Ethan Coen’s new naughty comedy script is missing something.

There’s an interesting omission in today’s “Scriptland” feature by Jay Fernandez in which he provides a lot of details about a new screenplay written by Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke. The script, titled Drive-Away Dykes certainly sounds like a staple of the Coen variety: offbeat characters, intriguing premise, a throwback to a different cinematic era, and more than a dollop of kinky sex.

But it seems to me that the article misses the most glaringly obvious question: where’s Joel?

The Coen brothers have collaborated on a good 90% of their cinematic output for more than two decades, creating one of the longest-lasting movie partnerships that I can recall – let alone one in which they both write, direct and just happen to be brothers.

So to write an entire article heralding the creation of a typically Coen-like script without ever mentioning reasons why Joel may or may not be involved really seems like a missed opportunity on Fernandez’s part. Are the brothers on the outs? Taking time apart? Is Tricia Cooke the Yoko Ono of our cinematic generation?