Biography

Frequently casts Steve Buscemi (6 times), spouse Frances McDormand (5 times), Jon Polito (5 times), John Goodman (5 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

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).

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).

When an actor improvises a line on the set, he will almost invariably say something like, "That was great, but could you do it like it's written in the script?" Most Coen brothers films are the same (line for line) when released as they are on the page in the final draft of the script.

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) were written while they were stuck with Barton Fink (1991).

In the late 1970s, he had a brief marriage, that ended in divorce. His second wife Frances McDormand wears the wedding ring that originally was worn by his first wife, since she felt it shouldn't go to waste.

Directed 7 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Michael Lerner, Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, and Denzel Washington. McDormand and Bardem won Oscars for their performances in two of his movies.

Works so closely with his brother Ethan Coen that the two of them have been jokingly referred to as "The Two-Headed Director".

Frequently we are writing characters and we are thinking, "Wouldn't it be interesting to see such and such play this kind of a person?", and the character starts to grow out of that as you are writing it. It's a combination of things that you are making up and what you know about the actor.

It's a funny thing; people sometimes accuse us of condescending to our characters somehow -- that to me is kind of inexplicable.

[on filmmaking] I can almost set my watch by how I'm going to feel at different stages of the process. It's always identical, whether the movie ends up working or not. I think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic about how it's going to work. And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

I hate when people cry in movies. It's particularly disconcerting when you're sitting at a really awful movie and you hear people all around you sobbing and blowing their noses.

We've never considered our stuff either homage or spoof. Those are things other people call it, and it's always puzzled me that they do.