EDGE Miami

Josh Brolin, a star in the new Coen Brothers film No Country for Old Men, has the slightly weathered, handsome face of a cowboy to go along with his truly great, movie-star hair and muscular build.

Indeed, he greets a group of journalists who enter the room in which he’s seated at the head of a large table with a pack of Winston cigarettes at his elbow: had they been Marlboros, the image would have been complete.

And to be sure, Brolin’s character in the new film, Llewellyn Moss, is a taciturn, self-reliant, cowboy-hat wearing, pickup-truck driving all-American guy, not unlike the unnamed Sam Elliot character in another Coen Brothers film, The Big Lebowski.

Whereas Elliot’s character had an ethereal, mythical, almost tricksterish persona, however, Brolin’s character in No Country for Old Men is more of a pragmatist. After stumbling onto a bloody tableau-dead drug runners, shot-up SUVs, a load of heroin-Moss decides to help himself to a satchel full of money.

The drug runners’ backers, however, are not about to let loose of the cash quite that easily. They dispatch a professional assassin, a man named Sigur (Javier Bardem in an atrocious wig), who moves through the world like a wisp of fate. Sigur is quizzical, philosophical, and highly principled; he kills without compunction, but that’s because, as he sees it, life and death exist in a rigid balance and honor demands that the scheme of things be preserved. The closest he ever comes to taking pity on anybody is to offer a coin-toss to see if Fate really does decree that his victim should die.

The movie becomes an elaborate, suspenseful chase between the two men, with other characters stumbling into their path and, as often as not, getting themselves shot for their trouble.

The Brothers adapted the screenplay from a novel by Cormack McCarthy; McCarthy could have written his story just for them. As with just about any Coen Brothers film, there’s a complex interplay of the bleak and the majestic, the comic and the existential, and, in the case of this movie in particular, a struggle between will (Moss) and fate (Sigur).

Brolin is friendly, approachable, and talkative, so when he’s asked how an actor prepares to work in a Coen Brothers film, he jumps right in:

"You pry, that’s what you do," says Brolin. "You pry, because they’re not the most verbose duo."

That’s not to say the pair, who produce and direct their movies together, are hard to work with. Says Brolin, "[During the rehearsal process, it was easy, because they were very open. They’re just not great conversationalists. They don’t feel any need to uphold their end of the conversation in the least."

At least, they didn’t used to; as Brolin says a moment later, "That was then; now that I know them well, there’s a million things to talk about, a million different interests. But I think in the beginning, the whole small talk thing, they find no interest in it whatsoever.
Not that everything has to be deep and meaningful: that’s not the point," Brolin adds. "It’s just, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, let’s just do the work."

Almost as an aside, Brolin lets the press know how lucky they are to have him as an interview subject, saying, "That’s why they’re not the best interviews during these press screenings and all that, because [they’ll be asked a question], and already I can feel them just going, ’Oh, Jesus Christ.’"

As though in keeping with this description of the brothers, the movie itself is hardly verbose; it contains long sequences of silence of silence, a few in which Brolin’s character shares the screen with a multitude of corpses. How did all that time with "dead" people affect his psyche as an actor?

"Well," laugh Brolin, "when they yell ’Cut!’ and you have the dead bodies getting up and blinking, and their eyes are still white because of the contacts they have in, it’s pretty humorous." As to his psyche, "it’s all make believe. You lend yourself to the moment it’s happening, and then you go have your coffee and your donut, and maybe talk to the props guy or get into the props girl, who’s the props guy’s assistant, who’s pretty hot..."

When the laughter subsides, Brolin continues: "When you’re on the set, you create your own fun, and especially when you do a movie that’s heavy, you create more fun than you normally would. I’ve always found that being in comedies is the most serious; I did a movie called Flirting With Disaster, and I remember Lily Tomlin going [slaps his own forehead repeatedly] ’I’m not funny, I’m not funny, I’m not funny, I’m not funny...’ And I’d be, like, ’Fuck, this is so gnarly!’

"With this [Coen brothers movie], we had a lot of fun," Brolin continues. "We wanted to get away from the tense feeling that the script is all about, and you want to stay open, too, you want to stay free and imaginative, so you try to play as many practical jokes as you can just to keep your wit going."

Brolin adds, "You don’t know this until afterwards; when you’re doing it, you just think you’re a really bad actor and you’re awful, but in hindsight, you see the method--I think!"

A journalist, thinking of Brolin’s roles in Planet Error, the Robert Rodriguez-directed half of Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse, the war film The Valley of Elah, and the just-released American Gangster, remarks that Brolin has a bumper crop of four movies for release in 2007, and Brolin corrects him with a friendly tone.

"I don’t mean to sound pretentious," Brolin says, "but there’s five; and [I only bring it up] because I really like that movie, and I know not a lot of people saw it; The Dead Girl.

"I really liked that movie," Brolin continues. "One of the best compliments I got was, I just saw Sean Penn up in Toronto, and he was, like, ’Bro! Saw The Dead Girl! It’s fuckin’ great!’ It was very gracious of him to be that excited."

Addressing his considerable screen presence this year, Brolin says, "But anyway, yeah, it’s nice; I think the difference is that people are seeing these movies. I like the work that I’ve done before that, whether it be in theatre in New York, or in L.A., it’s all the same work. It’s just that these movies are being seen."

What would Brolin like to do next?

"I don’t know, man," the actor says. "A dinner theatre in Phoenix, maybe. Try that out for a while."

Isn’t he exhausted from having made all those movies?

Brolin answers in an animated way that indicates he’s far from worn out by is workload. "No, because they’re exciting parts and exciting filmmakers, so not at all," he says.

The actor continues, "I’m more exhausted after the movie’s over from all the stuff I’ve been doing; I’ve been trading full time, I wrote and directed a three and a half hour play, I did a short film called X."

Brolin adds with a grin, "And no matter how late I stay up at night, I’ve got to take my kids to school at 7:30 the next morning; that’s truly exhausting. This stuff is the easy stuff."

Did he say he was trading full time? As in stocks?

"I’m a full time trader, full time," verifies Brolin. "We have a business called MarketProbability.com and I’m full time there. That’s the day job. I make a lot more money trading than I do acting, that’s for sure. It gives me the ability to say no, which is good. And I don’t lose my money, which is a good thing."

Adds Brolin, "I’m one of the very few [who don’t lose their money]."

Brolin broke his collarbone earlier this year in a motorcycle accident. One journalist wonders whether this experience changed his approach to acting.

Brolin takes a moment to unwrap a mint before replying, looking thoughtful, then utters a slightly nervous laugh.

"Yeah," he says. "I mean... no. But, yes."

Brolin laughs along with everyone else at that cryptic answer, then explains. "The great thing about the motorcycle accident is, I didn’t see it coming, and I always thought I would see it coming; I always fancied myself a top expert rider and all that, having raced dirt bikes. I thought I could get out of any situation. This was one of those things that, I wasn’t thinking about anything else--it just was there, and I was in the air, and I thought, ’Shit! I won’t get to do that fucking Coen brothers film. That sucks!’"

There’s more laughter, and Brolin continues his story.

"I was in the air long enough that I could be thinking, ’How are my legs? I didn’t hit the car hard enough with my body; that’s amazing, because I would have broken something for sure. But now I’m on my way down... I have my helmet on, that’s good; I have my gloves, I have my [body suit]; now, if I can roll over on my back, because I’ve got this back thing on, I might be okay.’ And I was trying to roll, but I didn’t really have the momentum. I landed right [on my collar bone] and that just snapped it, right in half.

"I didn’t tell anybody for a week," Brolin continues, "and I thought, ’I can grit my teeth and get through [filming No Country for Old Men], and it’ll be fine. But my lawyer told me, ’You’re liable if you don’t say anything, so you have to say something,’ and so I told the story a little bit differently than the way it really was..." More laughter. "...but it all worked out.

"So anyway," Brolin sums up, "anything can happen. Cormack’s book [takes] the same theme: anything can happen."

Was Brolin fan of the Cormac McCarthy novel before starring in the film version?

"Sam Shepard turned me on to the book when I was in Austin doing Grindhouse," Brolin relates. "I knew Blood Meridian, I knew Child of God--those were the two [Cormack McCarthy books] I had read. Now I’ve read almost everything."

Continues Brolin, "I was amazed by the book. I read it in a day and thought it was phenomenal. But I never thought, ’Who’s doing the movie?’"

Once he knew a movie was in the works, was he initially interested in the role of Moss?

"No," says Brolin, who goes on to reckon, "I think if I’d have been interested in anything [beforehand], it would have been Sigur."

Sigur, of course, is Moss’ thematic opposite. Whereas Moss is confident that he can plough his way through his conflict with Sigur with enough muscle and enough precautions, Sigur is convinced that the outcome is already decided and all he needs to do is pull the trigger. It’s a matter of human will versus destiny.

"That’s absolutely right," Brolin says, "he is about Fate. He’s so confident in that he is the messenger of the Grim Reaper, he’s the Grim Reaper himself."

As for Moss, says Brolin, "having had two tours in Vietnam, [he] feels himself resourceful enough to deal with any obstacles that might come up in taking this money. And anyone who’s ever been poor would have taken that money like [snaps his fingers] that."

Continues Brolin, "If you’re an idiot, you’re going to take the money to your trailer, not go anywhere, not leave... but obviously, he doesn’t do that. As the movie goes on, you start to understand how resourceful he is. But I don’t think that when he made the decision to keep the money, that he thinks there’s anybody like Sigur who exists. The Mexicans, yes; that makes sense to him. [But not Sigur.]

"I think the parallel principles are the same in their intensity and in their integrity," Brolin says. "[Sigur] and his principles and his relationship to Fate is the same as Llewellyn’s [principles] and his love for his wife, and the fact that he can think his way through that labyrinth of complications."

Though Moss and Sigur are locked in a pitched battle of wits and stamina, they never meet face to face; at best, they catch glimpses of one another in shadows and across distances. A third major character is a sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who traces the path of death and destruction Sigur leaves behind him, but again the sheriff never confronts Moss or Sigur directly.

The question arises of how the actors constructed their performances, needing to play off people with whom they never share the screen-especially when so much of the action is wordless, and there’s so much tense watchfulness and waiting involved.

"Look, when you’re doing dialogue, you’re playing this character, it’s a little easier because you have this crutch that you can rely on," says Brolin.

"But the quiet, that’s a whole other thing, because you have to convey these ideas and the story that you’re telling, but fear is, ’I’m going to boring as an actor,’ so you start doing things," and here Brolin begins scratching himself and plucking at his shirt to illustrate, "that don’t belong there.

"If you’re not doing anything, and you lend yourself to this vacancy, then you’re not filling the moment properly," Brolin continues. "So we talked a lot about that, about how much Llewellyn talks to himself when he’s out in the desert. Is it going to get the point where he seems crazy? Because we don’t want that at all. We want a guy who’s basically keeping himself company. That’s what you do when you spend all that time alone, and that’s okay. How much grunting [should he do]? What does an inhale mean, now that there’s no music [in a scene]? Well, it means a lot, because the ambiance becomes a character in itself. It became a really interesting challenge for us, and it was a huge challenge for me because, as you can tell, I like to talk a lot, and everybody knows it!"

A swell of laughter greets this observation.

Brolins continues, "There was one [grunt] that I added, when I find the money and I open up the satchel and I look at the dead guy. I kept fucking up the take because I would look for too long, and then Ethan and Joel would start laughing. I said, ’Dude, you can’t laugh. Please don’t laugh. I’m trying to pull off this moment, and I know it’s weird, and it may work; when you see it post [production] you can decide whether you want to use it or not.’ And I’d do it again, I’d really stare at the dead guy for a long time, like, ’Are you gonna move? Do you have anything to say? Is there something that’s going to come out of this moment? Do you just want to give some little dead hint about how you feel?’ And Ethan and Joel would always start laughing.

"But I said, ’Hey, can I put this thing in here, where I look down at the money and it’s not really a decision, it’s just [reflex]. Out of respect for the moment of having found this money, what if I go, "Hm." Or, "Mmm-hmm." Or, "Ohhhh." Or whatever.’ So we rehearsed a bunch of different ones. That was the most absurd off-camera conversation that we had in order to find one grunt that was appropriate for the moment."

The Coens direct their movies together; what was it like having two directors guiding his performance? Did the Coans speak in unison?

"You mean, do they speak at the same time?" asks Brolin.

Once the laughter subsides, Brolin says, "They do: they finish each other’s sentences; there’s no arguments, ever; [there are] no real disagreements, and if there is a disagreement, it’s usually immediately one [of the Coens] going, ’Okay, that’s fine.’

"Once in a while one of them will go, ’You know what, I think...’ But they don’t ever say, ’I disagree.’ And they’re not looking at each other; they’re looking at you. It’s like they’ve already figured it out. It’s kind of miraculous, and I’ve never seen anything quite like it," Brolin says.

The actor continues, "And then their editing process is amazing because they have an L-shaped desk, and they have Ethan looking at the log and picking takes of scenes, and they have a little bell right there, so when Ethan finds that particular take that he thinks is the best one, he moves it over to Joel’s computer, who’s going to edit it into the sequence, and he hits the bell: ding! And then they’ll look at each other."

Did Brolin get together with Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones to work out any kind of continuity for their characters’ reactions to one anothers’ actions?

"No," Brolin says, then laughs at his own terseness. "That’s one of those questions that, if you’d asked Ethan and Joel, they just would have told you, ’No,’" he says.

Continues Brolin, "No, I think a lot of that stuff comes afterwards. I don’t think that you can play the reality in the movies. When you’re in post [production] and you’re putting stuff together, then you can say, ’Look, I think we can lengthen this moment a little bit more, and that might create a little more ambiguity here, so people will ask those questions, which I think is totally appropriate; ’Existentially, what does this mean? Sociologically, what does this mean?’ All those questions.

"Paul Verhoeven said it the best I’d ever heard it put, when we were trying to figure out themes for Hollow Man, which I thought was important, and even in the outcome, when I looked at the movie, I go, ’Dude, I think we should have had a longer conversation, because I think there was much more to be had from the movie than what ended up being there.’

"But he got mad at one point," Brolin continues, "and he said, ’You know what? You don’t figure any of this shit out until after the movie is finished, and you look at the movie, and reporters start asking questions like, ’What were you doing, when at that moment you go, "Mmm-hmmm?" What did that mean?’"

Says Brolin, "To us, that meant we found the money, or you were saying okay to taking the money, or maybe it was just a vacant moment. Maybe it was one of those things where I just wanted to be done with the take, and they actually used it? I dunno."

Reckons Broslin, "It’s weird."