Honey is Not! Film, Detective Genre, & Joel Coen Reteam
,a Pulitzer-winning chief editor.
The Coen Brothers‘ Separate Paths and a hint of Reunion
By Marcus Rodriguez
For seven years, fans have wondered what happened to the legendary filmmaking duo, Joel and Ethan Coen. Thier last collaboration, the anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), felt like the culmination of an era, following a string of iconic films like True Grit and No Country for Old Men. But life, as it often does, intervened.
While Joel continued to direct solo projects, including the Shakespearean tragedy The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington, Ethan found himself drawn back to filmmaking with his wife, Tricia Cooke. Together,they completed the documentary Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Paradise. This sparked a creative itch,leading to their latest venture,Honey Don’t!,a comedy that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
Honey Don’t!, starring Margaret Qualley as a lesbian private investigator, Honey O’Donahue, is a deliberate subversion of genre tropes.Cooke describes it as a way of “switching gender rates” in the detective film, placing a “classic femme fatale, a kind of sultry, very tempting detective” at the center of the story. The film, which is a spiritual successor to their earlier collaboration Blood Simple, is a testament to their independent creative energies.
but the story doesn’t end there. The Coen brothers aren’t abandoning their partnership entirely. They are currently developing a new project,described by Ethan as “about the desert of life,rolling down the river,ya get it?” Cooke adds with a wry smile,”…meets a horror movie.”
The brothers are already writing a new script together, signaling a potential return to the collaborative filmmaking that made them famous. “We have one written,” ethan confirms. “I’m sure we’ll do it.”
This news will undoubtedly delight cinephiles who have long cherished the unique voice and vision of the Coen brothers. While their individual pursuits have been fruitful, the prospect of a new joint project offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future of two of cinema’s most influential storytellers.