How Coen Brothers Messed With Josh Brolin On No Country For Old Men

Actor Josh Brolin thinks the Coen Brothers messed with him on the set of No Country for Old Men. The Oscar-winning film had Brolin playing Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad, leaving the scene with a satchel of money recovered from a dead man. This sets off a chain of events that has Moss on the run, pursued by Javier Bardem’s assassin Anton Chigurh, as well as those wishing to retrieve the money. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, the film also starred Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, and Garret Dillahunt.

No Country for Old Men served as a career relaunch for Brolin, who followed the film with a number of notable roles that continued his rise in Hollywood, such as in W., American Gangster, and Men In Black 3. Having begun his acting career early on, appearing in films like The Goonies, Thrashin’, and the TV series The Young Riders, Brolin’s later roles would cement him in the A-list, particularly for his work as Thanos in the MCU, Cable in Deadpool 2, and a working relationship with Denis Villeneuve in both the Sicario and Dune franchises.

While guesting on the YouTube show Hot Ones, Brolin recounts a story about a specific moment in No Country for Old Men which had the actor suggesting a line of dialogue (or rather, a sound) that he would later suspect turned into a long-game joke for Ethan Coen. When Brolin’s character discovers the dead man by a tree with a satchel of money, the actor suggested that he should make a sound of some sort when he sees what’s in the satchel. The directors had Brolin make a number of different grunts before having him settle on one in particular, which made it into the film. However, after the movie was complete, Brolin noticed that every time it screened in a theater, Ethan would laugh out loud at that moment, making the actor suspect that it was all a ruse to mess with him. Read his account below:

When we were doing No Country [For Old Men], you know, everything was pretty much drawn and you kind of knew what you were doing and it wasn’t dialogue heavy so there wasn’t a lot of stuff to experiment with and change, but I know when I got the satchel and I opened it up, I said, ‘Don’t you think he should say something. He looks at the dead guy and he looks around and you can tell he’s thinking about what is this, what do I want to do with this, and shouldn’t there be a little something there?” And Joel [Coen] goes, “Well, like what?” And I said, “I don’t know, like a ‘huh’ or a ‘hm.'” And they go, “Is there anything else?” And I go, “Like ‘hmm?'” And they go, “What else?” And, now you’re thinking, “They’re f*cking with me, right?” So, I went through about six of them and Ethan said, “Try the second one.” So, I did the second one and then every time we screened the movie I always knew where Ethan was in the theater, because every time that moment happened he would burst out laughing. So, was it a joke, or did it help the movie and the scene? We’ll never know. [Joking] Any kind of film that they’ve come out with and they’ve manifested that’s good is an accident. Not because of skill or anything.

No Country for Old Men would go on to win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor for Bardem. Both Bardem and Brolin would appear together again in Villeneuve’s Dune, and may well both appear again in Dune: Part 2. In the meantime, Brolin is currently starring in Prime Video’s Outer Range and will next be seen in the comedy Brothers with Peter Dinklage and Brendan Fraser.

The Coen brothers have frequently toyed with the oddities of human behavior in their films, so it makes sense that they would mess with Brolin a bit on No Country For Old Men. From Raising Arizona to Fargo to Burn After Reading and everything in between, the Coens have captured strange and fascinating performances from their actors, so there must be some method to their madness. Whether it was a joke or just a fond memory for Ethan Coen when the moment transpired on the set of No Country For Old Men, the end result was a game-changing performance for Brolin and an Oscar-winning film for Coen, so either way, the bit seemed to pay off.

Source: Hot Ones

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