“Honey Don’t”, interview with director Ethan Coen and screenwriter Tricia Cooke

“Honey Don’t”, the second chapter of a B-movie lesbian trilogy directed by Ethan Coen (without his brother Joel) and co-written with the screenwriter and the director’s wife, Tricia Cooke, is a captivating and hilarious homage to 1940s Dashiell Hammett–style detective stories, with Margaret Qualley in the role of an anti–femme fatale.

Coming to Italian movie theaters with Universal Pictures starting September 18th, the film premiered, out of competition, at the 78th Cannes Film Festival.

Blending a classic noir with the lesbian pulp novel

Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s  second collaboration on “Honey Don’t“, after “Drive Away Dolls“, blends a private-eye story with a murder mystery wrapped in seduction, lies, and stylized action. Drawing inspiration from classic noir films, “Honey Don’t” merges the hard-boiled storytelling of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain with the grit of lesbian pulp novels.

“Honey Don’t” reimagines the classic noir detective story by centering a female lead who is a lesbian private investigator. During the interview set during Cannes Film Festival, the filmmakers declared that they aimed to play with the butch-femme dynamic by switching them so to avoid the usual femme fatale trope. The result is a story that challenges gender norms and genre conventions and is part of a broader effort to craft honest, genre-based movies with a fresh perspective on sexual identity and character dynamics.

Working together

How do you blend your voices together? we asked the duo in order to understand more about their collaboration on the film’s development process.  Cooke and Coen admit that they rely on their ongoing dialogue,  blending ideas, and shaping characters that feel authentic yet exaggerated enough to serve the satire. The characters, especially the lesbian protagonists, played by Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza, were designed to explore complex themes such as trauma and identity. The filmmakers noted that their characters act as twin sisters, one representing the “good” and the other the “evil”, highlighting how trauma influences behavior and self-perception.

When satire ends and reality begin

In “Honey Don’t“, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke introduce us to characters  that feel as extreme as they feel real. When does satire end and reality begin? “These characters are kind of outrageous – confirms Coen – but you look at reality and and they’re not so outrageous anymore, certainly these days in our country, reality is odder than fiction“.

Coen and Cooke assure that their storytelling seeks to push the limits while being careful not to lose connection to real-life experiences.

The Third chapter

Following “Honey Don’t” and “Drive Away Dolls” Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke aim to continue exploring lesbian-themed genre films with the third chapter. Their next project, Go Beavers promises to further innovate within the genre, blending traditional storytelling with daring, fresh perspectives on sexuality and identity.

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