Burn After Reading
Encyclopedia
Burn After Reading is a 2008 black comedy
film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
. The film stars George Clooney
, John Malkovich
, Frances McDormand
, Tilda Swinton
, and Brad Pitt
. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and it was released on October 17, 2008 in the United Kingdom. The film had its premiere on August 27, 2008, when it opened the 2008 Venice Film Festival
.
) quits his job as a CIA
analyst
and resolves to write a memoir
about his life and career. When his pediatrician wife Katie (Tilda Swinton
) finds out, she sees it as a justifiable opportunity to file for divorce
and continue her extramarital affair unimpeded. Taking her lawyer's advice, she copies financial records and several other files from her husband's computer onto a CD.
When the CD gets left on the locker room floor of Hardbodies, a local gym, by a careless law firm employee, it falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt
) and his co-worker Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand
), who mistake the numerical data in the Cox's bank records and the cryptic first draft of Osbourne's memoir to be highly sensitive government information. After getting the data traced back to Osbourne, Chad and Linda plan to give the disc back to him for a reward, with Linda planning to use the money to pay for cosmetic surgery
. But when a phone call and subsequent in-person meeting with Osbourne goes horribly wrong, Chad and Linda turn over the disc to the Russian embassy
, offering more information in return for monetary compensation. With no other data to give them, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Cox home to get more files from their computer.
Meanwhile, Osbourne's increasingly erratic behavior - aggravated in part by his encounters with Chad and Linda - prompt Katie to move ahead with the divorce proceedings. She changes the locks on their house, forcing Osbourne to move onto the sailboat
they have docked on Chesapeake Bay
. With her husband out of the picture, Katie invites her lover, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney
) to move in. A womanizing Treasury Department employee and U.S. Marshal, Pfarrer is coincidentally also secretly seeing Linda. When he finds a strange man hiding in a bedroom closet in Katie's house - actually Chad in search of more documents for Linda - Harry panics and shoots him point blank in the face. Seeing that Chad has no identification or labels in his suit, Harry believes he has just killed a spy and quickly disposes of the body by dumping it in the bay.
Two days later at the CIA headquarters, an official named Palmer (David Rasche
) and his director (J. K. Simmons
) learn that information from Osbourne has been given to the Russian Embassy. They are perplexed and decide to maintain observation until the situation "makes sense."
Harry, increasingly anxious after killing a man he believes was a government spy, gets into an argument with Katie and decides to leave the house. On his way out, he spots a man who has been trailing him for the past several days. After tackling him to the ground, Harry finds out that the man is a process server tasked with giving him divorce papers from his wife Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel
), who is having an extramarital liaison of her own. Harry is devastated and goes to see an agitated Linda, who confides in Harry that her friend Chad is missing; he agrees to try to help find him (unaware that Chad is the man he killed in Cox's home).
The next morning, Harry and Linda meet in a park, and she provides him with more information about Chad's disappearance. When Harry realizes that Chad is the man he killed, he flees in terror, assuming Linda is also a spy. Linda then turns to Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins
), the kindhearted manager of Hardbodies, who has unrequited feelings for her. Believing the Russians have kidnapped Chad, he agrees to go to the Cox home to search Osbourne's computer. Unemployed and having spent the past several days living on a small boat, Osbourne becomes unhinged when he finds out that his wife has emptied his bank accounts, and, no longer having keys, decides to break into the house to get some of his personal belongings. Finding Ted in the basement, Osbourne initially takes him to be Katie's lover and fires a gunshot at him. Ted manages to get out of the house, only to be fatally attacked by a hatchet-wielding Osbourne.
At CIA headquarters a few days later, Palmer and his director try to understand what exactly happened. It is revealed that while trying to board a flight to Venezuela
, Harry was detained because his name was on a hot list, Chad's body has been disposed of and the CIA are holding Linda who is promising to keep quiet about everything if they will pay for her cosmetic surgery. A CIA agent shot Osbourne during his hatchet assault on Ted and the bullet has put Osbourne in a coma
. The director instructs Palmer to let Harry fly to Venezuela, mistakenly saying that the US has no extradition treaty with Venezuela, decides the CIA will pay for Linda's surgery and postpones considering Osbourne's situation until he regains consciousness, which is not likely. The director tells Palmer that they did not really learn anything.
produced the film for Focus Features
, which also has worldwide distribution rights.
Burn After Reading was the first Coen brothers
movie not to use Roger Deakins
as cinematographer
since Miller's Crossing
. Emmanuel Lubezki
, the four-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer of Sleepy Hollow
and Children of Men
, took over for Deakins. Mary Zophres
served as costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive movie with the Coen brothers. Carter Burwell
, a composer who worked with the Coens in eleven previous films, created the score. Early in the production, Burwell and the Coens decided the score should include a great deal of percussion instruments, which the filmmakers felt would match the deluded self-importance of the characters. In creating the score, they discussed the political thriller Seven Days in May
, which included an all-drums score; the Burn score consisted of a great deal of Japan
ese Taiko drums
. Joel Coen said they wanted the score to be "something big and bombastic, something important sounding but absolutely meaningless."
Burn After Reading is the first original screenplay penned by Joel and Ethan Coen since their 2001 movie, The Man Who Wasn't There
. Ethan Coen compared Burn After Reading to the Allen Drury
political novel Advise and Consent
and called it "our version of a Tony Scott
/Jason Bourne
kind of movie, without the explosions." Joel Coen said they intended to create a spy movie because "we hadn't done one before," but he feels the final result was more of a character-driven movie than a spy story. Joel also said Burn After Reading was not meant to be a comment or satire on Washington D.C.
Parts of the Burn screenplay were written while the Coens were also writing their adaptation of No Country for Old Men. The Coens created characters with actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Richard Jenkins in mind for the parts, and the script derived from the brothers' desire to include them in a "fun story." Ethan Coen said Pitt's character was partially inspired by a botched hair coloring job from a commercial the actor filmed. Tilda Swinton, who was cast later than the other actors, was the only major actor whose character was not written specifically for her. The Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule among the A-list cast.
Production Weekly, an online entertainment industry magazine, falsely reported in October 2006 that Burn After Reading was a loose adaptation of Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, a memoir by former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence
Stansfield Turner
. Although both stories involve the Central Intelligence Agency
and derive their titles from the top secret classification term, the Coen brothers script has nothing to do with the Turner book; nevertheless, the rumor was not clarified until a Los Angeles Times
article more than one year later.
Principal filming took place around Brooklyn Heights, as the Coens wanted to stay in New York City to be with their families. Other scenes were filmed at Paramus, New Jersey
, Westchester County, New York
and Washington, D.C., particularly in the Georgetown
neighborhood. Filming began on August 27, 2007 and was completed on October 30, 2007. John Malkovich, appearing in his first Coen brothers film, said of the shooting, "The Coens are very delightful: smart, funny, very specific about what they want but not overly controlling, as some people can be." The film opened the Venice Film Festival
in August 2008.
The Coen brothers said idiocy was a major central theme of Burn After Reading; Joel Coen said he and his brother have "a long history of writing parts for idiotic characters" and described Clooney and Pitt's characters as "dueling idiots." Burn After Reading is the third Coen brothers film for Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?
and Intolerable Cruelty
), who acknowledged that he usually plays a fool in their movies: "I've done three films with them and they call it my trilogy of idiots." Joel said after the last scene was shot, "George said: 'OK, I’ve played my last idiot!' So I guess he won’t be working with us again."
Pitt, who plays a particularly unintelligent character, said of his role, "After reading the part, which they said was hand-written for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted." Pitt also said when he was shown the script, he told the Coens he did not know how to play the part because the character was such an idiot: "There was a pause, and then Joel goes...'You'll be fine'."
During a fall movie preview, Entertainment Weekly
wrote that Malkovich "easily racks up the most laughs" among the cast as the foul-mouthed and short-tempered ex-CIA man. The first scene Malkovich performed was a phone call in which he shouts several obscenities at Pitt and McDormand. But Malkovich could not be on the sound stage
for the call because he was rehearsing a play, so he called in the lines from his apartment in Paris
. Regarding the scene, Malkovich said, "It was really late at night and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. God knows what the neighbors thought." Swinton plays Malkovich's wife who engages in an affair
with Clooney, although the two characters do not get along well. Clooney's and Swinton's characters also had a poor relationship in their previous film together, Michael Clayton
, prompting Clooney to say to Swinton at the end of a shoot, "Well, maybe one day we'll get to make a film together when we say one nice thing to each other." Swinton said of the dynamic, "I'm very happy to shout at him on screen. It's great fun."
Swinton described Burn After Reading as "a kind of monster caper movie," and said of the characters, "All of us are monsters – like, true monsters. It’s ridiculous." She also said, "I think there is something random at the heart of this one. On the one hand, it really is bleak and scary. On the other, it is really funny. ... It's the whatever-ness of it. You feel that at any minute of any day in any town, this could happen." Malkovich said of the characters, "No one in this film is very good. They're either slightly emotional or mentally defective. Quirky, self-aggrandizing, scheming." Pitt said the cast did little ad-libbing because the script was so tightly written and wove so many overlapping stories together. Veteran actor Richard Jenkins
of The Witches of Eastwick
said the Coen brothers asked him if he could lose weight for his role as the gym manager, to which Jenkins jokingly replied, "I'm a 60-year-old man, not Brad Pitt. My body isn't going to change."
Joel Coen said the sex machine built by Clooney's character was inspired by a machine he once saw a key grip
build, and by another machine he saw in the Museum of Sex
in New York City.
based on 213 reviews as of November 26, 2009. The film fared well but not as well among the "Top Critics," earning a 61%, another "Certified Fresh" rating, out of 18 reviews. The Times
, which gave the movie four out of five stars, compared it to Coen films Raising Arizona
and Fargo
in its "savagely comic taste for creative violence and a slightly mocking eye for detail." The review said the attention to detail was so impeccable that "the Coens can even raise a laugh with something as simple as a well-placed photograph of Vladimir Putin
," and complimented Carter Burwell
's musical score, which it described as "the most paranoid piece of film music since Quincy Jones
's neurotic soundtrack for The Anderson Tapes
." Andrew Pulver, film reviewer for The Guardian
called the movie "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn't be in bigger contrast to the Coens' last film, the bloodsoaked, brooding No Country for Old Men
." Pulver, who also gave Burn After Reading four out of five stars, said it "may also go down as arguably the Coens' happiest engagement with the demands of the Hollywood A-list
." Pulver said Brad Pitt had some of the funniest moments and that compared to the other Coen brothers movies, Burn After Reading most resembles Intolerable Cruelty. The Hollywood Reporter
reviewer Kirk Honeycutt complimented the actors for making fun of their screen personae, and said the Coen brothers "have taken some of cinema's top and most expensive actors and chucked them into Looney Tunes
roles in a thriller." Honeycutt also said "it takes awhile to adjust to the rhythms and subversive humor of Burn because this is really an anti-spy thriller in which nothing is at stake, no one acts with intelligence and everything ends badly."
Todd McCarthy, of Variety
magazine, wrote a strongly negative review of Burn After Reading, which he said "tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results." McCarthy said the talented cast was forced to act like cartoon characters, described Carter Burwell's score as "uncustomarily overbearing" and said the dialogue is "dialed up to an almost grotesquely exaggerated extent, making for a film that feels misjudged from the opening scene and thereafter only occasionally hits the right note." Time film critic Richard Corliss
said he did not understand what the Coen brothers were attempting with the film, and after describing the plot, wrote, "I have the sinking feeling I've made Burn After Reading sound funnier than it is. The movie's glacial affectlessness, its remove from all these subpar schemers, left me cold and perplexed." Corliss complimented Richard Jenkins and J.K. Simmons for their brief supporting roles. David Denby of The New Yorker
said the movie had several funny scenes, but they "are stifled by a farce plot so bleak and unfunny that it freezes your responses after about forty-five minutes." Denby also criticized the pattern of violence in the movie, in which innocent people die quickly and the guilty go unpunished. "These people don’t mean much to [the Coen brothers]; it’s hardly a surprise that they don’t mean much to us, either. ... Even black comedy requires that the filmmakers love someone, and the mock cruelties in Burn After Reading come off as a case of terminal misanthropy."
Leah Rozen, of People
magazine, said the characters' "unrelenting dumbness and dim-witted behavior is at first amusing and enjoyable but eventually grows wearing." But Rozen said the performances are a redeeming factor, especially that of Pitt, who she described as a standout who "manages simultaneously to be delightfully broad and smartly nuanced."
Le Monde
noticed its "particularly bitter image of the U.S. The alliance of political incompetence (the CIA), the cult of appearance (the gym club) and vulgar stupidity (everyone) is the target of a settling of scores" where the comedy "sprouts from a well of bitterness."
The movie was nominated at the 2009 Golden Globe awards for Best Comedy or Musical and for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy or Musical (Frances McDormand). The National Board of Review named Burn After Reading in their list of the Top 10 Movies of 2008. Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
named it the second best film of 2008, Empire
magazine named it the third best film of 2008, and Owen Gleiberman
of Entertainment Weekly
named it the seventh best film of 2008.
and Blu-ray Disc
on December 21, 2008, on Region 1. The Region 2 version was released on February 9, 2009.
Black comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Coen Brothers
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
. The film stars George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
, John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
, Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand
Frances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...
, Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
, and Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
. It was released in the United States on September 12, 2008, and it was released on October 17, 2008 in the United Kingdom. The film had its premiere on August 27, 2008, when it opened the 2008 Venice Film Festival
65th Venice International Film Festival
The 65th Venice International Film Festival, held in Venice, Italy, was opened on August 27, 2008 by Burn After Reading, and closed on September 6, 2008....
.
Plot
Faced with a demotion at work due to a drinking problem, Osbourne Cox (John MalkovichJohn Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
) quits his job as a CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
analyst
Intelligence analysis
Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...
and resolves to write a memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
about his life and career. When his pediatrician wife Katie (Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
) finds out, she sees it as a justifiable opportunity to file for divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
and continue her extramarital affair unimpeded. Taking her lawyer's advice, she copies financial records and several other files from her husband's computer onto a CD.
When the CD gets left on the locker room floor of Hardbodies, a local gym, by a careless law firm employee, it falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt
Brad Pitt
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
) and his co-worker Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand
Frances McDormand
Frances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...
), who mistake the numerical data in the Cox's bank records and the cryptic first draft of Osbourne's memoir to be highly sensitive government information. After getting the data traced back to Osbourne, Chad and Linda plan to give the disc back to him for a reward, with Linda planning to use the money to pay for cosmetic surgery
Plastic surgery
Plastic surgery is a medical specialty concerned with the correction or restoration of form and function. Though cosmetic or aesthetic surgery is the best-known kind of plastic surgery, most plastic surgery is not cosmetic: plastic surgery includes many types of reconstructive surgery, hand...
. But when a phone call and subsequent in-person meeting with Osbourne goes horribly wrong, Chad and Linda turn over the disc to the Russian embassy
Embassy of Russia in Washington
The Embassy of Russia in Washington, D.C. is the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation to the United States. The chancery is located at 2650 Wisconsin Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C..-New Embassy compound at Wisconsin Avenue:...
, offering more information in return for monetary compensation. With no other data to give them, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Cox home to get more files from their computer.
Meanwhile, Osbourne's increasingly erratic behavior - aggravated in part by his encounters with Chad and Linda - prompt Katie to move ahead with the divorce proceedings. She changes the locks on their house, forcing Osbourne to move onto the sailboat
Sailboat
A sailboat or sailing boat is a boat propelled partly or entirely by sails. The term covers a variety of boats, larger than small vessels such as sailboards and smaller than sailing ships, but distinctions in the size are not strictly defined and what constitutes a sailing ship, sailboat, or a...
they have docked on Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
. With her husband out of the picture, Katie invites her lover, Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
) to move in. A womanizing Treasury Department employee and U.S. Marshal, Pfarrer is coincidentally also secretly seeing Linda. When he finds a strange man hiding in a bedroom closet in Katie's house - actually Chad in search of more documents for Linda - Harry panics and shoots him point blank in the face. Seeing that Chad has no identification or labels in his suit, Harry believes he has just killed a spy and quickly disposes of the body by dumping it in the bay.
Two days later at the CIA headquarters, an official named Palmer (David Rasche
David Rasche
-Early life and career:Rasche was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was a minister and farmer. Rasche started in theatre, but also has appeared on numerous movies and television series. He became a member of the Chicago Second City, after John Belushi moved on to Saturday Night Live...
) and his director (J. K. Simmons
J. K. Simmons
Jonathan Kimble "J. K." Simmons is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on television as Dr. Emil Skoda in NBC's Law & Order , Assistant Police Chief Will Pope in TNT's The Closer, neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger in the HBO prison drama Oz, on film as J...
) learn that information from Osbourne has been given to the Russian Embassy. They are perplexed and decide to maintain observation until the situation "makes sense."
Harry, increasingly anxious after killing a man he believes was a government spy, gets into an argument with Katie and decides to leave the house. On his way out, he spots a man who has been trailing him for the past several days. After tackling him to the ground, Harry finds out that the man is a process server tasked with giving him divorce papers from his wife Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel
Elizabeth Marvel
-Biography:Marvel was born in Mohnton, Pennsylvania. She studied at Juilliard. She has several credits on Broadway and in film and television. Marvel was a series regular on The District, and has appeared in two films by the Coen Brothers: True Grit as the adult Mattie Ross, and Burn After Reading...
), who is having an extramarital liaison of her own. Harry is devastated and goes to see an agitated Linda, who confides in Harry that her friend Chad is missing; he agrees to try to help find him (unaware that Chad is the man he killed in Cox's home).
The next morning, Harry and Linda meet in a park, and she provides him with more information about Chad's disappearance. When Harry realizes that Chad is the man he killed, he flees in terror, assuming Linda is also a spy. Linda then turns to Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins
Richard Jenkins
Richard Dale Jenkins is an American stage, film, and television actor. After beginning his career in theatre, Jenkins made his film debut in 1974, and appeared in supporting roles in numerous film productions in the 1980s and the 1990s. His breakthrough came in the 2000s for playing the deceased...
), the kindhearted manager of Hardbodies, who has unrequited feelings for her. Believing the Russians have kidnapped Chad, he agrees to go to the Cox home to search Osbourne's computer. Unemployed and having spent the past several days living on a small boat, Osbourne becomes unhinged when he finds out that his wife has emptied his bank accounts, and, no longer having keys, decides to break into the house to get some of his personal belongings. Finding Ted in the basement, Osbourne initially takes him to be Katie's lover and fires a gunshot at him. Ted manages to get out of the house, only to be fatally attacked by a hatchet-wielding Osbourne.
At CIA headquarters a few days later, Palmer and his director try to understand what exactly happened. It is revealed that while trying to board a flight to Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, Harry was detained because his name was on a hot list, Chad's body has been disposed of and the CIA are holding Linda who is promising to keep quiet about everything if they will pay for her cosmetic surgery. A CIA agent shot Osbourne during his hatchet assault on Ted and the bullet has put Osbourne in a coma
Coma
In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
. The director instructs Palmer to let Harry fly to Venezuela, mistakenly saying that the US has no extradition treaty with Venezuela, decides the CIA will pay for Linda's surgery and postpones considering Osbourne's situation until he regains consciousness, which is not likely. The director tells Palmer that they did not really learn anything.
Cast
- George ClooneyGeorge ClooneyGeorge Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
as Harry Pfarrer - Frances McDormandFrances McDormandFrances Louise McDormand is an American film and stage actress. She has starred in a number of films, including her Academy Award-winning performance as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, in 1996...
as Linda Litzke - John MalkovichJohn MalkovichJohn Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...
as Osbourne Cox - Tilda SwintonTilda SwintonKatherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, The Beach, We Need to Talk About Kevin and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her...
as Katie Cox - Brad PittBrad PittWilliam Bradley "Brad" Pitt is an American actor and film producer. Pitt has received two Academy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning one...
as Chad Feldheimer - Richard JenkinsRichard JenkinsRichard Dale Jenkins is an American stage, film, and television actor. After beginning his career in theatre, Jenkins made his film debut in 1974, and appeared in supporting roles in numerous film productions in the 1980s and the 1990s. His breakthrough came in the 2000s for playing the deceased...
as Ted Treffon - David RascheDavid Rasche-Early life and career:Rasche was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was a minister and farmer. Rasche started in theatre, but also has appeared on numerous movies and television series. He became a member of the Chicago Second City, after John Belushi moved on to Saturday Night Live...
as Palmer - J. K. SimmonsJ. K. SimmonsJonathan Kimble "J. K." Simmons is an American actor. He is best known for his roles on television as Dr. Emil Skoda in NBC's Law & Order , Assistant Police Chief Will Pope in TNT's The Closer, neo-Nazi Vernon Schillinger in the HBO prison drama Oz, on film as J...
as CIA Superior - Jeffrey DeMunnJeffrey DeMunnJeffrey DeMunn is an American theatre, film and television actor.-Life and career:DeMunn was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of Violet and James DeMunn. Stepson of noted actress Betty Lutes DeMunn...
as cosmetic surgeon - Elizabeth MarvelElizabeth Marvel-Biography:Marvel was born in Mohnton, Pennsylvania. She studied at Juilliard. She has several credits on Broadway and in film and television. Marvel was a series regular on The District, and has appeared in two films by the Coen Brothers: True Grit as the adult Mattie Ross, and Burn After Reading...
as Sandy Pfarrer - Devin Rumer as Surveillance
- Olek KrupaOlek KrupaAleksander Krupa , often credited as Olek Krupa, is a Polish actor best known for playing villains and/or criminals, such as in Blue Streak and Home Alone 3...
as Krapotkin - Dermot MulroneyDermot Mulroney-Early life:Mulroney was born in Alexandria, Virginia, the son of Ellen, a housewife and amateur actress originally from Manchester, Iowa, and Michael Mulroney, a law professor at Villanova University School of Law, originally from Elkader, Iowa. He has a sister, Moira, and three brothers, Conor,...
as a star of Coming Up Daisy
Production
Working Title FilmsWorking Title Films
Working Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, UK. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions, including films starring comic actor Rowan Atkinson...
produced the film for Focus Features
Focus Features
Focus Features is the art house films division of NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, and acts as both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films....
, which also has worldwide distribution rights.
Burn After Reading was the first Coen brothers
Coen Brothers
Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers...
movie not to use Roger Deakins
Roger Deakins
Roger Antony Deakins, ASC, BSC is an English cinematographer best known for his work on the films of the Coen brothers. Deakins is a member of both the American and British Society of Cinematographers...
as cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
since Miller's Crossing
Miller's Crossing
Miller's Crossing is a 1990 American gangster film by the Coen brothers and starring Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, Jon Polito and John Turturro...
. Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki
Emmanuel Lubezki Morgenstern, ASC, AMC , better known as Emmanuel Lubezki, is a Mexican cinematographer, known for his groundbreaking techniques and characteristic style. His nickname is "Chivo".-Early life and career:...
, the four-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer of Sleepy Hollow
Sleepy Hollow (film)
Sleepy Hollow is a 1999 American period horror film directed by Tim Burton. It is a film adaptation loosely inspired by the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving and stars Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Marc Pickering, Michael Gambon, Jeffrey Jones,...
and Children of Men
Children of Men
Children of Men is a 2006 science fiction film loosely adapted from P. D. James's 1992 novel The Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. In 2027, two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Illegal immigrants seek sanctuary in England, where the last...
, took over for Deakins. Mary Zophres
Mary Zophres
Mary Zophres is an American costume designer. She was recently nominated for an Academy Award for her costume work on True Grit. This nomination at the 2010 Oscars marked her first. Zophres previously worked on Born on the Fourth of July...
served as costume designer, marking her eighth consecutive movie with the Coen brothers. Carter Burwell
Carter Burwell
Carter Benedict Burwell is an American composer of film scores.-Life and career:Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie , a math teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd...
, a composer who worked with the Coens in eleven previous films, created the score. Early in the production, Burwell and the Coens decided the score should include a great deal of percussion instruments, which the filmmakers felt would match the deluded self-importance of the characters. In creating the score, they discussed the political thriller Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May is an American political thriller novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. It was made into a motion picture and released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk...
, which included an all-drums score; the Burn score consisted of a great deal of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese Taiko drums
Taiko
means "drum" in Japanese . Outside Japan, the word is often used to refer to any of the various Japanese drums and to the relatively recent art-form of ensemble taiko drumming...
. Joel Coen said they wanted the score to be "something big and bombastic, something important sounding but absolutely meaningless."
Burn After Reading is the first original screenplay penned by Joel and Ethan Coen since their 2001 movie, The Man Who Wasn't There
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Man Who Wasn't There is a 2001 neo-noir film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Billy Bob Thornton stars in the title role. Also featured are James Gandolfini, Tony Shalhoub, Scarlett Johansson, Adam Alexi-Malle and Coen regulars Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, and Jon...
. Ethan Coen compared Burn After Reading to the Allen Drury
Allen Drury
Allen Stuart Drury was a U.S. novelist. He wrote the 1959 novel Advise and Consent, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960.- Early life & ancestry :...
political novel Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent
Advise and Consent is a 1959 political novel by Allen Drury that explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell who is a former member of the Communist Party...
and called it "our version of a Tony Scott
Tony Scott
Anthony D. L. "Tony" Scott is an English film director. His films include Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, The Taking of Pelham 123, and Unstoppable...
/Jason Bourne
Jason Bourne
Jason Charles Bourne is a fictional character and the main protagonist in the novels of Robert Ludlum and subsequent film adaptations. He first appeared in the novel The Bourne Identity...
kind of movie, without the explosions." Joel Coen said they intended to create a spy movie because "we hadn't done one before," but he feels the final result was more of a character-driven movie than a spy story. Joel also said Burn After Reading was not meant to be a comment or satire on Washington D.C.
Parts of the Burn screenplay were written while the Coens were also writing their adaptation of No Country for Old Men. The Coens created characters with actors George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Richard Jenkins in mind for the parts, and the script derived from the brothers' desire to include them in a "fun story." Ethan Coen said Pitt's character was partially inspired by a botched hair coloring job from a commercial the actor filmed. Tilda Swinton, who was cast later than the other actors, was the only major actor whose character was not written specifically for her. The Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule among the A-list cast.
Production Weekly, an online entertainment industry magazine, falsely reported in October 2006 that Burn After Reading was a loose adaptation of Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence, a memoir by former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence
Director of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield M. Turner is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy....
. Although both stories involve the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
and derive their titles from the top secret classification term, the Coen brothers script has nothing to do with the Turner book; nevertheless, the rumor was not clarified until a Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
article more than one year later.
Principal filming took place around Brooklyn Heights, as the Coens wanted to stay in New York City to be with their families. Other scenes were filmed at Paramus, New Jersey
Paramus, New Jersey
Paramus is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough population was 26,342. A suburb of New York City, Paramus is located between 15–20 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan and approximately west of Upper Manhattan.Paramus is one of...
, Westchester County, New York
Westchester County, New York
Westchester County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. Westchester covers an area of and has a population of 949,113 according to the 2010 Census, residing in 45 municipalities...
and Washington, D.C., particularly in the Georgetown
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Georgetown is a neighborhood located in northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River. Founded in 1751, the port of Georgetown predated the establishment of the federal district and the City of Washington by 40 years...
neighborhood. Filming began on August 27, 2007 and was completed on October 30, 2007. John Malkovich, appearing in his first Coen brothers film, said of the shooting, "The Coens are very delightful: smart, funny, very specific about what they want but not overly controlling, as some people can be." The film opened the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
in August 2008.
The Coen brothers said idiocy was a major central theme of Burn After Reading; Joel Coen said he and his brother have "a long history of writing parts for idiotic characters" and described Clooney and Pitt's characters as "dueling idiots." Burn After Reading is the third Coen brothers film for Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and Charles Durning. Set in 1937 rural Mississippi during the Great Depression, the film's story is a modern satire loosely...
and Intolerable Cruelty
Intolerable Cruelty
Intolerable Cruelty is a 2003 romantic comedy film directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and starring Academy Award winners George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Geoffrey Rush and Billy Bob Thornton with Cedric the Entertainer...
), who acknowledged that he usually plays a fool in their movies: "I've done three films with them and they call it my trilogy of idiots." Joel said after the last scene was shot, "George said: 'OK, I’ve played my last idiot!' So I guess he won’t be working with us again."
Pitt, who plays a particularly unintelligent character, said of his role, "After reading the part, which they said was hand-written for myself, I was not sure if I should be flattered or insulted." Pitt also said when he was shown the script, he told the Coens he did not know how to play the part because the character was such an idiot: "There was a pause, and then Joel goes...'You'll be fine'."
During a fall movie preview, Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
wrote that Malkovich "easily racks up the most laughs" among the cast as the foul-mouthed and short-tempered ex-CIA man. The first scene Malkovich performed was a phone call in which he shouts several obscenities at Pitt and McDormand. But Malkovich could not be on the sound stage
Sound stage
In common usage, a sound stage is a soundproof, hangar-like structure, building, or room, used for the production of theatrical filmmaking and television production, usually located on a secure movie studio property.-Overview:...
for the call because he was rehearsing a play, so he called in the lines from his apartment in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. Regarding the scene, Malkovich said, "It was really late at night and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. God knows what the neighbors thought." Swinton plays Malkovich's wife who engages in an affair
Extramarital sex
Extramarital sex occurs when a married person engages in sexual activity with someone other than his or her marriage partner.Where extramarital sexual relations breach a sexual norm it may also be referred to as adultery, fornication, philandery, or infidelity...
with Clooney, although the two characters do not get along well. Clooney's and Swinton's characters also had a poor relationship in their previous film together, Michael Clayton
Michael Clayton (film)
Michael Clayton is a 2007 American drama film written and directed by Tony Gilroy, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack...
, prompting Clooney to say to Swinton at the end of a shoot, "Well, maybe one day we'll get to make a film together when we say one nice thing to each other." Swinton said of the dynamic, "I'm very happy to shout at him on screen. It's great fun."
Swinton described Burn After Reading as "a kind of monster caper movie," and said of the characters, "All of us are monsters – like, true monsters. It’s ridiculous." She also said, "I think there is something random at the heart of this one. On the one hand, it really is bleak and scary. On the other, it is really funny. ... It's the whatever-ness of it. You feel that at any minute of any day in any town, this could happen." Malkovich said of the characters, "No one in this film is very good. They're either slightly emotional or mentally defective. Quirky, self-aggrandizing, scheming." Pitt said the cast did little ad-libbing because the script was so tightly written and wove so many overlapping stories together. Veteran actor Richard Jenkins
Richard Jenkins
Richard Dale Jenkins is an American stage, film, and television actor. After beginning his career in theatre, Jenkins made his film debut in 1974, and appeared in supporting roles in numerous film productions in the 1980s and the 1990s. His breakthrough came in the 2000s for playing the deceased...
of The Witches of Eastwick
The Witches of Eastwick (film)
The Witches of Eastwick is a 1987 American horror comedy based on John Updike's novel of the same name. Directed by George Miller, the film stars Jack Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne, alongside Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the eponymous witches...
said the Coen brothers asked him if he could lose weight for his role as the gym manager, to which Jenkins jokingly replied, "I'm a 60-year-old man, not Brad Pitt. My body isn't going to change."
Joel Coen said the sex machine built by Clooney's character was inspired by a machine he once saw a key grip
Key grip
In the United States and many parts of the world in film-making, the key grip is the head of the grip department and chief rigging technician on the set. Using light, he or she is in charge of the shadows of light, the movement of the camera, the placing of cameras on any stationary, moving,...
build, and by another machine he saw in the Museum of Sex
Museum of Sex
The Museum of Sex, also known as MoSex, is a sex museum located at 233 Fifth Avenue near 27th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It opened on October 5, 2002.-History:...
in New York City.
Critical reception
Reviews for the film were mostly positive, earning a 78% "Certified Fresh" rating at Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
based on 213 reviews as of November 26, 2009. The film fared well but not as well among the "Top Critics," earning a 61%, another "Certified Fresh" rating, out of 18 reviews. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, which gave the movie four out of five stars, compared it to Coen films Raising Arizona
Raising Arizona
Raising Arizona is a 1987 comedy film directed by the Coen Brothers and starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand and Randall "Tex" Cobb. Not a blockbuster at the time of its release, it has since achieved cult status...
and Fargo
Fargo (film)
Fargo is a 1996 American dark comedy-crime film produced, directed and written by brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Frances McDormand as a pregnant police chief who investigates a series of homicides, William H...
in its "savagely comic taste for creative violence and a slightly mocking eye for detail." The review said the attention to detail was so impeccable that "the Coens can even raise a laugh with something as simple as a well-placed photograph of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
," and complimented Carter Burwell
Carter Burwell
Carter Benedict Burwell is an American composer of film scores.-Life and career:Burwell was born in New York City, the son of Natalie , a math teacher, and Charles Burwell, who founded Thaibok Fabrics, Ltd...
's musical score, which it described as "the most paranoid piece of film music since Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones
Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...
's neurotic soundtrack for The Anderson Tapes
The Anderson Tapes
The Anderson Tapes is a 1971 crime film. It was directed by Sidney Lumet and stars Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin Balsam, and comedian Alan King. The screenplay was written by Frank Pierson, based upon a best-selling 1970 novel of the same name by Lawrence Sanders...
." Andrew Pulver, film reviewer for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called the movie "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn't be in bigger contrast to the Coens' last film, the bloodsoaked, brooding No Country for Old Men
No Country for Old Men (film)
No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American crime thriller directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. The film was adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name...
." Pulver, who also gave Burn After Reading four out of five stars, said it "may also go down as arguably the Coens' happiest engagement with the demands of the Hollywood A-list
A-list
A-list is a term that alludes to major movie stars, or the most bankable in the Hollywood film industry.The A-list is part of a larger guide called The Hot List that has become an industry-standard guide in Hollywood...
." Pulver said Brad Pitt had some of the funniest moments and that compared to the other Coen brothers movies, Burn After Reading most resembles Intolerable Cruelty. The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
reviewer Kirk Honeycutt complimented the actors for making fun of their screen personae, and said the Coen brothers "have taken some of cinema's top and most expensive actors and chucked them into Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
roles in a thriller." Honeycutt also said "it takes awhile to adjust to the rhythms and subversive humor of Burn because this is really an anti-spy thriller in which nothing is at stake, no one acts with intelligence and everything ends badly."
Todd McCarthy, of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine, wrote a strongly negative review of Burn After Reading, which he said "tries to mate sex farce with a satire of a paranoid political thriller, with arch and ungainly results." McCarthy said the talented cast was forced to act like cartoon characters, described Carter Burwell's score as "uncustomarily overbearing" and said the dialogue is "dialed up to an almost grotesquely exaggerated extent, making for a film that feels misjudged from the opening scene and thereafter only occasionally hits the right note." Time film critic Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
said he did not understand what the Coen brothers were attempting with the film, and after describing the plot, wrote, "I have the sinking feeling I've made Burn After Reading sound funnier than it is. The movie's glacial affectlessness, its remove from all these subpar schemers, left me cold and perplexed." Corliss complimented Richard Jenkins and J.K. Simmons for their brief supporting roles. David Denby of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
said the movie had several funny scenes, but they "are stifled by a farce plot so bleak and unfunny that it freezes your responses after about forty-five minutes." Denby also criticized the pattern of violence in the movie, in which innocent people die quickly and the guilty go unpunished. "These people don’t mean much to [the Coen brothers]; it’s hardly a surprise that they don’t mean much to us, either. ... Even black comedy requires that the filmmakers love someone, and the mock cruelties in Burn After Reading come off as a case of terminal misanthropy."
Leah Rozen, of People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
magazine, said the characters' "unrelenting dumbness and dim-witted behavior is at first amusing and enjoyable but eventually grows wearing." But Rozen said the performances are a redeeming factor, especially that of Pitt, who she described as a standout who "manages simultaneously to be delightfully broad and smartly nuanced."
Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
noticed its "particularly bitter image of the U.S. The alliance of political incompetence (the CIA), the cult of appearance (the gym club) and vulgar stupidity (everyone) is the target of a settling of scores" where the comedy "sprouts from a well of bitterness."
The movie was nominated at the 2009 Golden Globe awards for Best Comedy or Musical and for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy or Musical (Frances McDormand). The National Board of Review named Burn After Reading in their list of the Top 10 Movies of 2008. Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
named it the second best film of 2008, Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine named it the third best film of 2008, and Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
named it the seventh best film of 2008.
Box office
In its opening weekend, the film grossed $19.1 million in 2,651 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking number one at the box office. As of July, 2009, it has grossed $60.3 million in the United States and Canada and $100.8 million in other countries adding up to $161.1 million worldwide gross.Home video
Burn After Reading was released on DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
on December 21, 2008, on Region 1. The Region 2 version was released on February 9, 2009.
External links
- Burn After Reading at Working Title FilmsWorking Title FilmsWorking Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, UK. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions, including films starring comic actor Rowan Atkinson...