Burn After Reading

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haha, this is getting ridiculous.  who do they think they are?  david fincher?  from AICN...

QUINT: The only other thing I wanted to bring up was your collaboration with the Coen Bros because I'm a huuuuge Coen Bros fan...
GEORGE CLOONEY: I'm going to be doing another film with them probably in the Spring. It's called BURN AFTER READING. It's really fun, really funny. I'll do anything they want. I really will... (pause)

http://www.aintitcoolnews.com/display.cgi?id=22381

[Pubrick]

or in your case.. Burn BEFORE Reading

[MacGuffin]

Clooney Reuniting with Coens a Third Time
Source: Production Weekly

George Clooney will reunite with Joel Coen and Ethan Coen on Burn After Reading, their third collaboration together after Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

Production Weekly says the Coen Bros. script is loosely based on the novel "Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence," by Admiral Stansfield Turner, who served as director of the CIA from 1977 to 1981.

The contemporary East Coast caper is about a CIA agent who is writing a book and he loses the disc. Clooney wouldn't play the agent, but instead a killer.

Production is scheduled to begin in August, after he wraps filming on Leatherheads, which starts shooting early next spring.

[MacGuffin]

Focus books actress for back-back films
McDormand to star in 'Pettigrew,' 'Burn'
Source: Variety

Focus Features has booked Frances McDormand for back-to-back pics.

McDormand will play the title character in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day," an adaptation of the Winifred Watson period comic novel that will shoot in London in April. Bharat Nalluri, who is coming off the HBO pic "Tsunami: The Aftermath," will direct. The script was written by Simon Beaufoy ("The Full Monty") and David Magee ("Finding Neverland"). Nellie Bellflower and Stephen Garrett are producing.

She plays a governess in the 1800s who gets a taste of glamour when she goes to work in the home of a nightclub songstress. One of Pettigrew's chores is to sort out the entertainer's unrespectable affairs.

McDormand will then head to New York to star opposite George Clooney in "Burn After Reading," a dark comedy about the CIA that will be directed and produced by Joel and Ethan Coen. Film is also being produced by Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner's Working Title.

The film will mark McDormand's fifth film with the Coens (she's married to Joel). Aside from her Oscar-winning turn in "Fargo," McDormand starred in "Raising Arizona," "Miller's Crossing" and "The Man Who Wasn't There."

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Pitt feels the 'Burn' for Coen brothers
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Brad Pitt has signed on to join his "Ocean's Thirteen" co-star George Clooney in the Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading" for Working Title Films.

The black comedy, which also stars Frances McDormand, centers on a CIA agent who loses the disc of the book he is writing. Like the film's title, the screenplay is shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear what role Pitt will play.

The actor will begin shooting the film in late August.

Joel and Ethan Coen penned the screenplay, and Joel Coen will direct the contemporary project.

Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are producing alongside the Coens. Focus Features will distribute worldwide.

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a few more details from the Coen Q&A...

- they're ditching Roger Deakins as DP and using Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki
- this will be their first movie without storyboards because they want to capture a more 'cinema verite' style
- John Malkovich will be in this movie
- this is their next film after No Country For Old Men and they're in pre-production now

[pzyktzle]

i loved brad pitt's "cameo" in being john malkovich.

[Pozer]

I sleep in a drawer. 

[MacGuffin]

Malkovich, 'Burn' make good match
Source: Hollywood Reporter

John Malkovich is in negotiations to star opposite George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand in the Coen brothers' "Burn After Reading" for Focus Features and Working Title Films.

The dark screwball comedy centers on Ozzie Cox (Malkovich), a former CIA agent who loses the disc of the memoir he is writing. McDormand will play Cox's philandering wife. Clooney is set to play an assassin. Because the screenplay is being kept under wraps, it is unclear what Pitt's character will be.

Shooting is scheduled to begin in August.

Joel and Ethan Coen penned the screenplay, and the former will direct the contemporary-set project.

Working Title's Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are producing alongside the Coens.

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i scooped the Hollywood Reporter by a week.  8)

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So How's the Script for the Coen Brothers' 'Burn After Reading,' Starring Pitt and Clooney?
Source: NY Magazine

The Coen Brothers are currently in Cannes, presenting their extremely well-received No Country for Old Men. It seems likely that this Western noir, adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem, will be hailed as a return to form for the Coens after the mild disappointments of The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. Meanwhile, the trades have been actively reporting superstar casting of the Coens' next film, Burn After Reading: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and John Malkovich have all been announced, and the Hollywood Reporter keeps referring to the script for Burn After Reading as being "shrouded in secrecy." But not so shrouded in secrecy that we couldn't read it!

As one could expect from a pair of writer-directors who followed Barton Fink with The Hudsucker Proxy, and The Man Who Wasn't There with Intolerable Cruelty, Burn After Reading is a comedy; its dark wit and ridiculously tangled plot differ substantially from the austere drama of No Country for Old Men. Malkovich plays Osbourne Cox, an alcoholic fired CIA agent whose memoir manuscript accidentally leaks. Pitt plays Chad Feldheimer, a dim-bulb personal trainer who finds the CD-ROM containing the manuscript and launches a plan to profit from the discovery. And Clooney plays Harry Pfarrer, a gone-slightly-to-seed Treasury agent whose philandering lands him in the middle of the ensuing mess.

We've speculated before that this film, starring as it does Clooney, might complete the Clooney-Coen "idiot trilogy," after O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty. Given the number of foolish misunderstandings, romantic entanglements, accidental shootings, Lycra-clad asses, and "lactose reflux" references in the script, we think we're right. The screenplay is awfully funny, as in this exchange when Chad helps his best friend, Linda, check out an Internet dating site and comes across a potential beau with aviator glasses:

    Chad:
    He uh, he might not be a loser.

    Linda:
    How can you tell?

    Chad:
    That's a Brioni suit.

    Linda:
    Oh yeah?

    Chad:
    Shit yeah.

    Linda (dubious):
    Does he look like he has a sense of humor?

    Chad:
    He looks like his optometrist has a sense of humor.

And if Burn After Reading, like Intolerable Cruelty before it, is marred with a few more gruesome deaths than is strictly necessary, it's quite apparent that the stars already cast are aligned perfectly with their roles: Clooney the aging Lothario who winds up straight man to an outlandish caper, Malkovich the unhinged secret-keeper at the end of his tether, and Pitt as a muscle-bound doofus with big dreams. It's the dumbest role Pitt's played, actually, since his memorable scenes in True Romance, and watching Pitt and Clooney play stupid will make a nice change from their smarter-than-the-room routine in the upcoming Ocean's Whatever. Look for Burn After Reading to shoot this summer and premiere in 2008.

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first pictures from the set of Burn After Reading featuring Brad Pitt (with a bloody nose) here:

http://justjared.buzznet.com/2007/09/23/brad-pitt-bloody-nose/

[picolas]

hah

[Pubrick]

choo.

[picolas]

urns