Joel David Coen - biography

Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes. They are known in the film business as "the two-headed director", as they share a similar vision of their films. It is said that actors can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer.

Personal lives

Joel and Ethan Coen grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, in a Jewish household. Their parents, Edward and Rena Coen, were professors, their father an economist at the University of Minnesota and their mother an art historian at St. Cloud State University.

When they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television with a neighborhood kid, Mark Zimering[citation needed] ("Zeimers"), as the star. Their first attempt was a romp titled, Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go. Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey (1966) became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear.

The brothers graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976. They both also graduated from 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. 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".

In the late 1970s, both brothers lived in the Weinstein dormitory at 5-11 University Place, an NYU dorm noted for housing such creatives as Ralph Bakshi, Rick Rubin, actor/writer Jonathan Schmock, and film makers Chris Columbus and Dan Goldman. Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. They adopted a son from Paraguay, named Pedro McDormand Coen (Frances and all her siblings were adopted themselves). McDormand has acted in six of the Coen Brothers' films, including a minor appearance in Miller's Crossing a supporting role in Raising Arizona, lead roles in Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn't There, her Academy Award winning role in Fargo, and her latest starring role in Burn After Reading. She also did a voice-over in Barton Fink. Ethan is married to film editor Tricia Cooke. Both couples live in New York City.

Career

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The 1980s

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 Blood Simple, their first 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, a dark humor and mise en scene. The film starred Frances McDormand who would go on to feature in many of the Coen brothers' films (and marry Joel Coen). Upon release the film received much praise and won awards for Joel's direction at both the Sundance and Independent Spirit awards. M. Emmet Walsh also won Best Male Actor[6] at the 1986 Independent Spirit awards for his portrayal of Detective Visser.

The next Coen brothers project was 1985's Crimewave, directed by Sam Raimi. The film was written by the brothers and Sam Raimi with whom Joel had worked on The Evil Dead. The next film written and directed by the brothers was the 1987 hit, Raising Arizona. The film is the story of the unlikely married couple--ex-convict H.I. (played by Nicolas Cage) and ex-cop Ed (played by Holly Hunter) who long for a baby but are unable to conceive. When a local furniture tycoon (Trey Wilson) appears on television with his five newly born quintuplets and jokes that they 'are more than we can handle', the couple 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.

The 1990s

Miller's Crossing was released in 1990 starring Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne and future Coen brothers' staple John Turturro. The film is set during the prohibition era of the 1930s and tells the tale of feuding gangsters.

The following year, Barton Fink, set in 1941, is the story of a New York playwright (the eponymous Barton Fink played by John Turturro) who moves to Los Angeles to write a B-movie. He settles down in his hotel room to commence the writing gets writer's block, with inspiration from the man (John Goodman) next door. Barton Fink was a critical success, garnering Oscar nominations plus winning three major awards at 1991 Cannes Film Festival, including the Palme d'Or. Barton Fink was the first of the brothers' films to use Director of Photography Roger Deakins, a key figure in the brothers' circle over the following 15 years.

In 1994, the The Hudsucker Proxy (co-written with Sam Raimi) revolves around a man who 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" overnight. The brothers returned to more familiar ground in 1996 with the crime thriller Fargo. Set in the Coen brothers' home state of Minnesota (Fargo, in neighboring North Dakota, appears in only a couple of early scenes), 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 plan goes 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, the film received several awards including a BAFTA award and Cannes award for direction and two Oscars, one for Best Original 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 had not enjoyed since Raising Arizona. Despite a lukewarm reception from the critics at the time, the film is now regarded as a cult classic.

The 2000s

Buoyed by the success of both Fargo and The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers' next film O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) was another critical success. The title was borrowed from the 1941 Preston Sturges film Sullivan's Travels, whose lead character, movie director John Sullivan, had planned to make a film with that title. Based loosely on Homer's Odyssey (complete with a cyclops, sirens, et al.) the story is set in Mississippi in the 1930s and follows a trio of escaped convicts who 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. The film also highlighted the comic abilities of George Clooney who starred as the oddball lead character Ulysses Everett McGill (assisted by his sidekicks, played by Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro). The film's bluegrass and old time soundtrack, offbeat humor and noted cinematography, made it 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) that coincided with a resurgence in interest in American folk music.

The Coen brothers produced another noirish thriller in 2001, The Man Who Wasn't There. Set in late 1940s 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, decides to blackmail his wife's boss, who is also her lover. The film's twists and turns and dark humor were typical of Coen films, but here the slow build of the thriller, its dead-end roads look meant that the film was more for the purists rather than casual audiences.

Intolerable Cruelty, released in 2003, starred George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones;it was a throwback to the romantic comedies of the 1940s with a story based on Miles Massey, a hot shot divorce lawyer, and a beautiful divorcee whom Massey had managed to stop getting any money from her divorce. She sets out on a course to get even with him while he becomes smitten with her. Intolerable Cruelty divided the critics; some applauded the romantic screwball comedy elements of the movie, others wondered why the Coens would wish to supply us with their take on this genre. In 2004, the Coen brothers made The Ladykillers, a remake of the Ealing Studios classic. The story revolves around a professor (played by Tom Hanks) who puts together a team to rob a casino. They rent a room in an elderly woman's house to execute the heist. When the woman discovers the plot, however, the gang decides to murder her to ensure 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.

No Country for Old Men, released in November 2007, follows closely the 2005 novel by Cormac McCarthy. Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), living on the Texas/Mexico border, stumbles upon, and decides to pocket, two million dollars in drug money. He then has to go on the run to avoid those looking to recover the money, including a sinister killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) who confounds both Llewelyn and local sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). This plot line is a return to the dark, noir themes and also marks a notable departure, including a lack of regular Coen actors (with the exception of Stephen Root). The film has received nearly universal critical praise, garnering a 95% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[10] The film won four Academy Awards, 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 Editor, but lost.) It was the first time since 1961 (Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise for West Side Story) that two directors had received the honor of 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 and opened to mostly enthusiastic reviews. The initial run closed on February 10, 2008 but was moved to a new theatre for a commercial Off-Broadway run. The commercial run began in March, 2008, and ran until June 1, 2008 at the Bleecker Street Theatre in New York City, produced by The Atlantic Theater Companyand Art Meets Commerce. In May 2009, the Atlantic Theater Company produced Coen's "Offices", as part of their mainstage season at the Linda Gross Theater.

Burn After Reading, a sharp and fast moving comedy, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney was released September 12, 2008; it portrays a collision course between a gym, spies and internet dating. Despite being released to mixed reviews, it debuted at number one in North America.

In 2009, they directed a television commercial for the Reality Coalition entitled "Air Freshener".

A Serious Man was released on October 2, 2009. It has been described as a "gentle but dark" period comedy (circa 1967) with a low budget. The film is based loosely on the Book of Job[citation needed] and the Coen brothers' own childhoods in a Jewish academic family in the largely Jewish suburb of St Louis Park, Minnesota.[14] Other filming took place in late summer 2008 in some neighborhoods of Roseville and Bloomington, Minnesota, at Normandale Community College, and at St. Olaf College. The movie went on to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture.

Upcoming, planned films and uncompleted projects

The Coen brothers' next film will be True Grit, based on the novel by Charles Portis.It is currently in post-production. Filming was done primarily in Granger, TX with some filming done in Austin, TX. The film will be distributed by Paramount. Jeff Bridges, who starred in the Coens' The Big Lebowski, will star as Marshal Rooster Cogburn. Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Barry Pepper will also appear in the movie. The Coens hope to film James Dickey's novel To the White Sea. They were due to start production in 2002, with Jeremy Thomas producing and Brad Pitt in the lead role, but it was cancelled when the Coens felt that the budget offered was not enough to successfully produce the film.

A project which has been mooted for several years is Hail Caesar, the third of the so called Numskull trilogy, a comedy starring George Clooney as a matinee idol making a biblical epic. However in an interview for the Los Angeles Times in February 2008, the Coens said that it did not exist as a script but only as an idea.[18] It has been announced that the Coen brothers will write and direct an adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. They will produce the film with Scott Rudin for Columbia Pictures.

In a 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 leatherbound book from a 'dusty old library'.

As well as their own projects, they have involvement in two other productions. One is Suburbicon, a comedy starring and directed by George Clooney. It will be written and produced by the Coens. In addition they have provided the screenplay for a remake of the 1966 film Gambit, due to star Colin Firth and Ben Kingsley. Both films were slated for a 2009 release, but delayed.

Joel stated that "a Cold War comedy called 62 Skidoo is one I'd like to do someday". The Coen brothers have stated that they are 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 brothers have 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".

Production company

Coen brothers founded their own film production company, called Mike Zoss Productions, located in New York City, which has been credited on films from O Brother, Where Art Thou?