Miller’s Crossing

“Let’s see, Miller’s Crossing. The Carter Burwell score is so haunting and evocative. The image of the hat drifting through the autumn woods and, you know, Turturro begging for his life. It brought style and also emotional realism, coupled in a way where it was sort of uniquely my– what I thought was the Coen brothers. It was part of the formative period of my life when I was watching movies and inspired to want to be a director.”

“I was the cinematographer on Miller’s Crossing. Trey Wilson, who is Nathan Arizona in Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing was written for him in the lead. Joel, Ethan, and I were driving out to Lake Pontchartrain with my wife, Sweetie, to look at a location. I was driving with Sweetie. Joel and Ethan were in front of me. I was the only one who owned a cell phone ‘cause the Coens just don’t like to spend money on wasteful things like cell phones. So, I got a call from our casting director who said, “Trey just had a massive brain hemorrhage and was not going to make it.” And the next day he died. And Joel and Ethan were two weeks before shooting, had to find a replacement. They found Albert Finney. Albert came in with less than two weeks and knew every single line of dialog. And here’s a personal story. Sweetie and I, my wife, Sweetie, and I got married at the wrap party for Miller’s Crossing. After we were married, with me weeping uncontrollably, Albert got the microphone. We were all given glasses of champagne. Albert made a toast that had a lot of metaphors about driftwood and floating down the river. Blah, blah, blah. And then he said, “Let’s all raise a glass to Sweetie and Barry.” The entire Mississippi River lit up in fireworks. Albert paid for a barge of fireworks. It cost him $7,000. Over the next 20 years, I would occasionally run into Albert at some restaurant and Albert would say, “Are you still married to Sweetie?” I go, “Yes, Albert.” And he said, “You better be. Those fucking fireworks cost me a fortune.” So, Miller’s Crossing, perhaps the best lit movie I’ve ever shot. And if you look at it carefully, you’ll see that I never motivated the light. You’ll see a lamp right here. But the main light will be coming from this side because that side made Gabe Byrne look better, in spite of the fact that it was not motivated. So you don’t have to motivate light to make something look beautiful.”

“So another Coen brothers film, that's here, absolutely one of my favorites is Miller's Crossing. This is a movie, I'm just going to tell you, you need to watch it not twice, but you need to watch it three times, at the very least, because the, the story is so intentionally, almost willfully, convoluted. And Gabriel Byrne is incredible. Marcia Gay Harden is, phenomenal playing the character of Verna. Albert Finney, extraordinary performance. But it's Turturro. John Turturro plays a character named Bernie Bernbaum. And what John does, in, in this performance in terms of what I like to call, as an actor, taking a dive. When an actor takes a dive, they just allow themselves to be ugly, to be humiliated, to be unappealing in every way without any vanity to it. Because of course you can be unappealing and it can be vain at the same time, because you're saying to the world, "Look at how unappealing I can be, aren't I a wonderful actor?" That's not what's going on in John's performance. He just embraces the notion of being, the aesthetic of being unappealing, and it's a gorgeous performance. It's one of my favorite character actor performances in all of cinema, and it's certainly my favorite performance by John Turturro, who has given performance after performance worthy of nothing but praise.”

“Would you say, Miller's Crossing-wise, would there be a, a Criterion Closet without a Coen brothers film in it? I have a specific love for this movie because, as a comics person, I always thought it was kind of the version of Will Eisner's The Spirit. That if you did The Spirit, this would be it. Gabriel Byrne's always being punched in the head, he wears his hat low covering his eyes, and at the end he turns out to be a little bit smarter than almost everybody else, except for Marcia Gay Harden. There's an action sequence in this, a violent sequence actually, that's almost like a musical number, where a group of thugs think they're going to take out Albert Finney, and he puts his cigar down to dispatch them. At the end of the sequence, he picks up his cigar and finishes it. As someone who likes both Will Eisner and cigars, I can't recommend Miller's Crossing more highly. By the way, when I asked them about that, they went, "Who is Will Eisner?", they had no idea what I was talking about. And I said, "Well, it seems kind of Three Stooges." "Oh yeah!" Because he's getting dope-slapped all the time. "Yes, of course it seems like The Three Stooges."”

“Miller’s Crossing. I mean, there’s not a bad Coen brothers movie for me, but this one, there’s just sort of a… an entirely new vocabulary this film teaches you in the first 30 minutes that you have to understand to appreciate the rest of the movie, and so it’s so much better on each rewatch. And let me tell you, not one of us, not me, not anybody who watched it, is ever gonna wear a hat as well as Gabriel Byrne wears a hat in this movie. Best hat work in cinema history.”

“Miller’s Crossing. That’s… These are people that I’d love to work with at some point. Maybe… I don’t know. You know how sometimes people show up in movies after you’ve kind of washed out a little bit? People get bored of you and then you go into hibernation for ten years and then some great filmmaker goes like, “Hey, I wonder what so-and-so’s doing?” Maybe that’ll be me. Maybe I’ll just go fish for ten years and have people be like, “What happened to Steve?” And then maybe the Coen brothers would be like, “Maybe we should just put him in a really cool movie?” I’m just throwing it out there, guys.”

“Miller’s Crossing, I discovered this movie in high school, and it’s become such a comfort film of mine. I’m a big rewatcher. There’s something about the score of this film that’s very warm and cozy. The production design, the wardrobe. It’s where I discovered Albert Finney. I wasn’t familiar with Albert Finney at all until I saw this film, and I was so glad for this particular introduction to him. Maybe my favorite John Turturro performance ever. Gabriel Byrne is, like, as cool as it gets. I love this movie so much. I had this baseball cap that I wore for six years, and I was walking in New York five years ago, and it was a very windy, rainy day in New York, and the cap flew off my head and I wanted to go chase it, but this film is so ingrained in me, I think of Gabriel Byrne saying, “There’s nothing more foolish than a man chasing his own hat.” So I just let the hat go. But I love this film. I’m going to take it home with me.”