In Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t, Margaret Qualley plays a small-town private investigator known for high heels who click-clacks her way through an investigation of mysterious deaths involving a church run by a charismatic preacher (Chris Evans). It’s the second feature co-written by Coen and Tricia Cooke, the married couple behind 2024’s lesbian road movie thriller Drive-Away Dolls.
The trailer suggests that the heels will come up again and again as Qualley’s character, O’Donahue, does her thing.
“Love those click-clacking heels,” a cop played by Aubrey Plaza calls out from an evidence locker, as Honey makes an exit. Though nothing more is said, they seem to share a connection.
The Honey Don’t trailer amusingly notes Ethan Coen is once again working with Cooke instead of his brother and longtime creative partner, Joel Coen, by giving him the onscreen credit: “From a Director of Fargo and No Country for Old Men.” (The brothers split after 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, but reportedly plan a reunion soon.)
Charlie Day pops up as well, as does a quick shot of Honey’s license plate: HNYDONT.
Margaret Qualley, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke Reunite for Honey Don’t
As they detailed in our February 2024 cover story about the origins of Drive-Away Dolls, Ethan Cohn and Tricia Cooke met when she was a recent NYU film grad who traveled to New Orleans to work on Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1989 film Miller’s Crossing.
“Ethan asked me on a date and we went to see Drugstore Cowboy,” Tricia Cooke told MovieMaker. “I told him, ‘I’m a lesbian, I’m not interested.’”
By 1993 they were married, and had two kids. She edited many of the Coens’ best-known films, including The Big Lebowski, 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and 2001’s The Man Who Wasn’t There.
She also made her own films, with a queer perspective. She co-directed the 2008 short “Don’t Mess With Texas” with Carrie Schrader. Cooke co-wrote the film, about two young lesbians who run into trouble at a diner, with Coen.
“Being married to Ethan and being queer there’s always a little disconnect sometimes,” she laughed. “I wanted to be able to make queer films as well.”
Their marriage evolved into what Cooke described as “a very non-traditional marriage and relationship where there’s a bigger unit…. I have a partner and Ethan has another partner.” And they kept up their collaborative creative pursuits, including an early draft of Drive-Away Dolls with a different name.
“We wrote Drive-Away Dykes together many, many years ago as a way for us to spend time together,” Cooke told us.
Drive-Away Dolls, which marked Ethan Coen’s solo directorial debut, was edited by Cooke and earned praise for Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan’s performances as lesbian best friends who take a road trip and get embroiled in a criminal scheme.
The Honey Don’t trailer has the same cool, assuredly shambolic feel, about characters nonchalantly hanging on by threads.
Coen-esque touches abound: One clue in the case is a ring for Evans’ church, called the Four-Way Temple. (We soon see Evans’ character, Reverend Drew, engaged in a not-quite four-way.) There’s a briefcase that recalls the one in Drive-Away Dolls, and a messy crime scene — overseen by Day’s character — that recalls the one where Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss makes a life-changing decision in 2007’s No Country for Old Men, which won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Joel and Ethan Coen.
And the needle drop is second to none: The trailer is blessed by Dusty Springfield’s rendition of “Spooky,” which gets spookier as we get a little deeper into the intrigue surrounding Honey and the Four-Way Temple.
Honey Don’t opens in theaters August 22, from Focus Features.