Hail, Caesar!: The making of the Coen Brothers’ Old Hollywood tribute

We spoke to some of the diverse talent behind the scenes on its flawless recreation of filmmaking’s Golden Age

Hail, Caesar! is a rather remarkable piece of cinematic engineering: at once a farcical spin on the relentless machine that was the studio system, shifting its talent like cattle and micro-editing their personal lives for the pleasure of the tabloid-reading public, whilst simultaneously acting as an ode to the Technicolor-soaked, bedazzled visions those same studios produced.

Tucked neatly within the slapdash antics of Hollywood fixer Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), as he rushes across studio lots to paint over the ugly truths of his actors’ lives and recover kidnapped star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), lie the Coens’ own films-within-films, grand recreations of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

From the biblical epic to the aquamusical, Hail, Caesar! finds itself enamoured with all the old phantoms of cinema; all rendered here in lavish, precise details thanks to the film’s diversely talented production crew. To celebrate its Blu-ray & DVD release, The Independent spoke to just a few those creative forces to uncover the secrets behind those spectacular cinematic sequences.

Hail, Caesar!

It’s this titular Roman epic that Baird Whitlock is in the midst of filming when he’s kidnapped by a mysterious group known only as The Future; itself an enthusiastic homage to host of biblical epics Hollywood produced during the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

Mary Zophres – costume designer and frequent Coens collaborator, having worked on the likes of The Big Lebowski and Fargo: “Ben Hur was very helpful, just because they had a year to prep the movie. So I referenced that quite a bit. To me, Ben Hur really got it right. I mean, they didn’t have any reference – what you have as reference are sculptures from Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, and some paintings – but they were trying really hard to get it factually correct.”

“We tried to mimic the Technicolor of that time period. A whole world had open up in terms of how you could express costumes on film, and we tried to embrace the look of those films; not only Spartacus and Ben Hur, but what was going on in those films in MGM, as much as we could. So, Ursulina (Tiffany Lonsdale) has a bit of teasing in her hair; it wasn’t super reality, it was how they were doing it in the ‘40s.”

“And they had more money than we did, so we had to figure out a way to make it look the way we wanted it to look and do it in budget. The armour in Ben Hur was real armour, they were wearing metal; but we realised very quickly that we probably wouldn’t be doing that in our film.”

“It would be too expensive; from Snow White and the Huntsmen to all those Marvel movies – all the metal, or what you think is metal – it’s really just a hard, plastic foam that’s painted to look like metal. So we decided that’s what we would do.”

The 'Aquamusical'

Scarlett Johansson’s swimming starlet DeeAnna Moran echoes the iconic Esther Williams, in a tribute to MGM’s ownaquamusicals and their epic displays of synchronised swimming and diving.

Zophres: “I watched every Esther Williams number; it was written that [DeeAnna Moran] was in a mermaid costume, but Esther always showed her legs. But now there’s a whole mermaid world, I had no idea; and people will dress up like mermaids – that’s a whole Internet thing!”

“There’s an old film called Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid; they made a plastic mould that the actress wore in that, there’s a photograph of her being carried around the set by prop men. There was definitely the idea that when they pull off her tail, they wanted a ‘thunk’ sound.”

“When those girls flipped over and the backsides of their bathing suits were yellow and the front sides were orange, it looked like one of those Busby Berkeley numbers in an old Esther Williams movie. I was so pleased; that’s what we were trying to do, to give a modern audience the experience of an MGM movie.”

Mesha Kussman - founder of water ballet company Aqualillies, who mainly perform live shows, but have worked on music videos for the likes of Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, and Ariana Grande: “It was the first film [we worked on] of this scale. I had sort of had a hunch that synchronised swimming and water ballet was going to make a return to the silver screen at some point, just because we had experienced so much success with it from a live show perspective.”

“For this project, we were asked by Joel & Ethan to create something that was more like a moving painting, like a kaleidoscopic image – because it was shot exclusively from above. That’s a different perspective to view synchronised swimming from than our live audience would normally view it. So, therefore, the choreography had to be adjusted in order to match the viewing experience. “

“Unlike our live performances, we did, like, five or six workshops in preparation for this and we got to work with the camera and see basically how every movement flowed into the other. And kind of put together all of the best parts of what we had, which was like an hour of footage for two minutes on screen at the end of the day.”

“[Esther Williams] is a true inspiration to all of the performers at the company. It was this sort of incredible full circle experience where, you know, you idolise these creators and pioneers; and then you show up on stage 30, that’s the same stage that Esther Williams swam in for her water musicals.”

“There was a sign that said, “Dangerous When Wet”; it was very special to us that the Coen Brothers added that touch because, historically, there actually was a sign on set during the filming of Esther Williams’ movies. They made it look like that sign as well, very vintage; so, all of the performers took a photo next to it and you could tell that they felt that way to be near it.”

Mary Jeanette Ramsey – who assisted Kussman and performed in the sequence itself: “I actually went to do a test in the water before the shoot day, I got to be the first person to swim in that space; and, for me, I know that other movies have been shot there since, but it really felt like I was the first person in that pool since Esther Williams. Having grown up doing synchronised swimming since I was six, it was the most amazing feeling; I got to be a Hollywood starlet for five minutes. “

Merrily We Dance

Future Han Solo, Alden Ehrenreich , gets a scene-stealing comedic moment as the Southern-twanged Hobie Doyle here; attempting to get to grips with the Midatlantic accent favoured by Laurence Laurentz.

Zophres: “It’s a ‘30s sort of drama with, like, Cary Grant in it or something; maybe it would have been early ‘40s. [Charles James] was a fashion designer – I’m constantly in awe of him – and his dresses were a huge influence on the look of the dresses in that part of the film.”

“Though Charles James used to use pastels, golds; pretty pinks and blues, the architecture of his dresses were almost like a piece of sculpture from the waist up, and from the waist down; and that’s what we wanted it to seem like. So, each gown was like its own piece of sculpture.”

“We had, of course, to make it very cheaply; I wanted a high-shine so we used a touch of satin. From the inside, they look nothing like the Charles James dresses, but from the outside! When we were fitting those girls I thought – Charles James would be spinning in his grave right now – but we had to cheat it on the inside; just because we simply didn’t have the money.”

The ‘No Dames’ sequence

Channing Tatum (playing Burt Gurney) proves he’s got moves like Gene Kelly in the film’s grand musical number, the sailor-inspired ‘No Dames’.

Zophres: “If you watch those old MGM musicals, what they were after was a bit of fantasy. In that way, their world is heightened, it was an escape from WWII; it was a whole other mind-set. The way we experience them now is through the history of cinema; like, the ‘70s just stomped all over the MGM musical. It’s a different kind of escapism than we have in films today, but we needed to get close to that.”

Christopher Gatelli, Tony Award-winning choreographer: “[The choreography] was kind of a mash-up of influences, but I think the main things we used were things like Anchors Aweigh, On the Town, and That’s Entertainment – which featured the best of the numbers from that era. There’s a moment in the sequence where the Coens pull away from the making of the movie; and that was specifically taken from a number that Eleanor Powell did in Fascinating Rhythm. There’s a section on one of the DVDs where they show you side-by-side her performing in the number, and them pulling back and showing how the cameras work. So we studied that to replicate the dance sequences exactly like they were, even down to the way they made the floor in different pieces.”

“It's interesting, on stage you have to choreograph everything so that you can tell an audience’s eye where to look, where to focus so you can keep telling the story. But in film, you don’t have to do that. You can really just let be free and a little more natural knowing that if you want to follow someone specifically, you can have the camera track and follow that person. It was great being able to play with those tools; it’s a whole different kind of storytelling, which was great.”

“[Channing Tatum] was a very physical dancer so he could backflips and handstands, and things like that. It was kind of perfect because Gene Kelly did that as well. We embraced that kind of physicality into Channing’s number to enhance it, and use some of the skills he was really great at already. It was a little easier than expected, because of him coming to the table with so many abilities already. Especially knowing we kind of nearing it to Gene Kelly, it was kind of perfect.”

“He had never tapped before, ever, and that’s a really hard skill. It’s kind of incredible, when the Coens showed me the script, it literally said – Burt Gurney’s going to be on a battleship, dancing with a mop in a Gene Kelly-style sequence – and it seemed on the page like it was going to be a 30-second clip of something. But the more they got into it, the more they loved the idea of making it this big number. They saw a clip of Donald O’ Connor tapping and said, oh, we think Channing should tap. And I was, like, great; but Channing turned to me and said, ‘I don’t tap’.”

“But, he was up for it; and he literally learned ten years of tap training in, like, three months. It was the most amazing thing to watch; he worked so, so hard. I can’t even explain. He was relentless in his determination to get it; and that’s all him, everything in the movie, there’s no dance double; it’s Channing the whole time. I truly couldn’t be prouder of him. He did such an amazing job.”

Lazy Ol’ Moon

Ehrenreich’s Hobie Doyle is seen in his element during a scene from Lazy Ol’ Moon; playing the white-hatted, soulful cowboy gently plucking at his guitar.

Zophres: “We actually looked at television, at Hop-Along Cassidy characters. Good guy iconic cowboys. When I was looking at the films of that time period, they were all sort of buckskin and fringe. Just for my own thing though, that sort of stepped on what Matt Damon wore for True Grit, and we liked the idea of cowboy shirts. He’s all in white, but there’s not an ounce of dirt on him.”

Hail, Caesar! is available to own on Digital HD™ now and on Blu-ray™ & DVD from 11th July, courtesy of Universal Pictures (UK).