At the Westwood Village theater on Monday night, Ethan and Joel Coen looked back at their career in cinema and introduced the cast of their new film Hail, Caesar! with a joke: “The main character is usually a nitwit … George Clooney is here!”
The world premiere of the film brought a slew of Hollywood couples to Los Angeles. The event drew George and Amal Clooney, Josh Brolin and Kathryn Boyd, and Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan Tatum.
Clooney expressed his admiration for the brothers, telling The Hollywood Reporter that “every actor you ever talk to would do a movie with them, it’s that simple.”
Said castmember Alden Ehrenreich: “I grew up watching so many of their films and loving them so much it just became a dream to work with them.”
Added Seinfeld‘s Wayne Knight, who is credited in the film as “short extra” and ends up drugging and kidnapping George Clooney’s character: “You know that you’re dealing with great quality and people who are really brilliant. How can you say no?”
In the Coen brothers’ new film, Brolin’s character, Eddie Mannix is a Hollywood fixer type for faux studio Capitol Pictures. He’ll pay you off, slap you around and shut you up. Whether Hollywood needed a Mannix type around more in the 1950s than it does today, Brolin said, “There was much more debauchery then than there is now. You can’t get away with it now.”
Said Knight, “There will always be someone who’s trouble and there needs to be someone that can hose them down, threaten them and carry them off. We always need people like that, we don’t like to admit it, but I think anytime you’re dealing with egos and power you do need someone fixing stuff up.”
“I’d like to have a fixer. I’d like someone running around, grabbing the guy from The Hollywood Reporter and strangling him,” said Clooney as he jokingly pretended to strangle this THR writer. “I wouldn’t mind that at all. I don’t think you could do it now. For everybody that would take a pay off there’d be someone that would break the story.”
The film, also starring Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes, hits theaters Feb. 5.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
-
Heat Vision
‘Street Fighter’ Movie Removed From Calendar as Phoebe Dynevor Shark Thriller Moves Back a Year
![]()
-
![]()
-
Heat Vision
‘The Assessment’ Star Elizabeth Olsen on the Newfound Importance of Her Non-Marvel Choices
![]()
-
Heat Vision
‘Saw XI’ Removed From Lionsgate Calendar as ‘Strangers: Chapter 2’ Takes Its Slot (Exclusive)
![]()
-
![]()
-
![]()
