O Brother, Where Art Thou? premiered

December 22, 2000
Joel and Ethan Coen’s purported adaptation of The Odyssey, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning, premiered in the US on this date.

George Clooney, upon reading the script did not immediately understand his character and so sent the script to his uncle Jack, a tobacco farmer who lived in Kentucky, and asked him to read the entire script into a tape recorder. Unknown to Clooney, in his recording, Jack, a devout Baptist, omitted all instances of the words “damn” and “hell” from the Coens’ script, which only became known to Clooney after the directors pointed this out to him in the middle of shooting. Jack had never been on a plane before flying in for the premiere.

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