Joel Coen
Joel Coen
Joel David Coenand Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Their films include Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, True Grit, and Hail, Caesar!...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth29 November 1954
CountryUnited States of America
Maybe there should be less of a mystique around making movies. I just don't think that there's any real mystery there.
It's almost like a genre rule: Don't Open The Box.
We don't have any rules about how we depict violence, or how much violence is in a movie. It's a calibration on a case-by-case basis.
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.
The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.
These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.
Barton Fink got written very quickly, in about three weeks. I don't know what that means.
You see a moral in them? Do we have morals?
Sometimes, in certain stories, I think we know at the outset essentially what the tone is going to be, or it becomes important that we're groping toward some kind of story with a certain kind of tone that we both get somehow. But I don't think how that's combined with other elements is ever in any way overtly discussed.
The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere.
It's a funny thing because you look at the careers of other filmmakers, and you see them sort of slow down, and you realize, maybe this becomes harder to do as you get older. That's sort of a cautionary thing. I hope it doesn't happen to me.
I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out.