It goes without saying that Joel and Ethan Coen (better known as The Coen Brothers) are two of the most well-respected filmmakers in Hollywood. Ever since bursting onto the scene with their independently made neo-noir Blood Simple in 1984, they explored every film genre under the sun.
In 1997, the brothers won their first Oscars for their Original Screenplay for Fargo, which later inspired a TV show. In 2008, they earned Academy Awards for Producing, Writing, and Directing their hyper-violent neo-western No Country For Old Men. Up next is a departure for Joel Coen, who for the first time directed a movie without his brother. Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is due sometime in 2021. Until then, get to know the Coen Brothers a bit better.
11 They Have An Educated Background
Joel and Ethan Coen were born and bred in Minnesota. Their father taught economics at the University of Minnesota while their mother taught art history at St. Cloud State University. After graduating from St. Louis Park High School, Joel and Ethan graduated from Simon's Rock Early College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Afterward, Joel attended NYU Film School for four years, making a 30-minute short thesis film entitled Sounders. He then spent a nine-month stint in the graduate film program at UT in Austin, Texas. Ethan earned an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1979.
10 They Got Into Filmmaking At A Very Young Age
Although Joel made Sounders in college, the brothers began making films short home movies in the '60s when they were children. To buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera when he was a kid, Joel saved money from mowing lawns in his neighborhood.
To hone their filmmaking craft, Joel and Ethan would use their Super 8 camera to recreate movies they watched on television. Such movies include Advise and Consent, The Naked Prey, Lassie Come Home, and others. They also made short original films such as Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, The Banana Film, and Lumberjack of the North.
9 Evil Dead Was One Of Their First Film Jobs
In 1981, the Coen Brothers got their foot in the door of Hollywood by editing low-budget horror movies. After working as a PA on commercials and industrial films, Joel worked as an assistant editor on Fear no Evil and Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead.
When Joel met Raimi, the two instantly hit it off and eventually decided to make a movie together. The result is the little-known 1985 movie Crimewave (above), a cartoonish horror-comedy written by Joel and Ethan and directed by Raimi.
8 They Have A Unique Writing Process
The Coen Brothers have adhered to a unique writing process throughout their illustrious career. While they have a strict no-improv policy due to their rhythmic dialogue, they do not outline their stories before writing scripts. Instead, Joel and Ethan prefer a natural process of finding the story as they go along.
They'll begin with one scene and allow the characters to dictate what comes next, often never knowing how the story will end up until the last minute. Because of this process, the brothers often suffer writer's block. For instance, they wrote the movie Barton Fink, during their writer's block on Miller's Crossing.
7 Their Production Company Is Named After A Childhood Hangout
In 2000, Joel and Ethan began making movies through their own production company, Mike Zoss Productions. The name Mike Zoss is named after the brothers' childhood hangout in Minnesota.
Mike Zoss Drug was an independently operated pharmacy in St. Louis Park during the '50s and a place where Joel and Ethan spent a lot of time growing up. The name Mike Zoss is featured prominently as the name of the pharmacy that Chigurgh blows up in No Country For Old Men.
6 They're Huge Stanley Kubrick Fans
Although the Coens cite light Doris Day-Rock Hudson fare and Jerry Lewis or Bob Hope comedies as early inspirations, the brothers are such giant fans of Stanley Kubrick that nearly all of their films pay homage to the master filmmaker.
In Raising Arizona for example, which also draws from The Road Warrior, a subtle nod to Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove comes in the form of graffiti on a door that reads POE-OPE. Barton Fink also has several parallels to Kubrick's The Shining, which is also about a blocked writer in a sinister hotel. In Intolerable Cruelty, sound effects from 2001: A Space Odyssey were used for the medical machines of the elderly lawyer, Herb Myerson.
5 Ethan Is A Published Author & Poet
In addition to being a four-time Oscar winner, Ethan Coen is an accomplished fiction and poetry writer who's had several of his works published.
In November of 2008, Ethan's collection of short stories entitled Gates of Eden was published. In April 2009, his poetry compilation The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way was published. Additional volumes written by Ethan include Almost an Evening, a trio of stage plays, as well as the 2010 release of the three-act play, Offices.
4 Joel Is Married To Frances McDormand
While it should come as no surprise that Joel is married to Oscar-winning actress and Coen Brothers regular Frances McDormand, their marital details aren't as well known. For instance, McDormand is Joel's second wife after a brief marriage in the '70s. The wedding ring McDormand wears is the same one that belonged to Joel's first wife.
After being married for a decade from, Joel and Fran adopted their one and only child in 1995. Their son, Pedro McDormand Coen -- who Fran famously shouted-out in her Oscar-winning speech for Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri -- was adopted from Paraguay.
3 Roderick Jaynes Is The Brothers' Editing Pseudonym
With the exception of three films - Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, and The Hudsucker Proxy - Joel and Ethan have edited every single one of their movies, and they've done so under the same pseudonym since 1984.
On 15 of 18 Coen Brothers films, Roderick Jaynes is credited as the editor. No such person exists. Joel and Ethan created the alias in response to seeing their names recur too often in their film credits. Roderick Jaynes has been nominated for two Best Editing Oscars, one for Fargo and another for No Country For Old Men.
2 They've Had Final Cut Ever Since Blood Simple
Because of their fiercely independent nature, the Coen Brothers have retained the final cut on every one of their films since their feature debut, Blood Simple, in 1984. Such power is unheard of in Hollywood these days, with very few filmmakers even able to retain final cut for just one of their films.
Speaking of Blood Simple, the Coens found funding after raising enough money on their own to film a short trailer to show investors. They ultimately financed the film through a pool of independently wealthy dentists who saw the trailer they made.
1 They Have A Lot Of Canceled Projects
Like most mainstream moviemakers, the Coens have had a number of potential projects fall by the wayside. Among them include a cold-war comedy called Skidoo 62 that Joel wanted to make in 2001. Several attempts to adapt James Dickey's World War II survival novel To the White Sea were made in the early 2000's as well.
The Coens also wrote drafts for an adaptation of the alternate history novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a quirky TV detective movie called Harve Karbo, the black market thriller Dark Web based on a two-part article published on Wired, and a remake of the gangster classic Scarface for Antoine Fuqua to direct. Though Fuqua eventually left, the Coens are still on board but now with Luca Guadagnino set to helm the remake.
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