Keyes' Cruel Moment

"I make tiny moments special" is the catch phrase of big, scary-looking Irwin Keyes, who's often cast, in his words, as "monsters, cavemen, hitmen, many varieties of gangsters, thugs, bodyguards, doorkeepers, hunchbacks, Frankenstein."

In the Coen Brothers' new "Intolerable Cruelty," Keyes plays another hitman, but with the kind of twist that's already garnering raves as a woodchipper-worthy classic Coen moment. As "Wheezy Joe," an asthmatic hit man who's hired first by George Clooney's character, then by Catherine Zeta-Jones' character to kill Clooney, Keyes gets a climactic moment near film's end which, according to his manager, Phil Brock, makes "people sort of gasp, and then they start laughing."

Keyes said working with Coens was a little disorienting: "One Coen brother would walk up and say in one ear, 'Do this, don't do that,' and a couple minutes later the other brother would come up and whisper in the other ear, 'Don't do this, do that.' I had to process all that."

You better not take his word for it, though. Keyes learned not to believe showbiz rumors when, decades ago, he had a few lines opposite Woody Allen in "Stardust Memories." He'd heard that the Woodman cut anyone who looked him in the eye, so at first Keyes delivered his dialogue to the star's belly. Woody cut the scene and set him straight.