Ethan Coen

Overview

Born
September 21, 1957 · Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Birth name
Ethan Jesse Coen
Height
5′ 8″ (1.73 m)

Biography

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Frequently casts Steve Buscemi (6 times), Frances McDormand (5 times), Jon Polito (5 times), John Goodman (4 times), John Turturro (4 times), George Clooney (3 times), Michael Badalucco (3 times), Charles Durning (twice), M. Emmet Walsh (twice), Peter Stormare (twice), Richard Jenkins (twice), John Mahoney (twice), Tony Shalhoub (twice), Stephen Root (4 times), and Billy Bob Thornton (twice).
References to the films of Stanley Kubrick
Films often center around or include a botched crime
Often creates at least one lengthy sequence in most of his films where only music plays as a major event unfolds, i.e Raising Arizona (1987) when Nicolas Cage is being chased after robbing a store. Also sequences in Miller's Crossing (1990), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), and Fargo (1996).
The Coens frequently focus on round spinning objects: hat in Miller's Crossing (1990), bowling balls and tumble-weed in The Big Lebowski (1998), hair pomade tins in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), UFO and a car wheel in The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) ...or the fans in Blood Simple (1984).

Trivia

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 writer's 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 (1991) was written while they were battling writer's block with Miller's Crossing (1990), and the first 40 pages of The Big Lebowski (1998) was written while they were stuck with Barton Fink (1991).
Both he and his brother Joel are huge fans of Stanley Kubrick.
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".
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.

Quotes

It's easy to offend people. People get uncomfortable, for instance, when the main character in a movie is not sympathetic in a Hollywood formula way. Our movies are loaded with things that aren't to everyone's taste. On the other hand, there's a scene in [O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)] where a frog gets squished that everyone seems to like. It's all right to do the frog squishing.
We aren't the grandfathers of any movement. In the 1980s, the so-called indie film movement was a media creation. What I found irritating is that 'independent' became an encomium. If it was independent, it was supposed to be good, and studio films were bad. Obviously, there are bad independent films and good studio films.
The movie people let us play in the corner of the sandbox and leave us alone. We're happy here.
The awards put a movie on people's radars. Festivals are good, even though the idea of putting movies in competitions -- this one is the best this, that one is the best that -- is ridiculous.
[re origin of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)] Ethan Coen We were in the office and Joel said, "O.K., suppose Dave Van Ronk gets beat up outside of Gerde's Folk City. That's the beginning of a movie. [Joel Coen adds:] It was an idea we kept coming back to. We were thinking 1961 is interesting, because it's the scene that [Bob] Dylan came into, not the one he created or transformed, because people know more about that. Dylan once said something - and I'm paraphrasing him - "Really, all I wanted is to be as big as Dave Van Ronk." That's how limited that scene was, in terms of the people in the broader culture. [Ethan:]...We did start thinking about Dave Van Ronk, and in fact read his memoir, which is kind of great, "The Mayor of Macdougal Street." But the movie's not about Dave Van Ronk, although Oscar [Isaac], the character, has his kind of repertoire. It's his music. It's a fictional character we gave his music to.