Actor Josh Brolin is nothing if not candid. On the recent Nerdist podcast, the 47-year-old Brolin suggested he’s old enough to not really give a shit anymore about what people think. In recent interviews, he’s been pretty frank about how the Coen Brothers are a little peculiar (affectionately calling them “socially inept”) and don’t care for small talk, and on the aforementioned podcast, he dogged the comic book/ western film in which he starred, “Jonah Hex,” revealing most of the film was quickly reshot and mangled in the process.
READ MORE: Review: The Coen Brothers’ ‘Hail Caesar!’ Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton & More
Brolin admitted he initially thought “Sicario,” the critically acclaimed crime thriller from Denis Villeneuve in which he stars with Emily Blunt, missed the mark. He recently elucidated his thoughts about the film on the DP/30 interview series.
“I was pleasantly surprised,” Brolin said. “I wasn’t too confident about that movie when we finished it because there was… some rewriting, some restructuring, a lot of talk and some improvising. There was a lot of talk in trailers, probably more than most movies I’ve done.
Brolin didn’t elaborate as to what those conversations were about, other than intimating that all parties were deeply concerned about the final product, but he suggested that no one other than the director knows the measure of any film during production. “It turned into a movie that I didn’t see, and that’s the difference between a great director and a director who’s just okay,” he said. “[Denis] knew. He acted like he didn’t, but he knew tonally exactly what he needed the whole time. And he got exactly what he wanted. And so when I saw it, I was like, ‘wow,’ and I love being wrong.”
Brolin revealed that he turned down the movie at first because he wanted to take a break, and he said the film’s director of cinematography convinced him to reconsider. “Roger Deakins very thoughtfully was like, ‘get your ass down here and stop being an idiot’ and I rightly did and I’m so grateful to him for that,” Brolin explained.
Brolin suggested his character in “Sicario” was so glib and relaxed because “probably part of it was [me thinking], ‘this isn’t going to work anyway so, whatever. I don’t know if that’s where my head was at, but we were really structuring something that we were hoping [would work] that I didn’t think was going to be very good. Since it’s not going to work anyhow, let’s really not make it work! And [yet] sometimes it works. ‘Jonah Hex’ didn’t work. [‘Sicario’] did.”
Brolin’s been making the press rounds for “Hail, Caesar!” so you can check out the full 30 minute interview below (where he also reveals he offered the Coens "The Hunchback Of Notre Dame," which he was producing), and you can listen to another 15 minute-ish interview with the excellent podcast The Frame. Lastly, some new “Hail, Caesar!” photos have surfaced. Absorb it all below.
