the kkk. But that's what I see in it now, too. You know, they are finding some sort of belonging in this group. And the marching's kind of choreographed but clumsy at the same time. It looks human. It doesn't look immaculate or flawless. There's also, I think, like, this kind of subtle joke that it's. It's shot a lot with, like, the guys peering in at them from the bushes as though they are the flying monkeys and the bad guys in the wizard of Oz. And so the sense that these racist, pompous, you know, guys who think that they're the pinnacle of evolution are acting a lot like trained monkeys really cracks me up too.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, I love that point of view. Right. I think, you know, they're in this position. They're kind of like a fly on the wall seeing this moment. And I think that that's really interesting, too, because the truth of the matter. We know what the truth of the matter is, but the performance is kind of overtaking it. And I feel like that's what this movie is wrestling with the entire time. Like, the truth in this movie is very flexible. Like, why did they run away from the chain gang? Well, they ran away because George Clooney's character lied to them about this money. There was no money. He had a different objective. But he tells him, I can't. I need to get back to my wife. And you wouldn't have come with me if that was the case. Right. Everyone is lying and performing a bigger thing to kind of create a narrative that just brings other people with them. And in the beginning of this movie, they're literally chained together. Like, he's gotta rally the troops because he can't leave by himself. Lying is the only way to do it.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, it's really true. And like the idea that this Odyssey on the way home has to be framed around naming the wife Penny, so it could be Penelope. Ish. That's the vague allusion to the Odyssey. But where I think the Cohens were really thinking is the stuff that I wouldn't have even known to associate with. Like I wouldn't. I didn't know it was interesting them that they had researched. I'm explaining this weird. But what I'm trying to say is like, you know, this character that we have of the bad, one of the bad, like Governors Charles Durning's Menelaus Papio Daniel, like that is more based on a real person than this movie is based on the Odyssey. That there was a guy named Leo Daniel who was a popular, like Texas governor and then Senate. He beat LBJ when he ran for the Senate. He was a popular politician there. And his whole thing was going on the radio with his little band that he called the Light Crust Doughboys. Because Leo Daniel, he came to his money by being a flower salesman, like flour, as in baked goods. And so he had this group called the Light Crusto Boys. And he would take them on on the radio. And that's where his fame came from, was just from being this kind of performer, entertainer. Like here's a little clip of them actually in an old time radio show.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

I like mountain music. Good old mountain music played by the real hillbilly van. I like bread and biscuits. Big white fluffy biscuits. My dear old ma just makes em grand. We like to sing and play and try to make folks happy. We hope you'll say please pass the the biscuits, Pappy. I like mountain music. Good old mountain music.

[Amy Nicholson]

And so that's the thing that as an audience member, when I'm watching this and I'm like, oh, I wish there was more Odyssey. I'm not seeing what they're really talking about, which is politicians through history that have done this. Even in here you hear a little bit of the clip of the song. You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. That's another politician named Jimmy Davis who became famous because he recorded that song. And then he used his musical fame in order to turn that into a political career. Like, here he is on the radio.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

You are my sunshine, My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You never know dear how much I love you. Please don't take my sunshine away.

[Amy Nicholson]

So yeah, I think it's so fascinating that it took you and me to two and a half decades to realize that that's what this movie is about because they never told us that's what they really were concerned about. Hat days are fine. We all have them. But if you are ready to treat the root cause of a dubious hair day, if it's time to do something less temporary, Nutrafol is a physician formulated, clinically tested way to support healthier hair from within. In fact, Nutrafol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people and they have formulas built for men at different life stages. Nutrafol men for guys 18 to 49 and the new Nutrafol men 50 plus, which is the very first product of its kind specifically made for men over 50. Nutrafol is made to address the key root causes of thinning. No matter where you're at at life, men using Nutrafol see visibly thicker fuller hair in three to six months. That is backed by peer reviewed studies and that is also why Nutrafol is the official hair growth partner of Major League Baseball. Those are guys who love rock and a good hat too, and they trust Nutrafool to stay on top of their hair game when they take it off. So start Nutrafool today and make the hat optional. Visit nutrafool.com and enter promo code unspooled for $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Find out why Nutrafol is the best selling hair growth supplement [e-mail] spelled n u t r-a f o l.com, promo code unspooled that's NutraFool.com promo code unspooled Unspooled. Happy summer. It is hot. Have you found the shorts? You know what I mean. The shorts that fit great, feel comfy, look good. The pair of shorts that you grab first. The ones you dig out from the laundry. If you're going to go run an errand, meet up with a friend, head to the movies, walk the dog. Quince specializes in basics that become the cornerstone of your wardrobe. Like their organic stretch cotton shorts. Those come in a few different cuts so that you can pick the pair that is right for your style. Maybe it's the utility shorts. They come in ivory black, olive. Great pockets on those. Maybe it's the chino shorts. Simple chic fan fave. They come in those three colors plus three more navy, orange and pink. The regular Chino shorts. Those hit mid thigh and if you like your shorts closer to the knee, scope out the Chino Bermuda shorts six colors on those same quality fabric. Ten and a half inch in seam. Catch me at the par three golf course. I'm going to be rocking that pair in the olive green.

[Paul Scheer]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Paul Scheer]

You know I'm thinking about the idea of what the radio is. The radio is a place where you can't see. Right. You are listening. And this movie is a lot about sight. You know, I think that you can make an argument that the Cyclops character that John Goodman plays, he has one eye, so his way of looking at the world is skewed. Right. He, he is unbalanced in the way that he sees the world. The radio gives people an idea of the Soggy Bottom Boys that isn't actually true. Right. We embrace, you know, there's a whole thing about, oh, the owner of the radio station is blind, so he doesn't even know who's performing. Like, he's just hearing the music. Right. There's a lot of. About sight and how you actually see. And maybe sight isn't all about just what you are visually seeing, but it's kind of the mental picture that you're creating about what you're seeing. Again, going back to performance.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And it is funny, like how many blind characters are in Homer or circle around Homer, you know that there's like blind prophets that Homer himself was considered blind. We get a note of like the blind prophet here. He's based on like the character of Tiresias who, if you've seen the Odyssey, he's the guy who like digs out of the dirt. He's like, here's what's gonna happen to you. This is their version of that character.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

You seek a great fortune, you three who are nigh in chains. You will find a fortune, though it would not be the fortune you seek. But first, first you must travel along and difficult road, a road fraught with peril.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. This idea of seeing clearly is a huge metaphor in both. You know, he gets home in the Odyssey and you know, Odysseus isn't sure who recognizes him. He disguises who he is. Here you even have like this Penny character refusing to recognize her husband, pretending she doesn't know who he is, hiding behind beards, thinking people are like just no good train hopping beggars. You know, that is very much one of the things that unifies these things.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, even, I mean, George Clooney's character's obsession with his own appearance, right. He needs a certain pomade, right. He wants to look a certain way. You know, even though he at certain points is covered in dirt and looks, you know, absolutely completely disheveled. His hair, he wants to make himself look good.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. I love how he just wakes up like sputtering,

[John Turturro (character voice)]

how's my hair?

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, George Clooney did his own makeup for this. Or basically he did his own filth. Like, he would take dirt, rub it on his face, just rub it on his face for real, and then wipe it off with a wet paper towel. And then he'd just add a little bit more stubble with a pen.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, wow. Interesting.

[Amy Nicholson]

I love that tiny thing about his performance and his accent. He based his accent on his uncle who was from Kentucky. And what he did is he had his uncle read the entire script to Oberlo in a tape recorder. Then he threw the script away and he just listened to his uncle say the lines over and over again until he had the accent right, which worked in terms of memorizing his lines. But then a couple months into the shoot, the Cohens were like, you really do have every word of this perfect. Except you never say the words hell and damn. His uncle had just skipped them because he didn't want to curse.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Oh, wow.

[Paul Scheer]

So sweet.

[Amy Nicholson]

And I love that because this is Clooney. He gets announced that he's making this movie one month after he officially quits ER when he's, like, the sexiest man in the world. And he went, like, full clown, right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

The sexiest man in the world's like, I'm gonna rub dirt on my face. I'm gonna make myself look ridiculous. Like, he turns himself into just this, like, charismatic buffoon, you know, fast talking, slick.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, somebody who seems to know the answers, says how the world works, but is constantly the least perceptive. And which is why he's also hilarious, right? Like, he will never be flustered. He will never be without the answer, but yet he has no knowledge whatsoever. But he is spitting it out like he's got. He knows everything about everything.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

You stole from my kin who was

[John Turturro (character voice)]

fixing to betray us.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

You didn't know that at the time.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

So I borrowed it till I did know.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

That don't make no sense, Pete.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

It's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, seeing George Clooney in this movie is just seeing somebody put all of their movie star charisma into this. I'm just realizing now how much I just adore these handful of actors. I don't feel like we have enough who are willing to look ridiculous in the service of having a great movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, absolutely. But I also think, you know, we just came off of an Academy Awards season where you're watching somebody like Sean Penn and even Leonardo DiCaprio both in the same movie in one battle, do these very big performances. I mean, Sean Penn, definitely much more of a clowning performance. You Know, I like that these leading men have like. I think a lot of leading men have this want to be a character actor. I think that that's one of the things I love about Brad Pitt. I mean, F1 is not that, but he often will find himself trying to do something more. DiCaprio's always kind of chasing that, you know, this ability to feel so comfortable. Maybe it's the. It's maybe the Paul Newman thing, right? No, I know. I'm so good looking, I need to like switch it up. I don't want to be good looking. I want to be something else. And it doesn't hurt that he also looks like a 40s movie star in this movie is, you know, if he feels time period specific, like he looks such the part as does Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as well. I mean, I love the way that Tim Blake Nelson essentially just keeps his mouth open for the entire film. It's hilarious.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And it's funny to think that this is like one of the first times people saw Tim Blake Nelson. Like, I think this movie helped make Tim Blake Nelson.

[Paul Scheer]

Right. They kind of like pulled him out of. Not retirement, but out of obscurity.

[Amy Nicholson]

He's like a Oklahoma rich kid, but a smart one. He's the only one who had read the Odyssey. Like, he has a degree in classics from Brown. He's the only one.

[Paul Scheer]

He's a writer too. Right. He was wanting to make his own movies at this point. And music. Right. I think that there is something about, you know, I. I wrestle with this, or I don't wrestle with it, but I. I'm often thinking that one of the things you can. One of the hardest things to do for yourself is to approach the world with a certain amount of naivete. Right. We have all been hardened and formed by our experiences that we have lived in. And so when we go into a certain situation, we make assumptions. And as we make assumptions, we probably are closing ourselves off to certain things. But that's, you know, part of survival. Right. Like, you understand, like, I will look both ways before I cross the street. You know, like there are certain things that are baked into our. Who we are. But I think that this movie is trying to tell you don't think you can know all the answers. Knowing all the answers, you'll never get far. You will never. You know, it's like you have to kind of flow with the world. You have to kind of move with it and make judgments based on the moment rather than a prescriptive lockdown. Because that's what George Clooney is always doing. He's like, I got my answer. Even though it. It's not based on what's actually going on.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Right.

[Paul Scheer]

Like, he's never, never, ever fades. And I think this idea of, like, moving, like. Like, with the ebb and flow, I want to bring it to the river because I think the river, to me, is so crucial in this film. Like, what the river represents.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it represents a bazillion different things, right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

River that's coming. You know, this dam that's going to come that, according to the lie he's told, is going to wash away where he buried the $1.2 million. There's a little bit of it in there that is. Yeah. Flo giving over. It's strange how reminiscent the scene of everybody getting washed away in the river is to a scene that you'll see in the Odyssey when you finally see it.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Amy Nicholson]

This idea of accepting your fate, putting your trust in the hands of the Lord, like he finally does for a second towards the end of it, before he takes it back here.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Please look down and recognize us poor sinners. Please, Lord. I just want to see my daughters again. I've been separated from my family for so long. I know I've been guilty of pride and sharp dealing. I'm sorry that I turned my back on you, Lord. Forgive me. Help us, Lord, for the sake of my family.

[Amy Nicholson]

And of course, he's immediately like, no, there's a scientific explanation for this. Definitely, definitely, definitely. But in that moment, he allows the water to flow over him. But then there's also this whole sense of what the water means even in the Odyssey on a larger scale, which is Poseidon, that a God that is angry, who is controlling your fate, who's not letting your boat go to shore, that he maybe gets Poseidon's forgiveness. And Poseidon helps him out and, like, throws a bunch of water out to, like, save his life.

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

Yes.

[Paul Scheer]

Because he's somebody who doesn't actually believe in religion. Right. Like, when everybody else runs to get baptized, he's like, nope. But yet he is somebody who is constantly saved by these moments of, you know, unexplainable. You know, like, he is living a very blessed life, in a way.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. And I feel like the idea of the gods, if they are real in this movie at all, you know, that's left kind of vague and teasing in a way. The gods almost seem to be ominous. Like, the gods kind of, to me, feel more like the law. You know, the sheriff who shows up with the reflective glasses and you can't see his face and you can't please him, and he's just an avenger, you know, he has made up your mind. He has made up his mind that he doesn't like you and you have to be punished again.

[Paul Scheer]

By the way, the state of Mississippi.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, but the state of Mississippi is like this avenging God who will not forgive them.

[Paul Scheer]

And you know, the way that this movie, you know, constantly puts them in water for these major decisions. You know, this idea, like, they are. And by the way, water washes away that guy, right? Like, he. Like, we don't know what happens to him. We assume that he is dead, but, like, water takes him out. Right? The water is the. Is the one thing, this reoccurring theme that can kind of wash away your sins, can kind of give you rebirth. It can, you know, deliverance. Like, I think water is, you know, is really interesting here because even the seduction, while framed as negative, is actually, I guess, positive, right? He didn't turn into a frog. We think he did. But, like, there's nothing bad in the water. You think, oh, the water. They've called him there to. To change him. But it didn't.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, no, I mean, I was going to say, like, when they're having that water stand at the end with the sheriff, he has that really freaky line where he says they're trying to tell him, like, you can't arrest us. You can't execute us. We've been pardoned. We just got pardoned by, like, Governor Menelaus. And he goes, well, we haven't. We don't have a radio and the law is a human institution. That line really freaks me out. Because if the law is a human institution, then what is he. Because he's saying, I'm going against that. I don't have to listen to that. He seems bigger and scarier. Like he sees himself above the law, above humanity.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I think. I think. But also because he's wearing these dark glasses, he can't see what he is or what he's not. Right. Like, they do such a great job with the costume design there, in the sense that even the center part of his sunglasses is like a leather. Like a little pouch. I've seen these before, you know, but, like, you don't see anything across his face in the way that you always are shooting him. He's got blinders on. Blinders? Not even. Yeah, I would say blinders. Why not? But I also think that this movie doesn't just make the evil people have blinders on. I think you could draw a line to Penny, which is Clooney's wife, Holly Hunter in the film. Her demand for this wedding ring is something that is interesting that she comes back to. She. She needs proof. You want me back. Well, you gotta give me that ring. Well, here's another ring. Well, that's not the ring I wanted. Well, I. You told me it was there, and that's the one I got. Well, I could have gotten confused. Like, I need that ring. And it's like there is something. Like she also has a firm line. And a lot of people do. Like, a lot of people are stuck in their belief and stuck in their ways. And maybe. I don't know if it's not appreciating the moment that they're in or seeing the forest through the trees, but I thought that the fact that the movie ends on that wedding ring moment, to me, you know, he wants this reunion. And I'm thinking about this. He wants a reunion. He wants to come back. And I guess maybe it's saying that there's two parts of this story. Like, just because you want to be back, just because you want this reunion, doesn't mean that you can control somebody else either. Like somebody else has a say as well. Or is it that you'll always be fighting an uphill battle, you will always be on this epic quest, you know, like, is marriage the ultimate, you know, hero's journey? I don't know. He will never be able to find that. We know that he will never be able to find that ring. So until. So. Or will he always. Will he be dying trying to find that ring?

[John Turturro (character voice)]

My adventuring days have come to an end. Time for this old boy to enjoy some repose.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's good Hunt.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

You were right about that ring too. Any other wedding band wouldn't do. This here was foreordained. Fate was a smiling on me. You just have to have confidence.

[Amy Nicholson]

That's not my ring.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

God. What?

[Amy Nicholson]

That's not my ring.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Not your ring?

[Amy Nicholson]

That's one of Anne Hurlings.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

You said it was in the roll top desk.

[Amy Nicholson]

I said I thought it was in the roll top desk.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

No, you said under the mattress, sir. No.

[Amy Nicholson]

Maybe my chifferobe. I don't know.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Well, I'm sorry, honey.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, we need that ring.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Well, that ring is at the bottom of a pretty darn big lake. Uh, a 9,000 hectare lake.

[Amy Nicholson]

And I don't care if it's 90,000, but, honey, that lake was not my doing. Oh, of course not. I counted to three.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

Honey, honey. No, wait, Honey.

[Amy Nicholson]

Well, I also just enjoy seeing an actor with that much charm find the limit of his charm, you know, that he just cannot win her over. And the idea of somebody so drawn to that. Yeah. We can say marriage is the ultimate hero's journey. Sure. Right.

[Google Chrome Ad Voice]

I mean, no.

[Paul Scheer]

It's like. Well, I guess maybe it's a journey that never ends.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Which I think is a beautiful way to look at it. It's not just like, you get married and it's over. It's like. Is it continually. Every relationship. It's not just about marriage, but every relationship is a constant, you know, recommitment and growth. I mean, that's. We talked about the invite a little while ago. I think that's the core of that film, too. Especially after you read, like, an article in the New York Times with Esther Perel, you know, this idea, you know, it's like, I think that there's the idea that you can constantly be on this journey of marriage, and maybe that's the hardest one. I don't know. I think that. Again, I see why that's so interesting. And I found it to be really. My eyes open this time. Ooh. My eyes open. I see the movie a little bit differently, and I think that that might be why the movie ends in an unfulfilling way for some. But for others, it feels like, oh, what a perfect bookend here. Like, what a perfect way to end it. Because he went from one chain gang to another. His kids all in that chain gang. Right. I mean, they're all the same thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

And one is voluntary holding that little rope. Right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. And his want to have that. Right. Like, he want. He's going from one to the other. And is one better than the other? He's living in a. He's still living in this thing where he's kind of trapped. And he's got to answer to this woman who's going to be very demanding of him. And they're on a chain gang.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. He wants another lifelong sentence with a master he can't please.

[Paul Scheer]

Right. You know?

[Amy Nicholson]

Oh, I like that. You know, there is something that I respect a little bit in the. Cohen's idea of pulling their homages from the Odyssey by a sense of just sort of gut instinct or like, here's what we thought was interesting. Here's what we remember about the story of the Odyssey that we're not gonna reread. We're gonna be able to conflate some stuff together, push stuff together, cram stuff Together to figure out, like, the themes that we find really interesting. I mean. Cause talking about the impact of, like, power and music and popularity, that makes me think that they took the scene of the sirens. This basic idea of, like, here's a song that will cause you to jump out of a boat, jump out of a car, you'll lose your life. To pursue it, to get closer and closer to the sense of music.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

How'd it do? Ladies Name a thief. Go to sleep, you little baby Everybody's gone in the cotton and the corn

[Amy Nicholson]

didn't leave Nobody but the babe it's like they took that idea of the power of music and then wrapped it around the entire thing. Right, right.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

That it's all about a siren song. And I feel like when you're not trying to literalize it and be like, beat for beat, here's the odyssey, then you can get to those larger ideas, and you can take the sirens and you can turn them in a little bit of Circe, too, who's like, maybe changing human beings into frogs instead of pigs.

[Paul Scheer]

I love that. And I think this idea that your life, you are always going on adventures, and there's choices that you make in each one of those adventures, and they will define you. Right. And. And you can kind of recommit yourself in different ways. And I feel like that's part of the baptism. I think that that's also part of, you know, when they take that frog and they're going to care for the frog and they're going to make it, you know, make. They're. They didn't just leave their friend, you know, they are going to. They made this choice. It could have been easier to leave them. Then they go back and get them again, you know, kind of pull him out of that prison. I love this idea that you're constantly changing who you are, or you can change and change quickly. Maybe that's part of it, too. Right. You aren't just the same person. And maybe we're damned if we don't want to change. And maybe that's why we go to that bank robber, Babyface. Is it George Nelson?

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, yeah. He's a real person. Yeah.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Right.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yes.

[Paul Scheer]

So Babyface, like, Babyface is fighting so hard against what people are labeling him as. That, like, he can't actually. I don't know, maybe that's, like, in his demise, is so clear that maybe there's something about, like, when you don't let yourself change or you don't embrace how people see you that could. Can hurt You. I don't know, maybe I'm. Maybe I'm losing it a little bit

[Amy Nicholson]

here, but I don't know. I mean, yeah, he rejects being called a guy with a baby face. I love the extra that they hire to, like, whisper, she has the best face. The Cohen's themselves are so good at hiring a full ensemble of just interesting people to look at. But Babyface, Yeah, real person Babyface's story, by the way. He was arrested for the first time when he was 12 years old because he accidentally shot his friend in the face. And he was kind of like a clone. A little bit of Bonnie and Clyde where he drove around the country robbing banks with his wife, Helen. He wound up dying in a shootout with one of the agents who had killed Dillinger. And then he killed that agent who had killed Dillinger. But he was hit. He died in a safe house with his wife. And I think this part's really sad. His wife had to leave him behind in a ditch. His body, because he was dead and they couldn't take him with him. She wrapped him in a blanket because he hated being cold. Oh, I think that's really sad and sweet. Yeah. But I think that from what I've heard, he and his wife Helen had a true love story. Little sad Helen's not here. Think it is pretty funny that he hates cows.

[Paul Scheer]

Cows.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

I hate cows worse than cappers.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, George.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Not the livestock.

[Amy Nicholson]

I also love that when he gets lynched at the end or gathered up by like the group of avenging townspeople, you just hear someone in the back yell, cow killer.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Oh, when that cow is in that. When the cow is at the end of that. I thought that was so. It made me laugh so, so hard. But I guess, you know, to a certain point, you know, he is,

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

you

[Paul Scheer]

know, he loves the spectacle. He is a violent man. Right. But he's got this energy to him. And, you know, and I guess maybe, you know, I'm sorry, like, let me say this. I'm glad that their love is there. And I think, you know, when I'm looking at him and trying to figure out, like, what is his Achilles heel? Like, well, his Achilles heel is that he is, you know, essentially, that's like. It's like, don't call me chicken from Back to the Future. Right? Like, it's like that's the one thing that kind of gets him going.

[Amy Nicholson]

Are you saying Achilles heel? Cause that's an Iliad thing.

[Paul Scheer]

I was. I mean, there it was. I mean. Cause he is right, isn't it?

[Amy Nicholson]

That's your version of subtly entering in some hole.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, that's it. You know, I said it in enough way that I knew it was connected, but I didn't draw much of a larger connection to it. I hope I'm using this the right way, but I do think that, like, he is. You know, this idea of, like, how we remember people like, you know, Billy the Kid and Baby Face, it's like these are violent, violent people. But they're going around, they're performing their own story, right? They're telling their story of who they want to be, and then we just accept it too. So maybe that's just back to perception again.

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[Amy Nicholson]

Onscreen. Abby, Paul, can I tell you something?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Since I watched this movie, I have done nothing but sing these bluegrass songs to my cat, who tends to really like them because, you know, my cat meows around when he likes.

[Paul Scheer]

I know.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, he, like meows with me every chorus he loves. The man from Constant Sorrow just loves it. He has not gotten tired of meowing whenever I sing it. That song has a really interesting history, you know, because it was Tebow and Burnett who went and gathered a bunch of this music that then became a giant bestseller, which is wild to imagine how big the soundtrack was beating out the podcast. Are you serious? But, yeah. I mean, there's so many neat stories just connected to it. Like the man of Constant Sorrow song that was first written in 1907. From everything he's been able to trace back by this coal miner who got beaten up by a railroad tramp. He was left to die. He just wrote down his lyrics. The lyrics wound up being in the hands of, of all things, a blind banjo player. Then they eventually made their way to this folklorist and then it became this American standard where you can Hear it. The first time it was ever recorded was in 1928. I want to play a little waterfall of it starting in 1968. And then two people who sang it next.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

I am a man upon some sort I've seen trouble all my days I'll say say goodbye to Colorado Where I was born and partly raised.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. Man From Casa Sorrow. It gets picked up by Bob Dylan. He records it on his very, very, very first album that he ever did. And then the last one, Miley Cyrus. Gotta have her doing the song.

[Paul Scheer]

Wow, this is wild.

[Amy Nicholson]

I know. I should have my cat do it. Yeah. Or even like that very first song that you hear in the movie starts, you know, when the Chain Gang is singing right here. That has a really interesting story where that's an original recording that Thiebaud and Burnett had heard that was recorded in the 1950s, back when there's the very famous musical folklorist, Alan Lomax, who would go around recording music, asking people to record music that they remembered, handing tape recorders to people. He handed this tape recorder to an inmate at a prison and said, can you record what you guys are singing on the Chain Gang? And this guy did, and that is the original recording. This man named James Carter. He recorded that in a prison in Mississippi, the real one. And they wound up finding James Carter, you know, 50 years later when this album came out to, like, give him a royalty check, he was just a guy working in Chicago, surprised. And this really changed his life.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

The convicts were singing it when I got there. They probably had been singing it years before I got there. I'm proud of it now because it gave me a piece of money I wouldn't have had if I hadn't sung it. Put a smile on my family's face. That's the big thing.

[Amy Nicholson]

They flew James Carter to the Grammys, and it was the very first time he was ever on an airplane.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Wow.

[Amy Nicholson]

Isn't that just amazing?

[Paul Scheer]

Like that is. I'm just sitting back enjoying the story. Wow, that's really fascinating. And we didn't milkshake duck him. Right. They. Nothing bad happened with James Carter. He didn't turn out to be, like, a serial killer. A lot of the times when we find some people. Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah. He put, I think, the money into his local church. His daughter is also in the interview that I played. She's wonderful. And. Yeah. But the sense that this music is alive, even that the people who sang this music was still alive when the movie came out, is just amazing because it feels like ancient and new at the same time, we're still living in times where politicians and endorsements and all of that matters a lot. I mean, it's ridiculous.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. And I think that it's interesting to put so many themes that are universal, that have stayed with us for a long time in the past. I think we are looking at it, and I think when you look at the Coen brothers resume, you see that they often go back to the past. And to me, I think that there

[Preston Sturges (character voice)]

is,

[Paul Scheer]

you know, I guess a sense of, well, in the past, things were better. Right. And I hate to go back to this phrase, but that make America great again. Take the Trump out of it. It doesn't make a difference about Trump. But there is a thing that, like, well, in the past, things were better. It was easier in the past. And I think what the Coen brothers often show by going in the past is like, nope, it was all there.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, people were still people.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. There were, you know, money troubles. There was status anxiety. You know, there are rituals. There's everything. Right. And then the story that we tell ourselves is like, oh, it was easier. But that's the story, and that's what everybody in this movie does. Tells a story of something that makes them, you know, look better or feel better about where they came from or what they did justifies it in some way. And it's so easy to say, well, the past was different. Well, the past is different because you are telling a version of that story to make sense with where you are now. And I think by constantly uncovering it, there's a little bit of relief. Like, we've been here. We've done this. I think that's why sometimes the most important journalist I want to hear from, and I don't even know if you consider him a journalist, is like, Ken Burns. Ken Burns, a gaya. We've done this. This is probably how it will end, you know? Cause, like. And this probably will go on here because, oh, there's a familiarity with, like, history does repeat itself. We do get into patterns. It never feels like. It always feels like it's the first time.

[Amy Nicholson]

Yeah, that's one of my favorite thoughts. That's. That's what gives me more comfort than anything.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

Just knowing that people have made it through this and survived and made it through worse. It survived. It's probably why my favorite books, a lot of them are, like, James Michener books.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

You know, just like, these epic stories about history with, like, Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall. In one place, which. Oh, James Michener's the best for that. You know, something like the Source, where you just watch a town get destroyed over a thousand years and keep building itself back up and people making the same mistakes, like. And that's why I think it's so fascinating because, you know, when the Cohens take this story, set it in the past, and then we all, at the time, it feels like, miss the point of what they're getting at. That's fascinating because you would want to think when you tell a story and set it in the past, the distance allows us to see the themes better. Like, it becomes more like a myth. Because if you make the story and set it today, people get cranky. Like, we're not like that. We don't do that. That's not how this works. You find the quibbles when something is set in the present day, right? You compare it against what you know. You figure out why it's wrong. But when it's farther away and you're not as familiar, I think it's easier often to see the themes. I just find it fascinating how much I miss them, you know?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, but you know what I think part of it is a great movie will always hit differently in the different times that you watch it. But I also think, you know, we're so accustomed, especially in the streaming age. We watch and we forget everything is disposable. You know, what's next Friday? Oh, there's five other things that are out on three different streaming platforms. And this is a movie. It's like, yeah, you gotta watch it. And you'll walk away with the first version of it, and you'll watch it again. You'll walk away with maybe a little bit more and then keep on watching it. And it's really deep filmmaking. I think it's sort of like the way that people talk about. Kubrick and the Coens are very similar. They make their films to hold up to a standard, a legacy. There's more than what meets the eye. And I think that that's true with many great directors, but especially with them. Kubrick and, you know, Kubrick and the Coens, I feel, like, have a strong, you know, belief that, like, don't worry. One day this will all even make more sense to you. But you have to put the time in. It's like a great text, you know, it's like, yeah.

[Amy Nicholson]

I mean, I might make a bold statement, but I think. I mean it. I don't think there is a Coen Brothers movie that gets Worse when you watch it again. I think there's a lot of movies that get worse when you watch them twice.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, I agree. It's like the logic of movies can fall apart very quickly under examination. It's like. Or, you know, oh, that doesn't make any sense. This is all shored up. It all makes a lot of sense. And it's a bummer that this was polarizing, but certainly didn't affect what they wanted to do. I don't think that they're ever affected by what they wanted to do.

[Amy Nicholson]

No, I mean, I think they deliberately encourage people to get annoyed by them.

[Paul Scheer]

Right?

[Amy Nicholson]

Like, oh, do you want another Fargo? Well, you're not getting one.

[Paul Scheer]

Right?

[Amy Nicholson]

That's. That's been their thing the whole time. We haven't done no country. I'm sure someday we'll do no country. But to go from no country to burn after reading, I mean, it's hilarious. They're just like, ha, ha. Take that. You wanted another one of those serious Texas violent dramas. You are not getting it.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, and. And this is why I feel like we'll keep on watching them. And the images of this movie are stunning. Roger Deakins work on. This is amazing. Like you said, they were able to run this through digital processing to really create that kind of dust bowl look. Movie is. And this is a movie, sadly, that I did watch on three different screens. Television, iPad, and iPhone. And it looks great on every one of them. It was a tricky day. It was a tricky day.

[Amy Nicholson]

Wow. Well, can I tell you something that I came across? A little news snippet From June of 2001, an important time in Laker history. Lakers win a championship.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

[Amy Nicholson]

Tiny news brief from the Los Angeles Times. Quote, the Lakers viewed. Oh, brother, where art thou? This week, Phil Jackson spliced in educational basketball clips just to keep the film session lively. In part, it was supposed to represent the Laker journey to the brink of their championship, Said Jackson. The odyssey, the little things that go on the trials. I also want these guys to have some decent music in their ears and give them an opportunity to wither under some bluegrass and country. And then they went on and beat the 76ers and got a ring.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, there you go. You know what? God bless the Lakers. They'll need it anyway, so. I know. All right, Amy. What a great conversation. What a great film. I'm so happy that we got a chance to rewatch this.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Well, that was some fun, though, wasn't it, George? Yeah. Almost makes me wish I hadn't been saved. Jacking up banks. I can see how a fellow derive a whole lot of pleasure and satisfaction out of it.

[Paul Scheer]

It's okay.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

Who? Doggies.

[Paul Scheer]

All right, Amy, let's take a little bit of a break from watching movies. Well, I guess we could be watching the brand new Apple TV film the Dink with Jake Johnson and Mary Steenburgen. Because next week we have a special sit down chat with director Josh Greenbaum, who you know from movies like Will and Harper, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and the upcoming Spaceballs 2. So we have a really fun chat with him and I think you might even enjoy the interview a little bit more if you watch the Dink beforehand. All right, well, you can continue this discussion about oh brother or Arthur on our free substack. Like I said, check out our YouTube page at Get Unspooled. We also have merch. You go to unspooled dashery.com check out what we got. And Amy, this show would not be possible without our amazing producers. Unspooled is produced by Amy Nicholson, Paul Scheer, Molly Reynolds and Harry Nelson. Sound engineered by Cory Barton, music by Devin Bryant, episode art by Kim Troxall, show art by Lee Jamison and social media production by Zoe Applebaum. This is a Rome production. See you next week. Bye for now.

[Amy Nicholson]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Amy Nicholson]

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[Amy Nicholson]

Hello. Look what TJ Maxx dragged in. The Devil Wears Prada 2 is now streaming on Disney plus and Hulu.

[John Turturro (character voice)]

We are just.

[Amy Nicholson]

We are downloadable.

[George Clooney (character voice)]

We are streamable.

[Amy Nicholson]

The fashion event of the year is certified fresh. Pull yourself together. We have work to do. Critics say it's smart and witty and the perfect sequel. That's all. Get Runway ready for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Disney and Hulu. Rated PG 13.