THE LADYKILLERS

About The Production
Reuniting with Joel and Ethan Coen for “The Ladykillers” is a stable of professionals who have worked in their expert capacities on many of their films. Cinematographer Roger Deakins (8 films with the Coens), production designer Dennis Gassner (6 films), costume designer Mary Zophres (7 films), stunt coordinator Jery Hewitt (9 films), and special effects coordinator Peter Chesney (7 films) are all Coen brothers regulars.

Academy Award® winner Gassner finds the collaboration a great treat. “It’s been an incredible pleasure to be asked back. Their projects are always such incredible sanctuaries, because of the impeccable organization that they always put into their movies.” Gassner was especially excited to work on another film set a South, as imagined by the Coens.

“Because it takes place in the South,” he says about the tone and mood being conveyed in his work, “it has a wonderful timeless quality.”

One of the main challenges that Gassner faced was to build a bridge that figures prominently in the film’s climax. “We obviously couldn’t build a whole bridge on stage,” Gassner says, “but we could build part of a bridge, then have the rest as a CGI element in our Mississippi location. That said, it needed to be at least partly real – it would set it in a real place and give it a romantic quality. It was great fun to design – it’s based on a bridge in Oregon that my family would drive over when I was a young boy.”

For costume designer Mary Zophres, the timeless quality was achieved by combining different periods from the 20th century while keeping in mind that the characters live in a small town in Mississippi. “Even though they have something from the past,” says Mary about the look of her characters, “they also have something very contemporary about their clothing.”

“Joel and Ethan’s films are the most interesting projects,” says Zophres. “For a costume designer to have great characters to dress and a whole world to create, that’s the jackpot. Their scripts are incredibly evocative – when I read it, I imagine the costumes.”

For the character of Dorr, says Zophres, “It’s described that he’s in a cream suit and there’s references to Edgar Allen Poe, but actually the first person I thought of was Mark Twain.”

This translated into “a three piece suit, slightly oversized and a quirky bowtie,” explains Zophres. Dorr also wears a cape. “I think everybody would agree that there’s a storybook quality to this movie,” continues Zophres, “a heightened sense of reality. So in that context, the cape totally works.”

Mrs. Munson, too, made an immediate impression on Zophres. “I remember thinking that she’s got to have big bazooms and floral dresses,” she recalls. That said, Mrs. Munson’s ample bosom does not come by her naturally. As Zophres explains, “Irma is not the size you see in her character so we have built a sculpture almost. It’s definitely a work of art.”

About her character’s look, Irma Hall says, “I wear dainty clothes and I fix my house up dainty and I have dainty little earrings.”

While Mrs. Munson and her church lady friends are dressed in demure classic florals and plaids vaguely reminiscent of the 30s, Dorr’s henchmen have jumped ahead several decades. The General and Garth Pancake both have not updated their wardrobes since the 1970s, with the former donning leisure suits and the latter showing a preference for short shorts. Gawain, on the other hand, brings a modern sensibility and 21stcentury threads.

Though “The Ladykillers” is a comedy, and as such, does not require the extensive stunt or effects work of some of their other films, stunt coordinator Jery Hewitt and effects coordinator Peter Chesney still had jobs to do. “Our big action sequence, such as it is, is the tunnel explosion,” says Ethan.

“Pancake blows himself out of the tunnel while he’s digging,” explains Chesney. “We had to launch him out. But it’s not a normal explosion; it’s more about comedic gymnastics with an explosion following him.”

This required careful timing with big air cannons that can chase the stuntman with effects and catapult him with a very specific trajectory. “The stuntman gets up to maybe 20 mph so he has a smooth take-off and he can control what he does after he leaves the mouth of the tunnel,” explains Chesney.

“This is not just throwing a guy across the room. It’s a performance,” insists Chesney. “There’s a big difference.”

Not as technically demanding but equally interesting was the football sequence, with stunt camera work involving cinematographer Roger Deakins. Says stunt coordinator Jery Hewitt, “We were worried about Roger. We had 21 huge, burly guys who are used to crashing into each other. Roger went in there with a delicate – and very expensive – hand-held camera.”

“After a few rehearsals you could see he was enjoying the heck out of it,” continues Hewitt. “It’s not football to its truest form, but it was so unique because the whole thing is done in the helmet.”

Cinematographer Roger Deakins, a longtime collaborator with Joel and Ethan, has worked on eight of their films. In fact, says Joel, “We can’t imagine doing a movie without Roger.”

Tom Hanks found working with the legendary Deakins a thrill. “I look back on the nature of the cinematographers, the cameramen I’ve worked with and I think for moviephiles it means a lot to add Roger Deakins to the list I’ve worked with,” say s Hanks. “This is a big deal. This is a huge deal.” Working alongside the Coens’ longstanding team is animal trainer Cristie Miele. “There’s a lot of animal action in the movie,” says Ethan referring to not only Pickles the cat and the raven on the bridge but also Pancake’s signature scene. “There’s also probably a cinematic first, we have a dog in a gas mask.”

“That was great,” adds Joel. “Christie went off and trained an English bull dog to play dead.” “We had to teach the dog to faint so that Pancake can give the dog ‘the kiss of life.’ It’s quite funny,” says Miele.

As far as Pickles the cat was concerned, the filmmakers weren’t sure what to expect. “They’re notoriously hard to train,” says Joel. “But Christie did some pretty remarkable things.”

Pickles was played by a number of identical cats each with a different behavior. “Cats can be trained to perform on cue,” explains Miele. “The key is to have a team. We have ten cats in our team and for each scene we prepare three different cats.”

There was one more new member of the production team, one necessitated by this particular screenplay: Prof. Dorr and his band of thieves are supposed to be practicing their baroque music on classical instruments. All the instruments and cases were made by renowned master guitar maker Danny Ferrington. “These are not necessarily things I would make,” explains Ferrington, “but when Ethan and Joel went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at these things they were kind of scratching their heads, saying, ‘Where are we going to get a theobo? Where are we going to find a harpolyre?’”

“As it turns out, gathering together authentic period instruments is pretty difficult,” explains Ethan. “People who have them don’t tend to want to lend them to movie companies.”

“Danny just basically made them all,” he continues. “Some he built from the ground up, and some were sort of ‘Frankenstein’ instruments, made from elements of different existing instruments. Tom’s character has a violin, the head stock of which is a Raven, which is appropriate to his character.”

The violin is fairly commonplace but some of the other instruments are a mystery to their supposed owners. Says Marlon about his stringed instrument, “I don't even know what instrument it is. It’s just, it's like the bass, but it’s like before Bootsy Collins introduced the slap funk to it.”

“It’s some sort of brass instrument that looks vaguely like a Doctor Seuss French Horn,” says JK Simmons about his instrument. “It’s embarrassing that I don’t know the name because I have a degree in music.”

“They’re accurate and comic at the same time,” says Simmons. “I haven’t become very accomplished on it but fortunately we’re not called upon to be.”

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