Interview with Josh Brolin on Hail, Caesar!

In the new Coen brothers film Hail, Caesar!, Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, a harried Hollywood fixer in the early 1950s. Mannix has to manage kidnapped star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), water ballet princess DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson), song and dance man Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) and cowboy songster Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) in this tale about the golden days of Hollywood.

We got a chance to chat with Josh Brolin about the film, getting to slap George Clooney, the real men his character was based on and working with the Coen brothers again. Check out what he had to say below.

ComingSoon.net: I wanted to ask you about the research you did about the man your character was based on. He’s been on screen before in Hollywoodland. What did you learn about him?

Josh Brolin: I did a lot! And the thing was, what I found out, what the Coens had written was not necessarily a parallel to who Eddie Mannix really was. He was more of an amalgamation. There’s a great book called “The Fixer,” which became like a bible to me during that movie. I love that book. It kind of reveals all the incredibly debaucherous acts [laughs] going on back then that seemed so much more severe than what has been going on now, with the exception of obviously some drug overdoses and that kind of stuff. It seems like it’s getting less and less. But the Eddie Mannix I play is more like Thalberg, Mayer, Mannix and Strickland who was a pr guy who the real Eddie shared a lot of his responsibilities with. It was really Strickland who dealt with the Hedda Hoppers and the rag mags and all that. So this guy is a very faith-driven guy, where the real Eddie Mannix wasn’t necessarily – the real Eddie Mannix was extremely brutal. He was the head of security for Nick Schenck at an amusement part in New Jersey and then he brought him over – you know, it was supposed to be Metro Goldwyn Schenck, which would have been horrible! [laughs] Metro Goldwyn Mayer is what it became but Nick Schenck had a part of the ownership of it. So once you start to learn all that, it’s great, but then you start going to different stories and ideas and that. I actually really like this character and the real Eddie Mannix was somebody I was a little turned off by.

CS: This seems like a production where everyone would turn up for everyone else’s shooting days. Did you guys do that? Did you all show up for Channing’s dance number?

Josh Brolin: Yeah, I did! Even though I was involved in Channing’s character’s set and he said hello to Eddie, I stayed for a lot of the dancing, though I didn’t have to! [laughs] But I wanted to see it! It was such a great thing. And the Coens were so stressed out about getting it right. I’ve never seen them so stressed about that and about the synchronized swimming. So I saw a little bit of that. Not most of it. I didn’t see any of the submarine stuff because I it was on a stage and all that. I really really wanted to. I really wanted to see that. Just the magic of it being pulled off, which was amazing. But yeah, I was the lucky one. I was kind of the through line, so all of these great actors who came in, I was lucky enough to work with them all.

CS: Obviously you’ve worked with the Coen brothers before. How was this one different? You said they were stressed?

Josh Brolin: I think they were stressed because of a couple of sequences. They weren’t – they’re never that stressed. They were maybe a little more laconic than they already are. I always have a good time with them. That’s why I do the movies. I don’t think they’re the greatest directors, but – just kidding! [laughs] They’re all good! We have a good time. They’re like my buddies. I really enjoy them. I would be really satisfied in my career, working with only them. You know? Maybe I might not say that in twenty years! [laughs] I really like who they are as professionals and personally.

CS: I know everyone is asking about this, but I have to ask you about slapping George Clooney. I have to!

Josh Brolin: You have to! [laughs] It’s fantastic! I said, I’m doing what so many people, with him not wanting to get married and perpetually single, and all the women that wanted to slap him, and all the guys who have wanted to slap him because of how gorgeous he is, that I’m finally the man to make all their dreams come true.

CS: Something that sort of stood out for me in the film; the gossip columnists were actually allowed on the studio lot. Did that actually happen?

Josh Brolin: Of course! Because they could figure out ways to get on there. They had a lot of power. She (Tilda Swinton) says, “We have twenty million readers!” You have a power that comes with that. It was their version of frickin’ Twitter or Instagram. You know? If you have a lot of followers then people listen to you. If you’re a critic or whatever. So yes, I think that they had the power to do whatever they wanted to do. And they were also investigative, so they were acting as critics, and, at the same time, as rag magazines. Like a National Inquirer kind of thing. The reason that doesn’t happen now is because there is so much less debauchery here. At least it feels that way. Or maybe I’m not creating it, so it doesn’t exists. I don’t know. [laughs] But around me, at least, it doesn’t seem really prevalent.

CS: Another thing I noticed is that you totally nailed that 1950s Hollywood speech pattern. Did you study that?

Josh Brolin: I did! Everything. We researched everything, we tried everything on. We tried on different fabrics for clothes. We found an actual authentic fabric from 1950 or 1949. We made one suit. I had one suit for most of the movie. That was an actual suit. I never changed that suit. That was a valuable suit to me. I’m very emotionally attached to it. [laughs] And the voice from the ‘50s, I’d listen to Abbott and Costello. I’d listen to this great sports figure that lived in New Jersey and he had a great baritone accent. It was hard for me to get down to the baritone because I quit smoking a couple years ago and for me, I was a very heavy smoker. I quite smoking and suddenly I was [in a high-pitched voice] talking like this! [laughs] So there was a lot of – not that anyone taught me how to do it – but there were a lot of voice exercises when I was on set, which I’m sure was annoying as all hell. Because every time we’d get ready to go – and nobody questioned me about it. No one made fun of me. I don’t know why. [laughs] Maybe they were afraid to. I was going, [in a low-pitched voice] “One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, hello. My name is, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.” And then they’d roll it. And they always knew when I was ready. [laughs] And sometimes I wasn’t ready yet. I’d go, “Nope. 1, 2, 3 … “ F*cking so annoying! [laughs] I’m sure. At least what I saw when I saw the movie for the first time a couple days ago, I was very pleased because tonally there was a real fine line between it being totally phony and impersonal and it being diplomatic and personable.

CS: I’d read that the Coen brothers’ scripts are usually pretty much done and that there aren’t a lot of changes during production. Was that true with this one?

Josh Brolin: Yeah, the good ones are. I mean, if you have something you’re going to bring – we talk about it for so long beforehand, if there’s any changes that have taken place, they usually happen during the prep. I really like that, personally, because I really like to learn the whole script before the first day. But I personally like to do that. Some people don’t like to do that. They don’t like to look at it until hours before they do it or the night before they do it. I’m not like that at all. I treat it like a play. I love treating it like a play. To me, the better I know my character, the better I can act that I don’t like the dialogue. And then you can kind of change different rhythms and all that kind of stuff. But no, all the changes took place in prep. I may have ad libbed a few things and they were like, “Okay,” to make me feel good. To make me feel like I contributed something. [laughs]

CS: Did they leave those in?

Josh Brolin: Yeah, a couple of them. [laughs] I never know at the end. I see it and I’m like, what was mine – I’ll ask. I’ll be like, “Ethan, was that mine?” And he’ll be like, “I don’t know. I have bigger things to think of than which syllable was yours.” [laughs]

Universal Pictures will open Hail, Caesar! in theaters on February 5, 2016.