Goofy Old Men
Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem yuck it up while meeting the press to talk about their Cannes film No Country for Old Men.
by Glenn Kenny
Let's make no bones about it: The celebrity roundtable interview is an awkward and potentially humiliating ordeal for everyone who undergoes it. A handful of journalists, more or less randomly put together, all of varying intelligence quotients and temperments, face off with one or more movie star, who's got to answer a series of questions of varying degrees of banality or profundity from a bunch of strangers.
There are many strategies for dealing with this against-the-laws of nature encounter, one of which is to refuse to take it at all seriously. And at first, that's just what Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem, who play cat-and-mouse antagonists in Joel and Ethan Coen's superb thriller No Country for Old Men, did when facing a gaggle of journos at the Cannes film festival, where the picture premiered.
Relaxing at the table, both looked suitably cocky and movie star-like as a publicist called "First question!" Bardem didn't wait for it. "Okay, what's it like to be a sex symbol? I know, I know. It's hard. But somebody's got to do it," cracking up Brolin. He was a far cry from his Old Men character, an embodiment of evil named Anton Chigurh who makes life-and-death decisions (literally) based on the flip of a coin and dispatches his victims with a cattle gun. Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a sweet-natured but resourceful latter-day cowboy who discovers a case full of money that Chigurh claims as his own. What follows is one of the most suspenseful and unconventional pursuits movies have offered in years.
Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men.
Photo by Richard Foreman/ Courtesy of Miramax Films
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The real-life Brolin resembles his character more than Bardem resembles his, but Brolin's got a sharp sense of humor and what seems like an innate restlessness. One of us asked Brolin if he was initially intimidated by the prospect of working with master thespian Bardem.
"I was so intimidated by him. After I saw Before Night Falls I thought I was gonna wake up every morning with him in my bed."
"And did you?" came the follow-up.
"Yeah. Why do you think we're so close?"
And so it went, with the two completing each others sentences or attempting one-ups. Asked about his unusual tonsure in the film, Bardem said, "I went to the trailer and I had the long hair. And [the hairdresser], because he's kind of a genius, he went bit bit bit bit bit. And the Coens were in the trailer, and they started to laugh... I think I saw Ethan fall down crying... and I said, 'What's happening?' and I looked in the mirror, and I said, 'Fuck.'"
Brolin: "And then he started welling up in the eyes and he looked at me and he said, I'm not gonna get laid for three months."
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