Coen Brothers - "You Know, For Kids!" the movies of the Coen brothers

In the July 2005 issue of Empire magazine published the results of their "20 Greatest Directors of All Time" reader poll. The brothers Coen came in at a respectable 13th place. Below, in italics, follows their one page write up which, hopeully they won't mind me copying so that you can all read it...

It was as dreamy teenagers, during one soporific Minnesota summer in the '60's, that Joel and Ethan Coen decided they should make a film. They cut lawns to afford a Super-8 camera, then sat down to decide what to shoot - in the end opting to film the movie that was playing on the family TV. Two brothers from smalltown America playing with cameras, making a film of a film: a cute family snapshot, but also the crystallisation of what would become practically a modus operandi.
Raised far from the studio sound stages of Hollywood or New York's artistic set, the Coens are all Minnesotan. How else to account for their peculiar, restless imagination than a childhood spent in a cultural backwater? Unschooled in filmmaking dogma, the brothers were nontheless immersed in filmic tradition, lapping up noir whodunnits, Ealing comedies and the '40's satires of Preston Sturges. Thier films, which reverentially toy with these conventions , are (admits Ethan) "about other movies". Blood Simple, their debut, betrayed a love affair with noir; an affair taken to obsessional extremes with The Man Who Wasn't There. The Hudsucker Proxy's feel-good absurdisms concealed a film about the Hollywood studio system. Barton Fink actually took place in Tinseltown, and The Ladykillers was a straight-out remake of the earlier classic.
Since their formative, for-fun Super-8 experience, the Coens have never stopped playing with cameras. All thier films are comedies of a sort, usually of a deliciously dark - and frequently surreal - nature. "We're not trying to educate the masses," they once agreed, and each movie bulges with a sense of joy at the possibilities of life through a lens. The mercurial eye of thier "self-concious camera" doesn't merely observe a scene, but participates - the tracking shot along the bar in Blood Simple that hops over a laid-out drunk; the plentiful point-of-view angles in Raising Arizona. Their uninhibited camerawork and inventive editing is as integral to their work as any one-liner or signt gag.
Despite the fact that Joel is credited as the director, the brothers act as one, editing (albeit under the alias Roderick Jaynes), producing and writing. And what writing it is, breathing life into a carnival of eclectic characters cast somehwere between the pitifully mundane and the hilariously grotesque - even down to the most marginal of characters. Typically inhabited by a stock company of some of the most creative character actors around, vivid cameos are another Coens hallmark (John Turturro's Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski, John Goodman's Big Dan Teague in O, Brother... et al). And filling their mouths is the arch, cartwheeling dialogue that betrays the brothers' literary loves - pulp authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammett and Elmore Leonard among them.
Steve O'Hagan

The Coen Brothers have started up a new Production Company called The KL Line, of which John Cameron is the President.

Joel and Ethan wrote a 1985, Sam Raimi helmed, movie, Crimewave.

Both have performed editing duties on five of their films (Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) under the pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes.

Joel was assistant editor on the Sam Raimi horror flick, The Evil Dead (1982) and assistant editor of Fear No Evil (1982).

Joel is married to Frances McDormand. They married in 1984. They also adopted a child named Pedro.

Ethan is married to Tricia Cooke, editor of many of the Coen's movies.

Ethan has written a book of short stories called Gates Of Eden and a collection of poems, The Drunken Driver Has The Right of Way.

Other Coen Brothers books available include; Screenplays for Blood Simple/Raising Arizona, Barton Fink/Miller's Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Intolerable Cruelty (all published by Faber & Faber Ltd) and all available at amazon.co.uk or, of course, amazon.com..

Although Joel is always credited as the director and Ethan as the producer it is common knowledge that both duties are shared.

The Coens are busy. They have also produced a fair few movies usually for past collaborators (see the "family tree" section). These include; Down From The Mountain (2000), a documentary about the musical artists who performed on the award winning soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Bad Santa (2003), the Billy Bob Thornton-starring Christmas comedy directed by Terry Zwigoff; Romance & Cigarettes (2004), a musical directed by John Turturro, starring James Gandolfini, Steve Buscemi and Christopher Walken and Where The Girls Are, co directed by Ethan's wife, Tricia Cooke.

Ethan is also a busy writer of movies that the brothers haven't directed. The first of which was co-written with Joen- Crimewave (1985) directed by Sam Raimi; The Naked Man (1998) directed by long time Coen storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson; and the story that A Fever In The Blood was based on.

Ethan and Joel Coen have signed up to direct a segment of the upcoming movie, Paris, je t'aime. The movie is essentially 20 five minute segments directed by 20 different directors including Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Godard, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Walter Salles, Tim Roth, and Tom Twyker. A mixed bunch for sure. The segments are to be tied together in some kind of narrative form by the inclusion of one character featuring in all of them. For more information on this visit the good old IMDB.

On 28th, 29th and 30th April in New York and 13th May in London the Coen brothers, along with Charlie Kaufman (writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), put on a "radio play" called Theater of the New Ear. It was split in to two parts with each writing and directing one. The Coen brother's part, Sawbones, was performed first and starred Coen regulars, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, and Marcia Gay Harden among others. Kaufman's Hope Leaves the Theater starred only three actors- Meryl Streep, Peter Dinklage and the titular Hope Davis. Suffice to say it was a little bizarre. I was lucky enough to get tickets for the London performance and you can read my report HERE..

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to work for the Coen brothers? Well, now you can find out! I have posted up an article written by one Alex Belth who served as Assistant Editior on The Big Lebowski for one whole year. He wrote the article, originally for Projections #8, but has kindly allowed me to add it to You Know, For Kids! You can read it by clicking HERE..