FRISKY BUSINESS

Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star as queer friends being chased by dumb male criminals in Drive-Away Dolls, a road movie/ romantic comedy/crime caper by husband-and-wife team Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke. Total Film hitches a ride with the directors and stars to talk dark laughs, dim crims and dildos…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke are talking about having sex while other people are in the room. Not now, in their marriage, you understand - Total Film is not in the habit of prying into the intimate details of its interviewees' relationships. But back in the day, in their youth.

'Yes, I've certainly lived through something like that,' says Cooke with an expression that falls somewhere between a grin and a grimace. 'I had a roommate in college who liked to bring men home. We shared a room. You have to zone out and find a different place to be, intellectually.' Coen is smirking. 'I'm not gonna make it personal and tell you about... But yes, it's everyone's nightmare,' he nods. 'You don't want to hear other people's sex: "Oh my god. Let me crawl into a hole. Let me not be here."

A lot of us have been there. The late teenage years and early 20s is, for many, a time of discovery, but it's also a time of financial low-to-no-income and shared rooms. College students will likely know all about having to put on headphones when an inebriated roommate crashes into the room in the gasping, grasping clutches of another.

'I've pretended to be asleep when I wasn't asleep,' laughs Margaret Qualley. 'You just try and sink into the bed. But I've never done the reverse!'