In Drive-Away Dolls Ethan Coen has made what he dubs “filthy fun,” and what his wife and co-writer Tricia Cooke calls a “queer road trip movie.” Whatever you want to call it, the film—the director’s first written and directed without his brother Joel—is a fast-paced journey that follows lesbian heroes and friends Jamie and Marian (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, respectively) on a road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, Florida, with stops in states like North Carolina and Georgia along the way (and cameos from Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon). Why Tallahassee, you ask? “Tallahassee is actually beautiful,” explains Marian to an unconvinced Jamie at the start of the movie. “They have live oaks, Spanish moss, birding…”
We spoke to production designer Yong Ok Lee about how Drive Away Dolls—a road-trip movie covering more than 1,000 miles—was made possible on screen.
In Drive Away Dolls, Jamie and Marian travel from Pennsylvania to Florida. Did the crew follow this route?
No, we only shot in Pittsburgh! On the road, the girls make stops in North Carolina and in Georgia, but we never actually shot there. From the production side, we just cannot afford to travel like that—following the highway from Philadelphia to Tallahassee—so we shot everything in Pittsburgh for cost and ease. It was all fine by me, though my biggest concern was the Florida part, because it looks so different. Besides that, most of the locations are in bars, motels, and hotels, or a diner on a highway, so it didn’t really matter to be honest. Some locations we built completely ourselves, others we shot on location but rebuilt the facades or dressed streets differently.
So, are you saying we can’t stay at El Conquistador hotel in Tallahassee for real?
