Joel (and Ethan) Coen Career Summation
Occupational Inheritance: No; mother art historian at St. Cloud State University, father economist at University of Minnesota.
Birth:
Social Class: Upper-middle; both parents academic
Race/Ethnicity/Religion: Jewish
Nationality: US
Formal Education: Joel, NYU; Un of Texas, Austin (one year)
Formal Education: Ethan. Princeton, Philosophy
Training:
First Film: Blood Simple, 1985; aged 29 (Ethan produced)
First Film (Ethan): 2004
First Oscar Nomination:
Gap between First Film and First Nom
Other Nominations: 13 in various categories (jointly)
Oscar Awards: Fargo, No Country for Old Men
Nominations Span:
Genre (specialties): hybrids
Masterpieces: Blood Simle, No Country for Old Men
Barton Fink won 3 major awards at the 1991 Cannes Film Fest, including the Palme d’Or.
Collaborators:
Cinematographer Roger Deakins, key collaborator, beginning Barton’s for 25 years.
Last Film: NA
Contract: Various studios
Career Shape: Innovative takes on genres (film noir)
Career Output:
Career Span:
Marriage: Joel, first marriage, McDormand actress, second marriage
Marriage: Ethan; film editor
Politics:
Death: NA
Joel Coen (born Nov 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born Sept 21, 1957), collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American film directors, producers, screenwriters, and editors.
Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody with irnic humor.
Their most acclaimed works include: Blood Simple (1985), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller’s Crossing (1990), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until The Ladykillers (2004) Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing.
They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing editing credits under the alias Roderick Jaynes.
My Oscar Book:
They have been nominated for 13 Oscars together, and individually for one award each, winning Best Original Screenplay for Fargo. in 2007, they won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men. The duo also won the Cannes Fest Palme d’Or for Barton Fink (1991).
The Coens have written a number of films they did not direct, including the biog war drama Unbroken (2014), the historical legal thriller Bridge of Spies (2015), and lesser-known, commercially unsuccessful comedies such as Crimewave (1985), The Naked Man (1998) and Gambit (2012).
Ethan is also a writer of short stories, theater and poetry.
Known for their distinctive stylistic trademarks including genre hybridity, the brothers’ films No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, and Inside Llewyn Davis have been ranked in the BBC’s 2016 poll of the greatest pictures since 2000.
Jewish Influence
In regards to whether our background influences our film making … who knows? We don’t think about it … There’s no doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things.—Joel Coen, on their Jewish heritage.
Joel Daniel Coen (born Nov 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born Sep 21, 1957) were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.
Their mother, Rena (née Neumann), was an art historian at St. Cloud State University, and their father, Edward Coen, was an economist at the University of Minnesota.
The brothers have an older sister, Deborah, who became a psychiatrist in Israel.
Both sides of the Coen family were Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origin. Their paternal grandfather, Victor Coen, was barrister in the Inns of Court in London before retiring to Hove with their grandmother. Edward Coen was born in the US, but grew up in Croydon, London and studied at the London School of Economics. Afterwards he moved to the US, where he met the Coens’ mother, and served in the US Army during World War II.
The Coens developed early interest in cinema through the medium of Television. They grew up watching Italian films (Fellini to the Sons of Hercules films) aired on a Minneapolis station, Tarzan films, comedies of Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Doris Day.
In the mid-1960s, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with their neighborhood friend Mark Zimering (“Zeimers”) as the star. Cornel Wilde’s 1965 film The Naked Prey became their Zeimers in Zambezi, which featured Ethan as a native with a spear. The 1943 film Lassie Come Home was reinterpreted as their Ed… A Dog, with Ethan playing the mother role in his sister’s tutu. They also made original films like Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, Lumberjacks of the North and The Banana Film.
Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976, respectively, and from Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA.
After Simon’s Rock, Joel spent four years in the undergraduate film program at NYU, where he made a 30-minute thesis film called Soundings. In 1979 he briefly enrolled in the graduate film program at the University of Texas at Austin, following a woman he had married who was in the graduate linguistics program. The marriage ended in divorce and Joel left UT Austin after 9 months.
Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. In 1995, they adopted a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, from Paraguay when he was 6 months old. McDormand has acted in several Coen Brothers films: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Burn After Reading, and Hail, Caesar! For her performance in Fargo she won the Best Actress Oscar.
Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1990. They have two children: daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob, who goes to Vassar College.
Both couples live in New York.
After graduating from NYU, Joel worked as production assistant on industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi while assisting Edna Ruth Paul in editing Raimi’s first feature, The Evil Dead (1981).
In 1984 the brothers wrote and directed Blood Simple, their first commercial film together. 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. The film contains elements that point to their future direction: distinctive homages to genre movies (in this case noir and horror), plot twists layered over a simple story, dark humor, and mise-en-scène. The film starred Frances McDormand, who went on to feature in many of the Coen brothers’ films (and marry Joel). Upon release the film received much praise and won awards for Joel’s direction at both the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards.
Their next project was Crimewave (1985), directed by Sam Raimi and written by the Coens and Raimi. Joel and Raimi also made cameo appearances in Spies Like Us (1985).
Raising Arizona (1987), the story of an unlikely married couple: ex-convict H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and police officer Ed (Holly Hunter), who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. When a local furniture tycoon (Trey Wilson) appears on television with his newly born quintuplets and jokes that they “are more than we can handle”, H.I. steals one of the quintuplets to bring up as their own. The film featured Frances McDormand, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, and Randall “Tex” Cobb.
Miller’s Crossing, in 1990, starred Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne, and John Turturro. The film is about feuding gangsters in the Prohibition era, inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s novels Red Harvest (1929) and The Glass Key (serialized in 1930).
Barton Fink (1991), set in 1941, in which a New York playwright, the eponymous Barton Fink (played by John Turturro), moves to Los Angeles to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel room to commence writing but suffers writer’s block until he is invaded by the man next door (John Goodman). Barton Fink was a critical success, earning Oscar nominations and winning 3 major awards at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d’Or. It was their first film with cinematographer Roger Deakins, a key collaborator for the next 25 years.
The Hudsucker Proxy (co-written with Raimi) was released in 1994. The board of a large corporation in 1958 New York appoints a naive schmo as president (Tim Robbins) for underhanded reasons. The film bombed at the box office ($30 million budget, $3 million gross in the USA), even though it featured Paul Newman and Jennifer Jason Leigh; Frances McDormand appears in brief uncredited role.
The Coens wrote and directed the crime thriller Fargo (1996), set in their home state of Minnesota. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who has serious financial problems, has his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law will pay the ransom. His plan goes wrong when the kidnappers deviate from the plan and local cop Marge Gunderson (McDormand) starts to investigate. Produced on a small budget of $7 million, Fargo was a critical and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue and McDormand’s performance. The film received BAFTA award and Cannes award for direction, and 2 Oscars: Best Original Screenplay and a Best Actress Oscar for McDormand.
In the black comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker, is used as an unwitting pawn in a kidnapping plot with his bowling buddies (Steve Buscemi and John Goodman). Despite initially receiving mixed reviews and underperforming at the box office, it is now well received by critics, and is regarded as a cult film. An annual festival, Lebowski Fest, began in 2002, and many adhere to the philosophy of “Dudeism”. In 2008, EW ranked it 8th on their Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years list.
Gates of Eden, a collection of short stories written by Ethan Coen, was published in 1998. The same year, Ethan co-wrote the comedy The Naked Man, directed by their storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) was another critical and commercial success. The title was borrowed from the Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels (1941), whose lead character, movie director John Sullivan, had planned to make a film with that title. Based loosely on Homer’s Odyssey (complete with Cyclops, sirens, et al.), the story is set in Mississippi in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts who, after absconding from a chain gang, journey home to recover bank-heist loot the leader has buried—but they have no clear perception of where they are going. The film showed the comic abilities of George Clooney as the oddball lead character Ulysses Everett McGill, and of Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro, his sidekicks. The bluegrass and old-time soundtrack, offbeat humor and digitally desaturated cinematography made it a critical and commercial hit.
It was the first feature film to use all-digital color grading. The film’s soundtrack CD was also successful, spawning a concert and concert/documentary DVD, Down from the Mountain.
The Coens noirish thriller, The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), set in late 1940s California, concerns a laconic chain-smoking barber (Billy Bob Thornton) discovers a way to blackmail his wife’s lover and use the proceeds to invest in a dry cleaning business.
The Coens directed the 2003 Intolerable Cruelty, starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s. It focuses on hotshot divorce lawyer Miles Massey and beautiful divorcée whom Massey managed to prevent from receiving any money in her divorce. She vows to get even with him while he becomes smitten with her. Intolerable Cruelty received positive reviews, although it is considered one of the duo’s weaker films.
Also that year, they executive produced and did an uncredited rewrite of the Christmas black comedy Bad Santa, which garnered positive reviews.
In 2004, the Coens made The Ladykillers, a remake of the Ealing Studios classic. A professor, played by Tom Hanks, assembles a team to rob a casino. They rent a room in an elderly woman’s home to plan the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, the gang decides to murder her to ensure her silence. The Coens received lukewarm reviews in response to this film.
They directed two short films for two separate anthology films—Paris, je t’aime (Tuileries, 2006) starring Steve Buscemi, and To Each His Own Cinema (World Cinema, 2007) starring Josh Brolin. Both films received positive reviews.
No Country for Old Men, released in November 2007, follows the 2005 novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), living near the Texas/Mexico border, stumbles upon, and decides to take, two million dollars in drug money. He must then go on the run to avoid those trying to recover the money, including sociopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who confounds both Llewelyn and local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The plotline is a return to noir themes, but in some respects it was a departure for the Coens; with the exception of Stephen Root, none of the stable of regular Coen actors appears in the film. No Country received nearly universal critical praise, garnering a 94% “Fresh” rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
It won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, all of which were received by the Coens, as well as Best Supporting Actor received by Bardem. The Coens, as “Roderick Jaynes”, were also nominated for Best Editing, but lost.
It was the first time since 1961 (when Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for West Side Story) that two directors received the Oscar for Best Director at the same time.
In January 2008, Ethan Coen’s play Almost an Evening premiered Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company Stage 2, opening to mostly enthusiastic reviews. The initial run closed on February 10, 2008, but the same production was moved to a new theatre for a commercial off-Broadway run at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York. Produced by The Atlantic Theater Company, it ran there from March 2008 through June 1, 2008. and Art Meets Commerce. In May 2009, the Atlantic Theater Company produced Coen’s Offices, as part of their season at the Linda Gross Theater.
Burn After Reading, a comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was released September 12, 2008, and portrays a collision course between a gym instructor, spies and Internet dating. Released to positive reviews, it debuted at #1 in North America.
In 2009, the Coens directed TV commercial titled “Air Freshener” for the Reality Coalition.
They next directed A Serious Man, released Oct 2, 2009, a “gentle but dark” period comedy (set in 1967) with a low budget. The film is based on the Coens’ childhoods in academic family in the largely Jewish suburb of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota; it also drew comparisons to the Book of Job. Filming took in the summer of 2008, in the neighborhoods of Roseville and Bloomington, Minnesota, at Normandale Community College, and at St. Olaf College.
The film was nominated for the Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Oscars.
True Grit (2010) is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Charles Portis. Filming was done in Texas and New Mexico. Hailee Steinfeld stars as Mattie Ross along with Jeff Bridges as Marshal Rooster Cogburn. Matt Damon and Josh Brolin also appear in the movie. True Grit was nominated for 10 Oscars, including Best Picture.
Ethan Coen wrote the one-act comedy Talking Cure, which was produced on Broadway in 2011 as part of Relatively Speaking, an anthology of three one-act plays by Coen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is a treatise on the 1960s folk music scene in New York City’s Greenwich Village, and very loosely based on the life of Dave Van Ronk.[68] The film stars Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan. It won the Grand Prix at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it was highly praised by critics. They received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song for “Please Mr. Kennedy”, which is heard in the film.
Fargo, a TV series inspired by their film of the same name, premiered in April 2014 on the FX network. It is created by Noah Hawley and executive produced by the brothers.
The Coens also contributed to the screenplay for Unbroken, along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. The film, directed by Angelina Jolie, and based on Laura Hillenbrand’s non-fiction book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010) which itself was based on the life of Louis Zamperini, was released on December 25, 2014 to average reviews.
The Coens co-wrote, with playwright Matt Charman, the script for the historical thriller Bridge of Spies, about the 1960 U-2 Incident. The film was directed by Spielberg, and released on October 4, 2015 to critical acclaim. They were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
The Coens directedmHail, Caesar!, about a “fixer” in 1950s Hollywood trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanishes during filming. It stars Coen regulars George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Frances McDormand, Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton, as well as Channing Tatum, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, and Alden Ehrenreich. The film was released on February 5, 2016.
In 2016, the Coens gave to their longtime friend and collaborator John Turturro the right to use his character of Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski in his own spin-off, The Jesus Rolls, which he would also write and direct. The Coens have no involvement in the production.
The Coens first wrote the script for Suburbicon in 1986, which was eventually directed by George Clooney and began filming in October 2016. It was released by Paramount Pictures in the fall of 2017.
The Coens directed The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a Western anthology starring Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, and James Franco. It began streaming on Netflix on Nov 16, 2018, after a brief theatrical run.
In 1998 interview with Alex Simon for Venice magazine, the Coens discussed a project called The Contemplations, which would be an anthology of short films based on stories in a leather bound book from a “dusty old library”. This project may have influenced or evolved into The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which has the same structure.
In 2001, Joel stated that “a Cold War comedy called 62 Skidoo is one he would like to do someday.
The Coens had hoped to film James Dickey’s novel To the White Sea, due to start production in 2002, with Jeremy Thomas producing and Brad Pitt in the lead role, but it was canceled when the Coens felt that the budget offered was not enough to produce the film.
In 2008, it was announced that the Coen brothers would write and direct an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007). They were to produce with Scott Rudin for Columbia Pictures. In fall of 2012, however, Chabon told Mother Jones that “the Coen brothers wrote a draft of a script and then they seemed to move on, and the film rights had “lapsed back to me”.
In 2009, the Coens were interested in making a sequel to Barton Fink called Old Fink, which would take place in the 1960s, around the same time period as A Serious Man. The Coens also stated that they have had talks with John Turturro in reprising his role as Fink, but they were waiting “until he was actually old enough to play the part.”
In 2011, the Coens were working on TV project, called Harve Karbo, about a quirky Los Angeles private eye for Imagine Television.
In December 2013, the Coens stated in an interview that they are working on a new musical comedy centered around an opera singer, though they have said it is “not a musical per se”. They revealed they are also working on a sword and sandals drama film set in ancient Rome.
In August 2015, it was announced that Warner Bros. had optioned the film rights to Ross Macdonald’s novel Black Money for the Coen brothers to write and direct.
In October 2016, the Coens would work on the screenplay for Fox titled Dark Web, and based on Joshuah Bearman’s two-part Wired article about Ross Ulbricht and his illicit Silk Road online marketplace. The project originated in 2013, with novelist Dennis Lehanen or the screenplay.
On February 10, 2017, it was announced that the Scarface remake’s script was being written by the Coens. Luca Guadagnino has announced plans to direct the film.
It was announced in March 2019 that Joel Coen would be directing an adaptation of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington. This will be Joel’s first directorial effort without brother Ethan, who is taking a break from films to focus on theater.
The Coen brothers’ own production company, Mike Zoss Productions in New York City, has been credited on their films from O Brother, Where Art Thou? onwards. It was named after Mike Zoss Drug, an independent pharmacy in St. Louis Park since 1950 that was the brothers’ beloved hangout when they were growing up in the Twin Cities. The name was also used for the pharmacy in No Country for Old Men. The Mike Zoss logo consists of a crayon drawing of a horse, standing in field of grass, with its head turned around as it looks back over its hindquarters.
Up to 2003, Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing, due to guild rules that disallowed multiple director credits to prevent dilution of the position’s significance. The only exception to this rule is if the co-directors are an “established duo.”
Third Duo
From 2004 on, they were able to share the director credit and since then, the Coens have become only the third duo to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. The first two pairs to achieve this were Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (who won for West Side Story in 1961), and Warren Beatty and Buck Henry (who were nominated for Heaven Can Wait in 1978).
My Oscar Book:
Directors Winning 3 Oscars for Same Film
Only 7 other directors have won three Oscars for the same film, a distinction the duo shares with Billy Wilder, James L. Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Peter Jackson, Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Bong Joon-ho.
With four Oscar nominations for No Country for Old Men for the duo (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing as Roderick Jaynes), the Coens have tied the record for the most nominations by single nominee (counting an “established duo” as one nominee) for the same film. Orson Welles set the record in 1941 with Citizen Kane being nominated for Best Picture (though at the time, individual producers were not named as nominees), Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Original Screenplay. Warren Beatty received the same nominations, first for Heaven Can Wait in 1978 and again in 1981 with Reds.
Alan Menken also achieved the same feat when he was nominated for Best Score and triple-nominated for Best Song for Beauty and the Beast in 1991.
In 2018, Cuarón was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography for Roma.
Filmography
1984 Blood Simple Circle Films
1987 Raising Arizona 20th Century Fox
1990 Miller’s Crossing
1991 Barton Fink
1994 The Hudsucker Proxy Warner Bros. / PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
1996 Fargo Focus Features
1998 The Big Lebowski
2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? Buena Vista Pictures, Universal
2001 The Man Who Wasn’t There Focus Features
2003 Intolerable Cruelty Universal Pictures
2004 The Ladykillers Buena Vista Pictures
2007 No Country for Old Men Miramax / Paramount Vantage
2008 Burn After Reading Focus Features
2009 A Serious Man
2010 True Grit Paramount Pictures
2013 Inside Llewyn Davis CBS Films
2016 Hail, Caesar! Universal Pictures
2018 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Netflix
2021 The Tragedy if Macbeth (solo director, Joel Coen)
Collaborators
Joel’s wife Frances McDormand is their most frequent acting collaborator
The Coen brothers frequently cast certain actors in their films, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Jon Polito, George Clooney, and John Turturro. They have worked twice with Jeff Bridges, Billy Bob Thornton, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, and Tim Blake Nelson and at least 3 times with Michael Badalucco, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, Bruce Campbell, J.K. Simmons, and Josh Brolin.
The Coens similarly tend to collaborate with certain filmmakers, especially Roger Deakins, Jess Gonchor, Skip Lievsay, and Mary Zophres. They used cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld on their first 3 films, through Miller’s Crossing, until Sonnenfeld left to pursue his own directing career. Deakins has been the Coen brothers’ cinematographer for all their subsequent films except Burn After Reading, on which they employed Emmanuel Lubezki, and Inside Llewyn Davis and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, on which they employed Bruno Delbonnel.
Sam Raimi is another frequent collaborator. He 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 (1998) from the Coen brothers, who had recently finished Fargo. (Both films are set in blindingly white snow, which reflects much light and can make metering for a correct exposure tricky). Raimi has cameo appearances in Miller’s Crossing and The Hudsucker Proxy. Raimi and the Coens met when Raimi directed The Evil Dead (1981), for which Joel was hired as an assistant editor.[103]
Carter Burwell has scored all of the Coens’ films, aside from Crimewave (1985), although T Bone Burnett produced much of the traditional music in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Ladykillers, and was in charge of archive music for The Big Lebowski.
Skip Lievsay handles the sound editing for all of the Coens’ films.
Most of the Coens’ films have been credited to the editor “Roderick Jaynes”, an alias which refers collectively to the two Coen brothers. Tricia Cooke, Ethan’s wife, was also an editor on 3 of their films (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Man Who Wasn’t There) after working as assistant editor on four of their earlier films (Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Fargo). Michael R. Miller edited Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing.
Academy Awards BAFTA Awards
Nominations and Wins
1991 Barton Fink
1996 Fargo
2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou?
2001 The Man Who Wasn’t There
2007 No Country for Old Men
2008 Burn After Reading
2009 A Serious Man
2010 True Grit
2013 Inside Llewyn Davis
2014 Unbroken
2015 Bridge of Spies
2016 Hail, Caesar!
2018 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Total 48, 7
