John Turturro's career as a director has been picking up steam in the last few years with the likes of Romance And Cigarettes, Passione and, most recently, Fading Gigolo, in which he also co-starred with Woody Allen. Shoring up those gigs behind the camera have been higher-profile roles in things like the Transformers films, but he remains perhaps best known for his four collaborations with the Coen Brothers (Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?). It's one of those in particular that continues to fire his imagination, to the extent that he wants to make a spin-off. Turturro has serious plans to revisit The Big Lebowski's preening bowler Jesus Quintana for a project of his own{
Quintana, you'll recall, was The Dude's arch nemesis at the alley. The creep could roll, man, but he was also a pervert. As described by John Goodman's less-than-tolerant Walter Sobchak, "He's a sex offender with a record. He did six months in Chino for exposing himself to an 8-year-old. When he moved to Hollywood he had to go door-to-door to tell everyone he was a pederast."
That doesn't, perhaps, sound like the greatest pitch for a solo film but, as played by Turturro, Quintana is comedy gold: a purple-tracksuited horror with a priceless accent and a grotesquely confident swagger (nicely undercut by a flashback to the door-to-door adventures described above). He only has minutes of screen-time, but he certainly makes an impression.
Turturro has been keen on this idea for a while: markedly more keen than the Coens themselves. "He talks incessantly about it," Ethan Coen said last year. "He even has the story worked out, which he's pitched to us a few times, but I can't really remember it. I don't see it in our future."
Turturro though, speaking at the Taormina Film Festival, says he hopes to shoot it as early as next year, pending the right approvals. "If I can get the permission I need, I'd really like to return to that role," he teased. But he's also said in the past that he was able to go "really far out" in Lebowski precisely because it was such a brief appearance. Over a greater length, he's said he would have to "calibrate" accordingly.
So what's he planning? What could a Jesus movie - once jokingly named as 100 Minutes Of Jesus - possibly entail? A biopic? A full-on bowling comedy? An action thriller? A psychological horror? All of the above at once? Nobody but a select inner circle know at the moment, so give us your own pitches in the comments below. One things's for sure though: nobody fucks with the Jesus. Turturro had better tread carefully...