Coen brothers

The Coen Brothers (Ethan Coen, left, and Joel Coen)
The Coen Brothers at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
Occupation(s)	Directors, screenwriters, producers, film editors
Years active	1980s—present
Spouse(s)	Frances McDormand (Joel) Tricia Cooke (Ethan)
Awards	Golden Palm - Cannes Film Festival 1991 Barton Fink (Joel and Ethan Coen) Best Director Award - Cannes Film Festival 1991 Barton Fink (Joel Coen) 1996 Fargo (Joel Coen) 2001 The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen)

Joel and Ethan Coen, known as The Coen Brothers, are Oscar-winning American filmmakers. For more than 20 years, the pair have written and directed numerous successful films, ranging from screwball comedies (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy) to film noir (Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There), to movies where those two genres blur together (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink). The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays, while sharing film credits for editor under the alias "Roderick Jaynes". They are known in the film business as "the two-headed director", as they share such a similar vision of what their films are to be that actors say that they can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer.

Biography

Early years and formal education

Joel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born September 21, 1957) grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their parents, Edward and Rena Coen, were professors; their father specializing in economics at the University of Minnesota and their mother in art history at St. Cloud State University.

When they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super-8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television with a neighborhood kid, Mark Zimering (a.k.a. Zeimers), as the star. Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear.

Both of the Coen brothers graduated from Simon's Rock Early College (now Bard College at Simon's Rock) in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Joel then spent four years in the undergraduate film program at New York University where he made a 30-minute thesis film called Soundings. The film depicted a woman engaged in sex with her deaf boyfriend while verbally fantasizing about having sex with her boyfriend's best friend, who is listening in the next room. Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy in 1979. His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, “Two Views of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy.”

The 1980s

After graduating from NYU, Joel worked as a production assistant on a variety of industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi, who was looking for an assistant editor on his first feature film, The Evil Dead (1981).

In 1984 the brothers wrote and directed their first film together, Blood Simple. Set in Texas, the film tells the tale of a shifty, sleazy bar owner who hires a private detective to kill his wife and her lover. Within this film are considerable elements that point toward their future direction, i.e. their own subverted homages to genre movies (in this case noir and horror), the clever plot twists layered over a simplistic story, their darkly inventive and twisted sense of humour, and their mastery of atmosphere. Also, the film starred Frances McDormand, who would go on to feature in many of the Coen brothers' films (and later marry Joel Coen). Upon release, the film received much praise, especially amongst the more left-field audience, and won awards for Joel's direction at both the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards.

The next Coen Brothers project to hit the big screen was 1985's Crimewave, directed by Sam Raimi. The film was written by the brothers and Sam Raimi, with whom Joel had worked on The Evil Dead.

The next film written and directed by the brothers was released in 1987 with the title Raising Arizona. The film is the story of an unlikely married couple, Hi and Ed (an ex-convict and an ex-cop played by Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter), who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. Fortune smiles on them when a local furniture tycoon appears on television with his five newly born quintuplets that he jokes "are more than we can handle." Seeing this as a sign from God and an opportunity to redress the natural balance, Hi and Ed steal one of the quintuplets and start to bring up the child as their own. Raising Arizona was much more accessible to the mass market with its innocence and wacky slapstick easing the action along amongst some dark humor.

The 1990s

Miller's Crossing was released in 1990, a straight-ahead homage to the gangster movie genre. Starring Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne and future Coen brothers staple John Turturro, the film is set during the prohibition era of the 1930s and tells the tale of feuding mobs and gangster capers. The film was praised for its dialogue and in-depth characterization. Typical of the brothers' oeuvre are the touches of dark humor and plot twists that were already becoming recurring features of their work.

The Coen Brothers' reputation was seemingly enhanced with every subsequent release, but it took a massive leap forward with their next movie, 1991's visually stunning Barton Fink. Barton Fink is set in 1941 and is the story of a New York playwright (the eponymous Barton Fink) who moves to Los Angeles to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel apartment to commence the writing but all too soon gets writer's block and allows himself to receive some inspiration from the amiable man in the room next door together with some industry associates. Inspiration comes from the strangest places and the hotel is definitely unusual and a magnet for the bizarre. Barton Fink was an unlikely commercial success, but even more so a critical success, garnering Oscar nominations plus winning three major awards at Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm). Barton Fink was the first of the brothers' films to use Director of Photography Roger Deakins, a key figure in the brothers' circle over the following 15 years.

In 1994, with their stock at an all-time high, the brothers were able to attempt their first big-budget feature film The Hudsucker Proxy (co-written with Sam Raimi). The story revolves around a man who is made the head of a massive corporation with the expectation that he will ruin the company (so that the board can buy it for next to nothing); instead he ends up inventing the hula hoop and becomes both a success and a "personality" overnight. The critics were, for once, lukewarm about the film, while Roger Deakins was universally praised for his skill as Director of Photography. The film was generally criticized for being "a pastiche too far." Most critics viewed the film as having nothing new to say due to its constant references and homages to classic movies of the 1930s and '40s. Many were disappointed by the Coens' first attempt at the big league. More significantly the film proved to be a massive commercial failure, making back only $3 million of its $25 million budget.

Following the commercial failure of The Hudsucker Proxy, the brothers returned to more familiar ground in 1996 with the low-budget noir thriller Fargo. Set in the Coen Brothers' home state of Minnesota, the movie tells the tale of Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), a man with a money problem, who works in his father-in-law's car showroom. Jerry is anxious to get hold of some money to move up in the world and hatches a plan to have his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law will pay the ransom that he can split with the kidnappers. Inevitably his best laid plans go wrong when the bungling kidnappers deviate from the agreed non-violent plan and local cop Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) starts to investigate the whole affair. A critical and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue and McDormand's performance, the film received several awards including a BAFTA Award and Cannes award for direction and two Oscars, one for best screenplay and a best Actress Oscar for McDormand.

The Coens' next film would build upon this success and in 1998 The Big Lebowski was released. With its story about "The Dude" an LA slacker (played by Jeff Bridges), used as an unwitting pawn in a fake kidnapping plot with his bowling buddies (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman). The Coens had hit on a film that would provide a mainstream accessibility that they hadn't really enjoyed since Raising Arizona. Despite a lukewarm reception from the critics at the time and only moderate commercial success, the film is now regarded as a cult classic and is consistently rated in polls as one of the best films of the 1990s.

Year 2000 and beyond

Buoyed by the success of both Fargo and Lebowski. The Coen Brothers' next film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) was yet another critical success. Based loosely on Homer's "Odyssey" (complete with a cyclops, sirens et al.) the story is set along the Mississippi River in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts that have absconded from a chain gang, and who journey home in an attempt to recover the loot from a bank heist that the leader has buried. But they have no idea what the journey is that they are undertaking. The film also highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney who starred as the oddball lead character of Ulysses Everett McGill (ably assisted by his sidekick, the now ubiquitous John Turturro). The film's Bluegrass soundtrack, offbeat humour and, yet again, stunning cinematography, meant it was a critical and commercial hit. The soundtrack CD became even more successful than the film, spawning a concert, a concert DVD of its own (Down from the Mountain) and coinciding with a resurgence in interest in American folk music.

The Coen brothers changed the pace in 2001 with another noirish thriller, The Man Who Wasn't There. Set in late 1940s California, the film tells the tale of a laconic chain smoking barber (played by Billy Bob Thornton), who in an effort to get some money together to invest in a dry cleaning business (where he really can clean up) decides to blackmail his wife's boss (who is also her lover). Unusual for a contemporary film, it was shot entirely in crisp Black and White. The film's twists and turns dark humour were typical of Coen films, but here the slow deliberate build of the thriller, its dead end roads and black and white look meant that the film was more for the purists rather than for the casual audience.

Intolerable Cruelty, arguably the Coens' most mainstream release, was released in 2003 and stared Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The film was a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s with a story based around Miles Massey, a hot shot divorce lawyer, and a beautiful divorcee who Massey had managed to stop getting any money from her divorce. She sets out on a course to get even with him whilst he becomes smitten with her. Intolerable Cruelty divided the critics, some applauding the romantic screwball comedy elements of the movie, others enquiring as to why the Coens would wish to supply us with their take on this genre. Either way, the general feeling was that the film was not entirely satisfying, and the film proved to be only a moderate commercial success.

In 2004, the Coen Brothers released The Ladykillers, a remake of the Ealing Studios classic. The story revolves around a professor who puts together a team to rob a casino. They rent a room in an elderly woman's house to execute the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, however, the gang decides to murder her to ensure her silence. This is easier said than done. The Coens received some of the most lukewarm reviews of their career with this movie; much criticism surmised that while the Coens have managed to make films in which a genre can be homaged or pastiched successfully, a relatively faithful reworking of an individual classic did not give them enough creative leeway to place a complete trademark touch on their work.

The Coens' latest movie No Country for Old Men was released in November 2007. Based on the 2005 novel by the author Cormac McCarthy, the film tells the tale of a man named Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) living on the Texas / Mexico border who stumbles upon two million dollars in drug money that he decides to pocket. He then has to go on the run to avoid those looking to recover the money, including a sinister killer (Javier Bardem) who confounds both Llewelyn and the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones). This plot line is a return to the dark, noir themes which have provided the Coens with some of their most successful material, but also marks a notable departure, including a less pronounced comedic element, and minimal use of music. The film has already received much critical praise on its premiere at Cannes.

Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984; they have an adopted baby named Pedro. Ethan is married to film editor Tricia Cooke. They all live in New York City.

Stylistic devices

Owing a heavy debt to film noir and other film styles of the past, the Coen brothers' films combine dry humor with sharp irony and shocking visuals, most often in moving camera shots. The Coens prefer not to put the opening credits at the very beginning of the film. The Coens are also amongst the few contemporary filmmakers who have shown a great affection for the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and have incorporated their influences with varying degrees of subtlety, ranging from entire movies in the screwball mode like The Hudsucker Proxy and Intolerable Cruelty to occasional fast-talking wacky characters like Steve Buscemi's cameo in Miller's Crossing. Their style of characterisation creates a world in which even characters with small speaking parts seem to have exaggerated traits or characteristics. This can be attributed to the settings of many of the films (for example the weird and wonderful characters in The Big Lebowski do not seem out of place in the many niche communities of LA).

Dialogue

Oscar winners for best screenplay (Fargo), the Coen brothers are known for the dialogue in their films. Sometimes sparse (The Man Who Wasn't There; Fargo; No Country for Old Men), sometimes unusually loquacious (The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona), their scripts typically feature a combination of dry wit, exaggerated language, and glaring irony. Besides Fargo, several of their scripts have been nominated for awards (The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother...).

Film noir and misunderstanding

In style and substance, Coen brothers movies show a heavy debt to the crime genre of film noir. While rarely admitting any influences, the filmmakers both freely acknowledge the impact that classic noir novelists have had on their darker films. In particular, Miller's Crossing is based on the works of Dashiell Hammett, particularly The Glass Key and Red Harvest, Big Lebowski on Raymond Chandler and The Man Who Wasn't There on James M. Cain - making up what is known as their Noir Trilogy.

The films also feature stark contrast in lighting and the typical theme of people being in over their heads working on a scheme. Their movies often deal with kidnapping. A near universal plot device is misunderstanding: misunderstanding over who killed Rug Daniels and who took his hair causes friction between different mobs in Miller's Crossing; misunderstanding of Norville's blueprint causes him some grief later in The Hudsucker Proxy; The Big Lebowski begins with a soiled rug caused by a case of mistaken identity; and in Blood Simple, misunderstanding is the driving force behind the entire plot past the thirty-minute mark. The Coen brothers' film The Man Who Wasn't There pays homage to film noir, with a plot that seems an update/twist of The Postman Always Rings Twice. The film is in black and white and has been lauded by various critics for both its cinematography and its sharply drawn, fairly sympathetic characters, though many critics take issue with the sharp turn in plot towards the end. The Coens have described these twists as an attempt to mimic the unexpected third acts of Cain's novels as well.

Depictions of America

The various aspects that make the character of a city, state or region of America are an integral component in several Coen brothers films. Raising Arizona strongly features the distinctive Arizona landscape, and some of the movie's characters are highly exaggerated stereotypes of some people's notions of Arizonans; for instance, Tempe is a trailer park in the middle of the desert. Similarly, in Fargo the landscape and accents of North Dakota and Minnesota are an essential component of the film. The Big Lebowski is the Coens' Los Angeles film, with the Dude and other characters emblematic of the city's eclectic population. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is distinctly Southern, as it was filmed in rural Mississippi, most of the characters speak with pronounced Southern accents, and the soundtrack is made up of bluegrass songs. Barton Fink is in some respects a satire on another famous area of Los Angeles, Hollywood, as The Hudsucker Proxy does for New York.

In addition, the Coens often set their movies in times of American crises: Miller's Crossing during prohibition, Barton Fink in the time around the attack on Pearl Harbor, The Big Lebowski during the 1991 Gulf War, and O Brother Where Art Thou? during the Great Depression. World War II also is mentioned as an important plot point in The Man Who Wasn't There, and Hi blames his recidivism on Reagan's presidency in Raising Arizona. The Hudsucker Proxy is set at the turn of 1958/59, the period that included Sputnik and the consequent escalation of the Cold War.

The Coen Brothers most recent film, No Country for Old Men, portrays an America that the director-writing duo have yet to experiment with in their prolific careers. Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men is a starkly original, albeit bleak, illustration of the reality of evil throughout the history of mankind. Set in the West, the region that is most recognizingly symbolic of America and the liberty it champions, the Coens delve into the story of a man, Llewelyn Moss, who unsuspectingly walks into a scene of massacre: a drug deal that ended in tragedy. In this film, America is meant to represent society as a whole; this world is one of tragedy and, at times, incomprehensible evil. Is there a way to even affect the fight between good and evil? Does resistance against evil even make an impact upon these broken times? At once examining the nature of absolute truth and nihilistic philosophy, the Coen Brothers adaptation of McCarthy's acclaimed novel paints an America - and ultimately, a global milieu - that is struggling to grasp the nature of evil and the will for hope.

Money

In most of Coens' films money is involved. In Fargo, money was the reason all the events throughout the film began. O Brother, Where Art Thou consists of three escaped convicts trying to find a hidden treasure. In The Man Who Wasn't There, the main character blackmailed his wife's boss to obtain money, but everything went disastrous. The story of No Country for Old Men relates with drug money. And the mass murder that occurred was all for the hunt for money.

Violence

The majority of the Coens' films are quite violent. In every one of their films, there is at least one death and, in many cases, multiple deaths. In The Hudsucker Proxy, the plot is unleashed by the suicide of Waring Hudsucker, and in The Ladykillers all of the main characters die in an attempt to dispose of an old woman. In some of their more graphic films, e.g., Fargo, most of the main characters die or are assaulted, all of which is portrayed onscreen; in one particularly graphic scene in Fargo, Steve Buscemi's body is processed through a wood chipper.

The majority of the violence in their films falls under the category of dark humor. One of the most comic scenes in The Big Lebowski is when Walter, The Dude and Donny fight the Nihilists. The Coens always use violence to drive the plot forward; for example, in Fargo Carl Showalters' assault by Shep Proudfoot drives Carl to call Jerry and tell him to deliver the money.

Overall, acts of violence are never wasted in a Coen brothers' film, and often these scenes are written into the script for comic effect or to advance the script.

Techniques

Visually, the Coens favor moving camera shots, especially tracking shots (the camera is placed on a track, or dolly, or the use of a Steadicam is employed. The camera then follows and moves with the subject of the shot) and crane shots; even when the camera is "static" it is often still drifting slightly. Their films are also distinguished by cinematic visual flourishes that mark turning points. Scenes that emphasise perspective or the interplay of shadow and light adorn many of the films: the rack of bowling shoes in the "Gutterballs" scene from The Big Lebowski, the boardroom table and the Hudsucker building in The Hudsucker Proxy, the night scene with "Wheezy Joe" in Intolerable Cruelty are a few examples.

The "Raimi cam" rush or speed-ramp

Occasionally in their tracking shots they "rush" the camera forward, as in the scene in Raising Arizona where Nathan Jr. is discovered missing by his mother; the Coen brothers dubbed the rush forward the "Raimi cam" in tribute to their longtime friend and director Sam Raimi, who used rushes extensively in Evil Dead (which Joel Coen helped edit). The Hudsucker Proxy features two consecutive rushes when Norville shows Mussburger's secretary the Blue Letter: first on the mouth of the lady screaming on the ladder, and then on Norville reacting to the scream.

Lenses

The Coen brothers' earlier films (with the exception of Miller's Crossing) made extensive use of wide-angle lenses, which are the preferred lenses of their first cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld. When Sonnenfeld left to pursue a directing career he was replaced by Roger Deakins, who has been trying to wean the Coens off these lenses since although wide angle lenses allow great depth of field, they cause considerable distortion in the apparent size of objects based on how far they are from the camera. Deakins has been working toward longer lenses, which appear to shorten the distance between objects but have shallower depth of field.

Camera angles

The Coen brothers use camera angles that sometimes hide rather than reveal information. Examples include in Fargo when Jean Lundegaard hides in the shower, in Miller's Crossing when Tom goes into his room after Leo leaves (Verna is on the bed behind him), and in Blood Simple when Abby is sitting up in bed with Ray and the Volkswagen pulls up outside her window.

Disguised cuts

They also frequently "hide" their cuts in close-ups on an object, in the style of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope: one obvious occurrence in Fargo is when Carl bangs on the television to get it to work, and when the picture comes in it is a cut to Marge's television as seen from her bed; a similar cut in Miller's Crossing happens when the close up of the window at Bernie's house pans away to show a man dead on the floor at another; in The Hudsucker Proxy when Amy Archer is cheering "Go Eagles!" after Norville hires her, the film cuts to her showing the same cheer to her coworker at the newspaper; and in Blood Simple when the "close-up" of the ceiling fan over Marty's head at the bar turns out to be from Abby's point of view on the couch at Ray's house. A similar technique is used to integrate the background music into the action. Some examples of this can be seen in The Big Lebowski where the song Tumbling Tumbleweed, which accompanies the introductory monologue, is then continued in muzak form in the supermarket scene where the monologue ends. In the same film, the background music playing as the main character confronts the private detective following him (played by Jon Polito), is playing on the detective's car radio.

Storyboarding

The Coen brothers storyboard their films completely before filming (unlike other directors, who only storyboard complex shots such as action sequences). They state that it helps them to get the size of budget they want, because they can show how most of the money will be used.

Color correction

O Brother, Where Art Thou? was the first film to be fully color-corrected from start to finish with digital techniques. The brothers wanted the scenery to reflect the "dust-bowl" atmosphere of the Depression and, since the actual landscape for many of the scenes was much lusher and greener than the desired effect, this required extensive color correction throughout the film, achieved with the use of computers.

Collaborators

See also: List of frequent Coen Brothers' collaborators

The Coens used cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld through Miller's Crossing until Sonnenfeld left to pursue his own directing career, including such films as The Addams Family, Get Shorty, and Men in Black. Roger A. Deakins has been the Coen brothers' cinematographer since Sonnenfeld's departure (see List of noted film director and cinematographer collaborations). However for their next film Burn After Reading they will use Emmanuel Lubezki as their cinematographer.

Sam Raimi also helped write The Hudsucker Proxy, which the Coen brothers directed; and the Coen brothers helped write Crimewave, which Raimi directed. Raimi took tips about filming A Simple Plan from the Coen brothers, who had recently finished Fargo (both films are set in blindingly white snow, which reflects a lot of light and can make metering for a correct exposure tricky). Raimi has cameos in Miller's Crossing and The Hudsucker Proxy. They met when Joel Coen was hired as one of the editors of The Evil Dead.

William Preston Robertson is an old friend of the Coens who helped them with re-shoots on Blood Simple and provided the voice of the radio evangelist. He is listed in the credits as the "Rev. William Preston Robertson." He has provided vocal talents on most of the Coens' films up to and including The Big Lebowski. He also wrote The Making of The Big Lebowski with Tricia Cooke.

The Coen brothers have a number of actors whom they frequently cast, including John Turturro, Michael Badalucco, Holly Hunter, Steve Buscemi, Frances McDormand, John Goodman, Jon Polito, and Stephen Root, each of whom has appeared in at least three Coen productions. They are planning two more films with George Clooney, Burn After Reading and Hail Caesar, the latter of which will complete the Coen Brother's "Idiot Trilogy" which began with O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty .

All of their films have been scored by Carter Burwell, although T-Bone Burnett produced much of the traditional music in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Ladykillers. Skip Lievsay handles the post-production sound work for all of their films.

Filmography

• Blood Simple (1984)
• Raising Arizona (1987)
• Miller's Crossing (1990)
• Barton Fink (1991)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
• Fargo (1996)
• The Big Lebowski (1998)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
• The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
• Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
• The Ladykillers (2004)
• No Country for Old Men (2007)
• Burn After Reading (2008)
• A Serious Man (TBA)

Other works

• Crimewave - 1985 film written by the Coen Brothers and Sam Raimi, directed by Sam Raimi
• Paris, je t'aime (2006) - segment: "Tuileries"
• Romance & Cigarettes - 2006 film produced by the Coen Brothers and written and directed by John Turturro
• Gates of Eden - a collection of short stories written by Ethan Coen
• Bad Santa - This film with Billy Bob Thornton was produced by the Coen Brothers.
• Suburbicon - George Clooney will be directing a script written by the Coen Brothers. The Coens will also be producing.

External links

• Joel Coen at IMDb
• Ethan Coen at IMDb
• Joel and Ethan Coen Bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
• Coenesque: The Films of the Coen Brothers
• Extensive Coen Brothers Biography and Filmography
• It's a movie-making trend: Brothers share directing duties, by James Hebert (San Diego Union-Tribune)
• Senses of Cinema, essay on the brothers (with film stills)
• The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers movie, An informative humor book by the Coens' friend William Preston Robertson.