Joel Coen mini-bio: oel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan (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, they 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.[citation needed] 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.”
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 there are considerable elements that would point towards 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 it would star 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 winning 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 together with Sam Raimi with whom Joel had worked with on The Evil Dead.
In 1987 the next film written and directed by the brothers was released 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 Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter) who long for a baby but unfortunately 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 humour.
1990 saw the release of Miller's Crossing 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 thirties and tells the tale of feuding mobs and gangster capers. The film was praised for its dialogue and the depth characterization. Typical of the brothers ouerve are the touches of dark humour and plot twists that were already becoming synonymous with the brothers work.
The Coen Brothers reputation was seemingly enhanced with every subsequent release, but this took a massive leap forward with their next movie, 1991's visually stunning Barton Fink. Barton Fink is set in 1941 and tells the story of a New York playwright (the eponymous Barton Fink) who moves to LA to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel apartment to commence the writing but all too soon he gets writers block and allows himself to get some inspiration by the amiable man in the room next door together with some industry associates. Inspiration comes from the most unusual places and the hotel is definitely unusual and a magnet for the strange and downright 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, imcluding the Palme D'Or. Barton Fink was the first of the brother's films to use Director of photography, Roger Deakins, a key figure in the brother's 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 little man, who by chance 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 over night. The critics were for once lukewarm about the film, whilst Roger Deakins was universally praised for his skill as Director of Photography, the film was generally criticised for being a pastiche too far. Most critics viewed the film as having nothing new to say due its constant references and homages to classic movies of the 30's and 40's, and many were disappointed by the Coen's first attempt at the big league. More significantly the film proved to be a massive commercial failure making back only $3,000,000 of its $25,000,000 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, it received several awards including a BAFTA 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, it is now regarded as a cult classic and is consistently rated in polls as one of the best films of the 1990s.
Buoyed by the success of both Fargo and Lebowski. The Coen Brothers next film O Brother, Where Art Thou? was to be 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. It also highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney who starred as the oddball lead character of Everett Ulysses McGill (ably assisted by his sidekick the now ubiquitous John Turturro). The films 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 a resurgence in interest in American folk music.
2001 saw another change of pace with another noirish thriller The Man Who Wasn't There. Set in late 1940's 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). Unusually for a contemporary film it was shot entirely in crisp Black and White. The films 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.
2003 saw the release of arguably the Coens' most mainstream film to date with Intolerable Cruelty, starring 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 female 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 begins to be 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 proved to be only a moderate commercial success.
2004 saw the Coen Brothers release 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 in order to execute the heist, but when the woman discovers the plot the gang decides to murder her to assure 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 legendary author Cormac McCarthy, telling the tale of a man living on the Texas / Mexico border, who stumbles upon $2m dollars of drug money that he decides to pocket, and who then has to go on the run to try and avoid those looking to recover their money. This plot line is a return to the dark, noir themes which have provided them with some of their most successful material and 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.
Goalstopper28posted 614 days ago
