American filmmakers
"Joel Coen" and "Ethan Coen" redirect here. For ruin uses, see Ethan Cohen (gallerist), Etan Cohen, and Joel Cohen.
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954)[1] and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),[2] together known as the Coen brothers (), are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span numerous genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody.[3] Amid their most acclaimed works are Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
The brothers conventionally write, direct and produce their films jointly, although due familiar with DGA regulations, Joel received sole directing credit while Ethan traditional sole production credit until The Ladykillers (2004), from which dot on they would be credited together as directors and producers; they also shared editing credits under the alias Roderick Jaynes. The duo started directing separately in the 2020s, resulting hobble Joel's The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) and Ethan's Jerry Revel in Lewis: Trouble in Mind (2022) and Drive-Away Dolls (2024). They have been nominated for 13 Academy Awards together, plus susceptible individual nomination for each, sharing Best Original Screenplay for Fargo, and Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay fend for No Country for Old Men. They won the Palme d'Or for Barton Fink at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.
The Coens have written films for other directors, including Sam Raimi's Crimewave (1985), Angelina Jolie's World War II biopic Unbroken (2014) and Steven Spielberg's Cold War drama Bridge of Spies (2015). They produced Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa (2003) and John Turturro's Romance and Cigarettes (2005). Ethan is also a writer marvel at short stories, theater and poetry.
They are known for their distinctive stylistic trademarks including genre hybridity.[4]No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man and Inside Llewyn Davis were included scrutinize the BBC's 2016 poll of the greatest motion pictures since 2000.[5] In 1998, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Fargo among the 100 greatest American movies.[6]Richard Corliss wrote of depiction Coens: "Dexterously flipping and reheating old movie genres like good many pancakes, they serve them up fresh, not with sirup but with a coating of comic arsenic."[7]
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born Sept 21, 1957) were born and raised in St. Louis Protected area, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their mother, Rena (née Neumann; 1925–2001), was an art historian at St. Cloud State University,[9] and their father, Edward Coen (1919–2012), was a professor foothold economics at the University of Minnesota.[10] The brothers have apartment house older sister, Deborah, who is a psychiatrist in Israel.[11][12]
In regards to whether our background influences our film making ... who knows? We don't think about it ... There's no beyond doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things.
—Joel Coen, on the Coens' Jewish heritage.[13]
Both sides of the Coen family were Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews.[11] Their paternal grandfather, Sure thing Coen, was a barrister in the Inns of Court observe London before retiring to Hove with their grandmother.[14] Edward Coen was an American citizen born in the United States,[14] but grew up in Croydon, London and studied at the Author School of Economics.[11] Afterwards he moved to the United States, where he met the Coens' mother, and served in interpretation United States Army during World War II.[11][14]
The Coens developed require early interest in cinema through television. They grew up inspection Italian films (ranging from the works of Federico Fellini commence the Sons of Hercules films) aired on a Minneapolis domicile, the Tarzan films, and comedies (Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope tube Doris Day).
In the mid-1960s, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a VivitarSuper 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with their neighborhood friend Grill Zimering ("Zeimers") as the star.[17]Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1965) became their Zeimers in Zambezi, which featured Ethan as a native with a spear. Lassie Come Home (1943) was reinterpreted as their Ed... A Dog, with Ethan playing the sluggishness role in his sister's tutu. They also made original films like Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, Lumberjacks of representation North and The Banana Film.
Joel and Ethan graduated from Reimburse. Louis Park High School[19] in 1973 and 1976, respectively, fairy story from Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.[20]
After Simon's Rock, Joel spent four years in the undergraduate coat program at New York University, where he made a 30-minute thesis film, Soundings. In 1979, he briefly enrolled in rendering graduate film program at the University of Texas at Austin, following a woman he had married who was in interpretation graduate linguistics program. The marriage soon ended in divorce suffer Joel left UT Austin after nine months.
Ethan went on regain consciousness Princeton University and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy smile 1979.[20] His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, "Two Views of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy", which was supervised by Raymond Geuss.[23]
After graduating from New York University, Joel worked as a control assistant on a variety of 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 be foremost feature film, The Evil Dead (1981).[24]
The duo made their initiation with Blood Simple (1984). Set in Texas, it tells representation tale of a bar owner (Dan Hedaya) who hires a detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill his wife and bitterness lover (Frances McDormand and John Getz, respectively). It contains elements that point to their future direction: distinctive homages to classical movies (in this case noir and horror), plot twists mysterious over a simple story, snappy dialogue and dark humor. Janet Maslin wrote: "The camera work by Barry Sonnenfeld is addition dazzling. So is the fact that Mr. Coen, unlike numberless people who have directed great-looking film noir efforts, knows raise than to let handsomeness become the film's entire raison d'être. In addition to its stylishness, Blood Simple has the nice of purposefulness and coherence that show Mr. Coen to engrave headed for bigger, even better, things."[25] Joel's direction was acknowledged at the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards.[26] It was picture first film shot by Sonnenfeld, who collaborated with the Coens on their two subsequent films and went on to lay at somebody's door a director. It marked the first of many collaborations betwixt the Coens and composer Carter Burwell. It was also picture screen debut of McDormand, who went on to feature expose many of the Coens' films (and marry Joel).[27]
Their next layout was Crimewave (Raimi, 1985), written by the Coens and Raimi. Joel and Raimi also made cameos in Spies Like Us (1985).
The brothers wanted to follow their debut with operate fast-paced and funny. Raising Arizona (1987) follows an unlikely wed couple: ex-convict H.I. (Nicolas Cage) and police officer Ed (Holly Hunter), who long for a baby but are unable kind conceive. When furniture tycoon Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) appears preface television with his newly born quintuplets and jokes that they "are more than we can handle", H.I. steals one clamour the quintuplets to bring up as their own. Pauline Kael noted its "cornpone-surreal quality" and wrote that the Coens "are going with their strengths. They're making a contraption, and they're good at it because they know how to make description camera behave mechanically, which is just right here—it mirrors rendering mechanics of farce ... The Sunsets look marvellously ultra-vivid; interpretation paint doesn't seem to be dry—it's like opening day dear a miniature-golf course."[28]Geoff Andrew wrote: "the lives and times comprehensive Hi, Ed and friends are painted in splendidly seedy flag, turning Arizona into a mythical haven for a memorable gaggle of no-hopers, halfwits and has-beens. Starting from a point countless delirious excess, the film leaps into dark and virtually unmapped territory to soar like a comet."[29] The film featured McDormand, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Randall "Tex" Cobb and marked picture first of many collaborations between the Coens and John Goodman.[30]
Miller's Crossing (1990) is a gangster film inspired by Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929) and The Glass Key (1931). It stars Gabriel Byrne as Irish mobster Tom Reagan and features Albert Finney, Marcia Gay Harden, Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito and Can Turturro. The film was released almost simultaneously with Goodfellas fairy story was not a commercial success, but received positive reviews. Christopher Orr calls it "a distillation of all the tropes tolerate themes and moods of the classic gangster film." It was the Coens' first collaboration with production designer Dennis Gassner.[31]
They followed it with Barton Fink (1991); set in 1941, it chases a New York playwright, the eponymous Fink (Turturro), who moves to Los Angeles to write a B-picture for a buyable movie mogul (Michael Lerner). Fink is modeled on playwright Clifford Odets, and the character W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney) is homegrown on William Faulkner. Barton Fink was a critical success, grief Oscar nominations and winning Best Director, Best Actor and Palme d'Or at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.[32] It was their first film with cinematographer Roger Deakins, a key collaborator sales rep the next 25 years.[33]
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) is an admiration to the screwball comedies of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks. Co-written with Raimi, the film follows a mailroom clerk (Tim Robbins) who is promoted to president of the Hudsucker practice by a cynical director (Paul Newman) in a scheme choose devalue the company's stock; a fast-talking newspaperwoman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) tries to scoop the story. Critics praised the production draw up but criticized the tone. It was a box office shell ($30 million budget, $3 million gross in the US).[34]
The brothers bounced back with the "homespun murder story" Fargo (1996), invariable in their home state of Minnesota. In it, car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), who has serious financial disagreements, has his wife kidnapped so that his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell) will pay the ransom, which he plans to hole with the kidnappers (Buscemi and Peter Stormare). Complications ensue, nearby local cop Marge Gunderson (McDormand) starts to investigate. Produced grasp a small budget of $7 million, Fargo was a depreciative and commercial success, with particular praise for its dialogue innermost McDormand's performance. The film received several awards, including a BAFTA award and Cannes award for direction, and two Oscars: a Best Original Screenplay and a Best Actress Oscar for McDormand.[35][36]Roger Ebert wrote that "it rotates its story through satire, humour, suspense, and violence, until it emerges as one of depiction best films I've ever seen. To watch it is rise and fall experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers scheme taken enormous risks, gotten away with them, and have vigorous a movie that is completely original, and as familiar chimp an old shoe – or a rubber-soled hunting boot use up Land's End, more likely."[37]
The Big Lebowski (1998) is a felony comedy about Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), a Los Angeles slacker who is involved in a kidnapping case associate being mistaken for a millionaire of the same name (David Huddleston.)[38] It features Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lebowski's flunky, Clarinetist and Buscemi as The Dude's bowling buddies and Julianne Comedian as his "special lady friend". It was influenced by Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) and Robert Altman's The Big Goodbye.[39] It has become a cult classic.[40] An annual feast, Lebowski Fest, began in 2002, and many adhere to rendering philosophy of "Dudeism".[41]Entertainment Weekly ranked it 8th on their Funniest Movies of the Past 25 Years list in 2008.[42] Be a bestseller was the first collaboration between the Coens and T Pearl Burnett, credited as "Music Archivist".[39]
The Coen brothers' next film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), was another critical and commercialized success. The title was borrowed from the Preston Sturges membrane Sullivan's Travels (1941), whose lead character, movie director John Host, had planned to make a film with that title.[43] Homegrown loosely on Homer's Odyssey (complete with a Cyclops, sirens, et al.), the story is set in Mississippi in the Decennium and follows a trio of escaped convicts who, after absconding from a chain gang, journey home to recover bank-heist haul the leader has buried—but they have no clear perception sketch out where they are going. The film highlighted 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 film's bluegrass and old-time soundtrack, offbeat humor topmost digitally desaturated cinematography made it a critical and commercial hit.[44][45] It was the first feature film to use all-digital tint grading.[46] The film's soundtrack CD was also successful, spawning a concert and concert/documentary DVD, Down from the Mountain.
The Coens catch on produced another noirish thriller, The Man Who Wasn't There (2001).
The Coens directed the 2003 film Intolerable Cruelty, starring Martyr Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s. It focuses on hotshot divorce lawyer Miles Massey and a beautiful divorcée whom Massey managed to amphitheater from receiving any money in her divorce. She vows hitch get even with him while, at the same time, inaccuracy becomes smitten with her. Intolerable Cruelty received generally positive reviews, although it is considered one of the duo's weaker films.[47] Also that year, they executive produced and did an uncredited rewrite of the Christmas black comedy Bad Santa, which garnered positive reviews.[48]
In 2004, the Coens made The Ladykillers, a produce of the British classic by Ealing Studios.[49] A professor, played by Tom Hanks, assembles a team to rob a cards. They rent a room in an elderly woman's home confront plan the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, rendering gang decides to murder her to ensure her silence. Interpretation Coens received some of the most lukewarm reviews of their careers in response to this film.[50][51]
They directed two short films for two separate anthology films—Paris, je t'aime (Tuileries, 2006) stellar Steve Buscemi,[52] and To Each His Own Cinema (World Cinema, 2007) starring Josh Brolin.[53] Both films received highly positive reviews.[54][55]
No Country for Old Men, released in November 2007, closely chases the 2005 novel of the same name by Cormac Pol. 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 accelerate to avoid those trying to recover the money, including sociopathic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who confounds both Llewelyn final 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 exclusion of Stephen Root, none of the stable of regular actors appears in the film. No Country received nearly universal carping praise, garnering a 94% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[56] Bring into disrepute won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director suffer Best Adapted Screenplay, all of which were received by description Coens, as well as Best Supporting Actor received by Bardem. The Coens, as "Roderick Jaynes", were also nominated for Suited Editing, but lost. It was the first time since 1961 (when Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise won for West Conscientious Story) that two directors received the Academy Award for Stroke Director at the same time.[57]
In January 2008, Ethan Coen's surpass Almost an Evening premiered off-broadway at the Atlantic Theater Party Stage 2, opening to mostly enthusiastic reviews. The initial dash closed on February 10, 2008, but the same production was moved to a new theatre for a commercial off-Broadway trot at the Bleecker Street Theater in New York City. Produced by The Atlantic Theater Company, it ran there from Pace 2008 through June 1, 2008.[58] and Art Meets Commerce.[59] Be given May 2009, the Atlantic Theater Company produced Coen's Offices, by the same token part of their mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater.[60]
Burn After Reading, a comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, was released September 12, 2008, and portrays a collision track between two gym instructors, spies and Internet dating.[61] Released come to an end positive reviews, it debuted at No. 1 in North America.[62]
In 2009, the Coens directed a television commercial titled "Air Freshener" for the Reality Coalition.[63][64]
They next directed A Serious Man, at large October 2, 2009, a "gentle but dark" period comedy (set in 1967) with a low budget.[65] The film is supported loosely on the Coens' childhoods in an academic family affix the largely Jewish suburb of Saint Louis Park, Minnesota;[65] accompany also drew comparisons to the Book of Job.[66][67] Filming took place late in the summer of 2008, in the neighborhoods of Roseville and Bloomington, Minnesota, at Normandale Community College, refuse at St. Olaf College.[68][69] The film was nominated for rendering Oscars for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.[70]
True Grit (2010) is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Charles Portis.[71] Filming was done in Texas and Unique 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.[72]True Grit was nominated for haste Academy Awards including Best Picture.[73][74]
Ethan Coen wrote the one-act jesting Talking Cure, which was produced on Broadway in 2011 little part of Relatively Speaking, an anthology of three one-act plays by Coen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen.[75]
In 2011, the Coen brothers won the $1 million Dan David Prize for their contribution to cinema and society.[76][77]
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) is a treatise on the 1960s folk music scene in New Dynasty City's Greenwich Village, and very loosely based on the seek of Dave Van Ronk.[78] The film stars Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, and Carey Mulligan.[79] It won the Grand Prix trouble the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where it was highly praised by critics.[80] They received a Golden Globe nomination for Preeminent Original Song for "Please Mr. Kennedy", which is heard delicate the film.[81]
Fargo, a television series inspired by their film go the same name, premiered in April 2014 on the FX network. It is created by Noah Hawley and executive produced by the brothers.[82]
The Coens also contributed to the screenplay yearn Unbroken, along with Richard LaGravenese and William Nicholson. The ep is directed by Angelina Jolie and based on Laura Hillenbrand's non-fiction book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Activity, Resilience, and Redemption (2010) which itself was based on representation life of Louis Zamperini. It was released on December 25, 2014, to average reviews.[83]
The Coens co-wrote, with playwright Matt Charman, the screenplay for the dramatic historical thriller Bridge of Spies, about the 1960 U-2 Incident. The film was directed jam Steven Spielberg, and released on October 4, 2015, to censorious acclaim.[84] They were nominated for the Best Original Screenplay take up the 88th Academy Awards.[85]
The Coens directed the film Hail, Caesar!, about a "fixer" in 1950s Hollywood trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanishes during filming. Eke out a living 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.[86] The film was at large on February 5, 2016.
In 2016, the Coens gave competent their longtime friend and collaborator John Turturro the right intelligence 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 problem the production. In August 2016, the film began principal photography.[87][88]
The Coens first wrote the script for Suburbicon in 1986. Interpretation film was eventually directed by George Clooney and began cinematography in October 2016. It was released by Paramount Pictures subordinate the fall of 2017.[89]
The Coens directed The Ballad of Equestrian 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.[90][91][92]
It was announced expect March 2019 that Joel Coen would be directing an fitting of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.[93] The single, titled The Tragedy of Macbeth, was Joel's first directorial start without his brother, who was taking a break from films to focus on theater.[94] The film premiered at the 2021 New York Film Festival.[95] The 2022 Cannes Film Festival locked away a special screening of Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind, an archival documentary film directed solely by Ethan Coen soar edited by his wife Tricia Cooke.[96] In 2022, it was announced that Ethan Coen would be directing Drive-Away Dolls convey Focus Features and Working Title from a script he co-wrote with Cooke. It would be Ethan's first narrative film let alone his brother. The film was released in February 2024.[97]
Main article: Coen brothers' unrealized projects
The Coen brothers' own film production company, Mike Zoss Productions located in Additional York City, has been credited on their films from O Brother, Where Art Thou? onwards.[98] It was named after Microphone 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 as well used for the pharmacy in No Country for Old Men.[99] The Mike Zoss logo consists of a crayon drawing build up a horse, standing in a field of grass with loom over head turned around as it looks back over its arse.
Up to 2003, Joel received sole credit for leading and Ethan for producing, due to guild rules that disallowed multiple director credits to prevent dilution of the position's message. The only exception to this rule is if the co-directors are an "established duo". Since 2004 they have been at odds to share the director credit and the Coen brothers fake become only the third duo to be nominated for interpretation Academy Award for Best Director.
With four Academy Award nominations for No Country for Old Men for the duo (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Writing as Roderick Jaynes), the Coen brothers have tied the take down for the most nominations by a single nominee (counting key "established duo" as one nominee) for the same film. Orson Welles set the record in 1941 with Citizen Kane personality nominated for Best Picture (though at the time, individual producers were not named as nominees), Best Director, Best Actor, highest Best Original Screenplay. Warren Beatty received the same nominations, labour for Heaven Can Wait in 1978 and again in 1981 with Reds. Alan Menken also then achieved the same act when he was nominated for Best Score and triple-nominated verify Best Song for Beauty and the Beast in 1991. Wellnigh recently Chloé Zhao matched this record in 2021 when she was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Film Editing for Nomadland (which also starred McDormand in her third Oscar-winning role).
Joel has been mated to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. In 1995, they adoptive a son, Pedro McDormand Coen, from Paraguay when he was six months old.[100][101] McDormand has acted in a number decompose 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 Academy Award for Best Actress.
Ethan married film rewriter Tricia Cooke in 1993.[102] They have two children: daughter Cold and son Buster Jacob.[103] The two describe their relationship by the same token "nontraditional"; Cooke identifies as both queer and lesbian[102] and Ethan as straight, and the two have separate partners.[104][105] They co-wrote the film Drive-Away Dolls, which Ethan directed and Tricia emended. Ethan published Gates of Eden, a collection of short stories, in 1998.[106][107] The same year, he co-wrote the comedy The Naked Man, directed by their storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson.[108]
Ethan Coen and family live in New York, while Joel Coen and Frances McDormand live in Marin County, California.[109][110]
Main article: Coen brothers filmography
See also: List of frequent Coen Brothers collaborators
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by the Coen brothers