Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are four-time Academy Award winning American filmmakers. For more than twenty years, the pair have written and directed numerous successful films, ranging from screwball comedies (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy) to film noir (Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men), to movies where genres blur together (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink). 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 such a similar vision of what their films are to be that actors say that they can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer.
Brother of Joel Coen.
Graduated from Princeton University, where he once tried to explain a missed deadline by saying that he had lost one of his arms during a hunting accident.
Works so closely with his brother Joel Coen that the two of them have been jokingly referred to as "The Two-Headed Director".
Alumnus of Simons Rock College, Great Barrington, MA, with brother Joel Coen. This is a fully-accredited college for students who typically enter at age 16 - before graduating high school.
Ranked #88 in Premieres 2003 annual Power 100 List with brother Joel Coen. They had been ranked #92 in 2002.
Brother-in-law of Frances McDormand.
He and brother Joel Coen have had final cut on all of their films since Blood Simple. , their debut film.
Frequently includes kidnapping plots in his films.
Has used the character name of Marva Munson in both of his past two films. First, in Intolerable Cruelty (Judge Marva Munson) and secondly, in The Ladykillers (Marva Munson).
Worked as a statistical clerk at Macys before setting off to make Blood Simple. .
He (along with his brother Joel Coen ) is part of the prestigious group of individuals to have won Oscars for writing, directing and producing in the same year, for the film No Country for Old Men . The others are Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King , James L Brooks for Terms of Endearment , Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather: Part II , Billy Wilder for The Apartment and Leo McCarey for Going My Way , and Alejandro G. Irritu for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) . James Cameron also won three Oscars for Titanic but they were for directing, producing and editing.
Only three times in Academy Award history have director-collaborators been nominated for Best Directing Oscars: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story , Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men . (Wise/Robbins and the Coens actually won the award).
The first Coen brothers film where both he and brother Joel Coen are given directing and producing credits was The Ladykillers . They have shared these duties on all of their films, but Joel has always been listed as director and Ethan as producer.
Has a younger sister named Deborah, who is a psychiatrist.
Was briefly married to a woman named Hillary in 1985. Has two children, a son Buster Jacob Coen and a daughter Dusty, with current wife Tricia Cooke.
His mother, Rena Neumann Coen, died of kidney disease in 2001.
Along with his brother Joel, has directed six actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Michael Lerner , Frances McDormand , William H. Macy , Javier Bardem , Jeff Bridges , and Hailee Steinfeld. McDormand and Bardem each won Oscars for performances in their separate movies.
The Coen Brothers are noted for their unusual writing process of not only eschewing outlines, but of not even concerning themselves what their story is about or who their characters are before beginning to write their screenplays. They will simply begin writing any scene they think up that they find to be interesting. Then, if they think of an interesting idea for a following scene, they will write that one, and then another, and so on and so forth until they have a first draft, discovering what the story is along the way. Then, they will heavily revise what they have until they feel they have a shootable screenplay. They have noted that because of this, they will often get writers block around the mid-point of any given screenplay, and will begin another screenplay in the meantime in order to remain productive. For example, the entirety of Barton Fink was written while they were battling writers block with Millers Crossing , and the first 40 pages of The Big Lebowski was written while they were stuck with Barton Fink .
As of 2014, he and Joel Coen wrote four films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Fargo , No Country for Old Men , A Serious Man and True Grit . Of those, only No Country for Old Men is a winner in the category.
Both he and his brother Joel are huge fans of Stanley Kubrick.
Along with his brother Joel, edits all of the films they direct under the shared pseudonym "Roderick Jaynes." He has said that if "Jaynes" ever won an Academy Award for Best Editing, it would not be accepted by either of them and simply claimed by the Price-Waterhouse representative (who would presumably have it sent to one of them after the ceremony). In 1997, Joel and Ethan wrote a long article using the Jaynes alias as the reporters name, where "Jaynes" harshly criticized wannabe hauteur filmmakers and used the Coen brothers as the prime example of this negative trend.
[re origin of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) ] Ethan Coen We were in,the office and Joel said, "O. K.
Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy. .
