20 Things You Didn't Know About O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Delmar actor Tim Blake Nelson was not content just spending his days shooting for the Coens' reimagining of one literary classic. He also pulled double duty by spending the nights working on his own.

While acting in The Thin Red Line, Nelson, who had one previous feature directing credit, was approached to helm O, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello set around a modern high school basketball team.

Initially reluctant, Nelson described himself as concerned by "this ruining of classic texts by teening them down". Nevertheless, he was convinced to take on the project by the way that a seeming epidemic of school shootings had made the American high school a conceivable environment for a violent tragedy.

During the shoot for O in spring of 1999, Nelson was cast in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, meaning that he had to edit his own update of a literary classic whilst also working on the Coens'.

O was due for release a year before O Brother, but proved a victim of the very thematic topicality that had attracted Nelson to the project. The 1999 Columbine Massacre meant that the film's producers at Miramax were no longer comfortable releasing a film about high school murder.

It eventually came out the summer after O Brother. Nelson did not, however, receive any positive knock-on effect of his association with that success when it came to marketing O, which was a box office disappointment.