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An Emmys Recap and Intolerable Cruelty

Sep 15, 2025

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IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

The Emmys were last night, which means it’s an opportunity for me to talk about David Sims’ least favorite thing — PRESTIGE TV!

My day-job is very Prestige TV-focused, so I was on the clock last night watching the Emmys telecast with the fervor of a sports fan. Scoresheet out, money on the line, etc. Let’s get into it.

BIGGEST BLANK CHECK BUMP: Seth Rogen became the second person in history to win Emmys for Writing, Directing, Acting, and Producing in the same night (Dan Levy for Schitt’s Creek was the first, I think). An insane feat! Because his Big Lebowski episode was aired during the Emmy voting window, I am directly attributing his success to our podcast. With The Studio being the most Emmy-winning series of the year, and breaking the record for the most wins ever for a freshman comedy season, Seth and Evan Goldberg certainly have their own Blank Check to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Stay tuned for updates on that front…

MOST DAVID WIN OF THE NIGHT: Dan Gilroy’s writing for this season of Andor was recognized! Rene Russo thanked! I learned of a third Gilroy brother!

BEST SARTORIAL REFERENCE TO A BLANK CHECK FILM: Jenna Ortega stuns as Isabella Rossellini in Death Becomes Her.

BIGGEST REFERENDUM ON “PRESTIGE TV” AS A CONCEPT: The Pitt won Best Drama Series over Severance. My personal opinion as someone who watched both shows - they’re both great. But The Pitt represents a model of television that both industry professionals and audiences miss - the 20+ episode season that gets churned out once a year. At a time when a career in the entertainment industry seems less stable than ever (especially in LA!), The Pitt represents a beacon of hope. The Pitt comes back in January. Who knows when we’re getting Severance Season 3.

FAVORITE THING MY HUSBAND SAID LAST NIGHT: “Oh hey, that’s the guy with the shorts from The Irishman!” upon Stephen Graham winning three Emmys for Adolescence

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER

Intolerable Cruelty — A Historical Timeline

Sometimes this section is full of bonus stories and facts that didn’t make it into their movie’s episode of Blank Check—I’ve got two of them below, in fact—but sometimes this section is for entering things into the official written record. So here’s a bullet-pointed walk through the extended development of the project that would eventually become Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2003 film Intolerable Cruelty:

In the early 1990s, the first version of the script was penned by the Life, Man of the House, and Soul Men screenwriting duo of Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone, based on an original concept by John Romano. It was developed by Jim Jacks’s production company Alphaville at Universal, and the first attached director was Doc Hollywood’s Michael Caton-Jones.1
Later on, the Coens came on solely as screenwriters, polishing the screenplay for director Ron Howard, who planned to film the comedy after production wrapped on his 1996 action thriller Ransom.2
In March 1995, Howard made way for The Freshman’s Andrew Bergman (a fellow UW-Madison PhD, btw), who planned to direct the film under the stewardship of producer Mike Lobell. In April 1997, the project was still being prepped for Bergman, though a new screenwriter had recently completed another draft of the script: The Big Chill’s Barbara Benedek.3
After that, the chronology gets a little bit shaky, but sometime after Bergman left, long-fabled Blank Check miniseries candidate Joe Dante arrived. He nearly directed a cast that included Jeremy Irons and Heather Locklear.4
Then Roger Deakins’ best friend Ron Howard came back to the project, though he soon left once again, this time to focus on How the Grinch Stole Christmas—talk about intolerable cruelty, am I right—and A Beautiful Mind.5
Shortly before Howard booked it for box office and Oscar glory, his company Imagine Entertainment’s chairman Brian Grazer shared the script with the late, incredibly great Jonathan Demme, who boarded the project in October 2000. Demme had planned to direct his remake of Charade with Will Smith around that time, but when Smith committed to Michael Mann’s Ali, Demme’s schedule freed up for another project. Variety’s story claimed that Joel and Ethan Coen were once again the writers of the most recent draft of the script, and Demme was said to be circling Hugh Grant, Téa Leoni and Geoffrey Wright to star.6
A month later, Variety reported that Demme was headed back to his remake of Charade, now titled A Truth About Charlie and starring Mark Wahlberg and Thandie Newton. Demme was said to have felt that the cast hadn’t “come together the way he’d hoped” for Intolerable Cruelty, and he wanted to get a project in the can before the predicted WGA strikes in the summer of 2001, so he went with Charlie instead. (The strike didn’t end up happening.) According to the story, Téa Leoni was still attached to Intolerable Cruelty, and Demme planned to return to the project after Charlie wrapped.7
In August 2001, Variety reported that Demme had returned to the project—and that he was now circling Will Smith for Intolerable Cruelty after not getting to work with him on Charlie. (Demme had also nearly—improbably—directed Smith in K-Pax.) Téa Leoni was still attached. (Good for Téa Leoni.)8 In Sight & Sound’s review of Intolerable Cruelty—and on the film’s Wikipedia page—it was claimed that Demme also circled Julia Roberts, though I did not find that in any of the trades.9 In the trades, Téa Leoni reigned over all.
Though the Coens never intended to direct their screenplay for Intolerable Cruelty, by the time their unrealized big-budget take on James Dickey’s 1993 novel To the White Sea had, as Joel said, gone down the “drainerino,” Intolerable Cruelty had a new star attached: O’ Brother, Where Art Thou’s George Clooney10. And it was Clooney who convinced the Coens that Intolerable Cruelty was the right replacement project.11

Did you get all that?

Musical Comedy

In some ways, Intolerable Cruelty was a risky proposition for the Coens: on the face of it, the film was their most mainstream project yet, the budget was easily their highest yet, and they were working with a producer—the aforementioned Brian Grazer—who wasn’t exactly known for shepherding the kinds of brainy, off-kilter projects with which the Coens had come to be associated. But, as Ethan so richly recounted to (ugh) Charlie Rose in 2003, the production went smoothly: “It was fun and easy. The actors were all fun and easy. It was good.”12

On his personal website, composer Carter Burwell presents a slightly more complicated picture, at least in regards to Grazer’s reaction to Burwell’s score. As Burwell writes, “There were a few points during the making of the film that we were reminded that we were in the Hollywood system, despite the fact that we were working, as usual, out of our downtown New York rooms.” One such point: Grazer had tested Intolerable Cruelty at Los Angeles-area screenings, and he, according to Burwell, “became concerned that some audience members were almost halfway through the film before they realized it was a comedy.” Though Burwell doesn’t remember if “if they were using [his] synth sketches in these screenings,” a “clear message came back from Grazer that the opening of the film - after the Simon and Garfunkel song that plays under the credits - must invite laughter!” Burwell had originally planned for his score to play the opening straight/against Geoffrey Rush’s *ahem* broad performance, but he took Grazer’s note and pulled a piece of his score from later in the film “where it had settled into its comedic voice” and shifted it to the opening. As Burwell writes, this didn’t quite align with his typical ambitions: “As an audience member, I enjoy that uncertainty about how I'm supposed to respond to a film, and, observing the Golden Rule, I try to provide other audience members with this experience, but clearly there are people who don't enjoy that little discomfort - especially in comedy.”13 If only he knew how much David and Griffin were right there with him.

An Extended Look

Though Intolerable Cruelty marked the first time George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones had ever appeared onscreen together, the two had crossed paths a few years earlier thanks to a mutual collaborator: that’s right, I’m forcing a Steven Soderbergh “story” into the end of this section. As Zeta-Jones told IGN in 2003, “Well, we'd met briefly before... at the longest screening of Traffic in the history of screenings. The very first cut of Traffic.” According to Clooney, the version of Traffic shown at that screening was “like four hours.” Though Soderbergh has not made a film with a runtime longer than 2 hours since 2008’s two-part epic Che—and though Soderbergh posted a 106-minute “Butcher’s Cut” of Michael Cimino’s infamously lengthy 1980 film Heaven’s Gate to his blog in 2014—the director was hesitant to lose anything from his first assembly of Traffic, per Zeta-Jones: “Steven didn't know what to lose. He was like, ‘It works.’”14 You know what else would be pretty long but would also really work: A STEVEN SODERBERGH BLANK CHECK MINISERIES.

A SPECIAL COEN’S PLAYLIST: VOL 1

A few notes on the Coen Bros playlists from friend of the pod Nate Patterson:

1.) So, perhaps you have noticed, the Coens have made a lot of movies. Making a single playlist for key songs and selections of score for all those would result in, like, a seven hour playlist that nobody wants. As such, we are gonna break it up into thirds, then at the end, I'll make you all a greatest hits that clocks in around 90 min - the perfect playlist length, IMO.

2.) I wanted to give a touch of insight as to how I make these selections. One limitation is Spotify, which does not have every song and every score (the Barton Fink score, shockingly, is hard to find!). I'm doing what I can, but some stuff just ain't on there. Also, I don't just want to include every song and every bit of score, as that would be cumbersome. I really try to select music that is potent in the film, something that contributes to a scene in a meaningful way, and sometimes that means a song inclusion is a little off. For example, this includes a recording of a song sung by an actor but not actually in the film, such as Holly Hunter singing Down In The Willow Garden to Nathan Jr. in Raising Arizona. Sometimes it's the best I could do, as in the use of Habanera in The Hudsucker Proxy, where I was unable to locate the exact recording used in the film. And sometimes it's just fun, like the whalesong from The Big Lebowski when The Dude is taking a bath. And sometimes, there are just too many songs to choose from, so I gotta cut it down. Nothing but my own discretion on that one. Come at me if you think I have made a heinous omission. You can direct your complaints to Ben Hosley via Reddit, he will super appreciate it.

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

Griffin Newman, Host: “SPLITSVILLE not only is one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in years (truly up there with THE NAKED GUN in pure joke density) but imho it has much in common with BC movie du jour INTOLERABLE CRUELTY! Also, without ruining anything it somehow has fight choreography worthy of a JOHN WICK movie?? Strongly recommend catching with a crowd if it’s still planning in theaters near you!”

Marie Bardi, Social Media: “I watched The Parallax View for the first time on Friday. Might watch Winter Kills next. Just getting deep into political assassination conspiracy cinema for no particular reason at all.”

AJ McKeon, Editor: “Chess. Hayes is in an afterschool program where he learns to play and I hadn’t played in years so it’s been fun to have him beat me and beat him sometimes. Also you can find a board for the cost of 1/9 of a pill case. Also, watch Searching for Bobby Fischer.”

JJ Bersch, Researcher: “I saw Chris Fleming last Friday and he is so funny. Go see him if you can! Or at least follow him on Instagram. They should let him host the Oscars after Conan is done.”

David Sims, Host: “I read TWO BOOKS THIS WEEK. Susan Choi’s Flashlight which was very involving if SERIOUS and educational on matters of history I don’t know enough about. And Richard Matheson’s Hell House which is about a HELL HOUSE!!! I want to do a whole haunted house novel run for Halloween season now.”

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “In New York City, we’re entering the part of the year where the weather is incredible. I went for a walk yesterday, and even though it was warmish, like a chilly autumnal breeze hit me and it was beautiful. So I’m going to recommend going for a nice walk away from your computer, which is a thing I was really glad that I could do this week especially.”

Nate Patterson, Playlist Curator and Ben’s Trainer: “The new Big Thief, "Double Infinite", is one of their strongest yet, and is ripe with the perfect sort of optimistic melancholy to accompany the onset of fall. Another new one, "It's A Beautiful Day" by Water From Your Eyes. A really catchy mix of post-punk and dance jams, I suggest this for cooking dinner, being in movement (driving, walking) but NOT your commute, and parties with Gen Z attendees. And finally, one from a few years back is going to be Julianna Barwick's 2020 album "Healing Is A Miracle", an ethereal, emotive ambient record that is somehow both intimate and epic. Great for getting writing done as well as staring into the void.
Lift of the week is the classic overhead press: you feel like a superhero every time! Look at you go, wheee!”

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

Auntie of Blankies and The Prestige Junkies’ own, Katey Rich, returns to discuss George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones at the height of their powers in Intolerable Cruelty.

And over on Patreon, we’re contractually obligated to cover Genndy Tartakovsky’s Netflix dirty-dog comedy, Fixed. But don’t worry, there’s also a lot of talk about Fantastic Four: First Steps. So you really can’t complain.