Summary
- Ethan Coen's first directorial effort, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, premiered at Cannes but faced a nearly two-year delay in getting released.
- A24's lack of experience with documentaries and preference for streamers could have contributed to the delay in releasing the film to the public.
- With minimal promotion, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind quietly debuted on Amazon Prime Video, highlighting the challenges documentaries face in distribution.
The hype surrounding Drive-Away Dolls has been that it’s the first solo directorial effort from Ethan Coen, one of the half of the Coen Brothers alongside sibling Joel Coen. This pair spent decades helming some of the most acclaimed American movies of the 1990s and 2000s, but have now gone their separate ways. Joel Coen helmed The Tragedy of MacBeth in 2021, while Ethan Coen teamed up with his romantic partner Tricia Cooke to write Dolls before directing this queer comedy himself. This Margaret Qualley/Geraldine Viswanathan starring vehicle is seemingly Ethan Coen’s inaugural foray into solo directing…except it’s not. Not technically.
While Drive-Away Dolls will be the first Ethan Coen directorial effort to get theatrically released to the general public, it’s not the premiere filmmaking effort from this man. That honor belongs to Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, a documentary about the life of musician Jerry Lee Lewis. Directed by Ethan Coen and edited by Tricia Cooke, the project was financed by A24 (among other production companies) and this indie juggernaut was planning to distribute the title after its May 2022 Cannes Film Festival debut. However, it took nearly two years after Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind debuted to finally become available to the public. What happened to the actual solo directorial debut of Ethan Coen…and why was the public being kept away from it for so long?
- Release Date
- February 23, 2024
- Director
- Ethan Coen
- Writers
- Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke
WHERE TO WATCH
Jamie regrets her breakup with her girlfriend, while Marian needs to relax. In search of a fresh start, they embark on an unexpected road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals.
'Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind’s' Fate Is Strange for A24 Festival Titles
Like any other indie studio, A24 doesn't set release dates for its titles years in advance. It's much more flexible with its release plans for its projects, with the company often debuting trailers for major projects before even announcing a release date. Still, even with this justifiably malleable approach to a schedule, there's usually a ceiling for how long A24 waits to premiere a movie after it makes its film festival debut. The Witch, for instance, opened in theaters in February 2016, 13 months after its Sundance 2015 premiere. How to Talk to Girls at Parties, meanwhile, premiered in a general North American theatrical release exactly a year after its May 2017 Cannes premiere, while Minari and Zola hit U.S. theaters well over a year after their respective January 2020 Sundance premieres thanks to COVID-19-releated delays.
In the past, the A24 titles with the longest gaps between their film festival premieres and when they actually were made available to the public were The Blackcoat’s Daughter (a whopping 18-month delay), Hot Summer Nights (a 16-month gap), and The Sea of Trees (a 15-month wait time), with all three of these titles getting simultaneous releases on either PVOD or DirecTV. Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind sat around for nearly two years after its Cannes Film Festival premiere with no domestic release in sight! This cemented a gulf between its premiere and domestic release that was drastically longer than past shelved A24 titles. Plus, most of the previous A24 titles with these kinds of extensive wait times were done in the early days of the studio when A24 would pluck up star-studded film festival titles to send to DirecTV.
Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind exists in a radically different era for A24, where the gaps between film festival premieres and general theatrical releases have narrowed and narrowed. Plus, unlike most films A24 dragged its feet on releasing in the past, the company actually financed Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. Partly why The Sea of Trees, for instance, took so long to debut in theaters after its May 2015 Cannes premiere was that A24 inherited the movie after this feature's original Roadside Attractions distribution deal fell apart. Given its personal investment in this production, one would imagine that A24 would be interested in putting the title out to the general public or even just selling it to a streamer for easy cash right away.
Instead, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind languished on a shelf. Making this prolonged holdup extra puzzling is that A24 initially seemed gung-ho about working directly with each of the solo Coen Brothers. A24 financed both Joel and Ethan Coen's inaugural solo directorial efforts. This indie studio seemed incredibly eager to profit mightily from this directorial duo going their separate ways. But, while The Tragedy of MacBeth got a brief theatrical run and eventual Apple TV+ release, Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind was stuck in limbo. A24’s initial excitement over being in the Coen Brothers business wasn’t enough to ensure Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind would get released in a timely manner.
Will We Ever See 'Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind'?
Image via Cannes Film Festival
Image via Working Title Films
Image via Amazon
Image via A24
Image via Focus Features
One thing likely preventing Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind from getting a proper release was simply A24’s lack of experience releasing documentaries. Across the first five years of A24's existence, the studio only had its name attached to three documentaries, two of which (De Palma and Oasis: Supersonic) were independent productions A24 acquired for distribution and then sent to PVOD. Starting with The Elephant Queen in October 2019, A24 has become slightly more prominent in the world of documentaries, but that feature also established a trend of A24 making documentaries almost exclusively for streamers. A24 docs have ended up on a slew of streamers (HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV+), with Occupied City being the only post-Amy A24 documentary to get a proper theatrical release.
This phenomenon even occurred in the first few weeks of 2024, when A24 quietly dropped its first two titles of the year. Those titles debuted in the form of a pair of documentaries few have heard that plopped onto Prime Video (My Mercury) and Netflix (Open Wide) with zero promotion. This trend suggests that, if a streamer doesn’t want to buy it, A24 very rarely dedicates its resources to putting documentaries into traditional theatrical releases. If Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind had secured a splashy streamer distribution offer after its Cannes premiere, the title would likely have already been available to the general public almost immediately. However, mixed reviews out of its Cannes Film Festival debut seemingly dashed those hopes and dreams. Arthouse titles rely heavily on positive critical reception to get the attention of potential distributors and Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind didn’t secure the kind of rapturous reception one needs to stand out in a crowded indie cinema marketplace.
Normally, that would be the end of this sad tale…but a funny thing happened while this piece was being written. Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind quietly got released on Prime Video. Neither A24 nor Prime Video made any mention of this development on their social media feeds, with A24 never even making a page for the film on its site (a feat the obscure 2024 documentary My Mercury did accomplish!). Fans of the Coen Brothers' work have never mentioned this debut online. There's been so little promotion for the title (which, as of this writing, has only one review on Amazon, a testament to how much it’s flying under the radar) that it’s hard to decipher when precisely it dropped on the streamer.
While an initial list of Prime Video’s January 2024 new releases said it would debut on the service on January 1, ample evidence exists suggesting it dropped on the service weeks after that initial target release date. A Film Forum screening of Trouble In Mind on January 10, for instance, labeled this showing a "sneak preview" with no mention of it being already available on Prime Video. Meanwhile, The Sedona International Film Festival in early February 2024 held the "Northern Arizona premiere" of the documentary, a claim that would be impossible to make if residents of Northern Arizona could watch the title on Prime Video at that time. A Belcourt Theater screening of the feature on February 13, 2024 (such theatrical screenings of streaming-exclusive movies in non-festival settings are typically held within days of their streaming premieres) and reports from local news outlets further indicate that Trouble in Mind premiered on Prime Video on Valentine’s Day or thereabouts.
This quiet debut further confirms that A24 seems determined to send its documentaries to streamers (unless they involve Amy Winehouse or director Steve McQueen) and especially reaffirms how little promotion streaming originals get in the modern age. Ethan Coen’s directorial debut, once seemingly destined to never get released, finally got unfurled to the world…and nobody knew about it! At least now, viewers can experience Trouble in Mind before they partake in Drive Away-Dolls while those same moviegoers have a superb example of the kind of distribution struggles documentaries tend to face in the American pop culture landscape.
Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind is available on Prime Video in the U.S.