John Turturro licks a fresh bowling ball in the all-Italian trailer for his movie about The Jesus
For years now, we’ve been quietly watching the progress of John Turturro’s spin-off movie about Jesus Quintana, the dancing, bowling, eight-year-old-allegedly-exposing-himself-to league rival who briefly dominates the screen in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski. Developed mostly by Turturro himself, with guidance from the movie’s writer-directors, Jesus is a memorable character in a film chocked to the brim with them, rolling to the strains of The Gypsy Kings, salaciously licking his bowling ball, and exuding a sort of undeniable dirtbag style.
Turturro has been talking since at least 2011 about doing a standalone movie about The Jesus, having gotten the permission of Joel and Ethan Coen—otherwise uninvolved—to break him out into his own little sleazeball world. And while Jesus Rolls isn’t hitting theaters Stateside until 2020, it’s coming out in Italy this week, which is why there’s a trailer out for it right now—it’s just, you know, in Italian.
Still, despite the egregious dubbing (god bless the poor actor who doesn’t even bother trying to do a Christopher Walken) it’s not hard to piece together at least some of the details of the movie, especially since Turturro has said in the past that it’s based on the controversial French film Going Places—once described by Roger Ebert as “the most misogynistic movie I can remember.” Turtorro’s movie apparently slots himself and Bobby Cannavale into the role of Bertrand Blier’s chauvanistic petty criminals, joined by Audrey Tautou to round out “a trio of sexually depraved misfits.” Given that we don’t speak Italian, we can’t offer up much more insight than that—although, hey, there’s Jon Hamm and Susan Sarandon, too!—but we can confirm: Turturro totally licks a bowling ball again. That’s got to count for something, right?