THE COEN BROTHERS ARE SOME OF THE GREATEST PEOPLE TO WORK with, they’re amazing. They know just what they want. I do quite a bit of improvisational acting in movies, but the couple of times I’ve been in a Coen brothers movie I did pretty much what they said. I improvised a little bit in Intolerable Cruelty. In that movie, they told me to throw out a couple of things that I wanted to do, but their stuff is so tightly written that you don’t have to ad-lib. You don’t find the need to.
The Man Who Wasn’t There, which was set in 1949 and filmed in black and white, was beautifully shot by Roger Deakins and beautifully edited, written, and directed by Joel and Ethan. The film has that whole film noir thing. During the filming of The Man Who Wasn’t There, I had the flu for the last two weeks, and if you ever see the movie again, in some of the barbershop scenes, which were shot toward the end, you’ll notice that I’m a little stuffed up and my eyes are puffy. But that was one of my favorite movies that I’ve ever been in. Angie always loved that character Ed Crane.
It was largely ignored in the United States because it is in black and white, and a lot of people won’t watch black-and-white movies. I think black and white is heavier than color. It gives the film a heavier mood. If you watch the old black-and-white movies, they have a different feeling about them, and I wish they made more of them. To me, black and white seems more like reality than a color movie, even though real life is in color. Somehow, black and white makes me feel like I’m in the story more. It’s just got something. It’s sweaty, it’s got depth and character. Think about all the great black-and-white photographs over the years. Usually you don’t see those famous photographs of people in color. They’re usually black and white, and there’s a reason for that.
I’ve seen pictures from the set of The Man Who Wasn’t There in color before, and it always upsets me because I just want to think of it in black and white. And there was a great cast of characters, terrific actors. The Coen brothers have a bunch of actors they like to use in their movies, and they know who’s right for the parts. I loved working with Fran McDormand and James Gandolfini, but all the actors in the movie were outstanding.