This year's Telluride Film Festival managed to lure Joel and Ethan Coen into a rare public appearance by setting up a tribute to the brothers' work, focusing specifically on the use of music in their films. Appearing alongside them was T-Bone Burnett, who helped gather music for their latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis, as well as The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
At one point, the conversation turned from music in movies to movie musicals, where Joel mentioned, "We are writing something right now where the main character is an opera singer." The genre-hopping directors rarely tread the same ground twice in a row, so following Davis, the story of a Greenwich Village folksinger in the 1960s with a film about a different type of singer may seem like an unlikely choice.
Joel himself did throw out the caveat, "You always hesistate to mention these things when you are in the middle of them, because sometimes they just go in a drawer and never surface again, and then people ask 'what ever happened to that thing' for the next 20 years." But as the Coens rarely tip their hand concerning upcoming work, we either have the rare treat of knowing the brothers' next move well in advance, or having a thing to ask them whatever happened to for the next 20 years.