Biography for
Joel Coen

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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. Emmett Walsh (I)' (twice), Peter Stormare (twice), Richard Jenkins (twice), John Mahoney (twice), Tony Shalhoub (twice), Stephen Root (twice), 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).

Often has a certain phrase that is repeated throughout the movie or a specific scene.

Typically makes movies set during a specific time period in the past.

Films usually contain at least one fast-talking character.

Films often include characters or places with the stereotypes of theregions they take place in. The Mid-Western accents and snow-covered landscapes for Fargo (1996), the South Western accents and barren deserts of Arizona for Raising Arizona (1987), the Southern accents and dust-bowl landscape for_O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)_, Los Angeles accents and life-style in The Big Lebowski (1998), and the accents and cramped environments of Los Angeles in Barton Fink (1991).

His movies often have a victim of a crime who is completely unsympathetic (Fargo, Lebowski, Raising Arizona)

Men often explicitly suffer bizarre and bloody deaths or indignities in their films, but women are typically harmed off-screen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink).

The opening shot of quite a few movies show the landscape of the place the movie is set in, with a voice over. E.g. No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou.

Anecdotes

Adopted a baby named Pedro.

Gets credit for directing all of the Coen Brothers movies, but it is well known that both he and brother Ethan Coen direct their films together. They also write and produce their films together. However, this has changed since The Ladykillers (2004), and now they both receive credit for directing and producing.

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

Alumnus of Simon's Rock College, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, along with brother Ethan Coen. This is a fully-accredited college for students who typically enter at the age of 16 - before graduating high school.

He and brother Ethan Coen have had final cut on all of their films since Blood Simple. (1984), their debut film.

Ranked #88 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List with brother Ethan Coen. They had been ranked #92 in 2002.

Brother-in-law of Tricia Cooke.

Frequently includes kidnapping-plots in his films.

Often has a scene that takes place in dark areas with a sense of dark humor. In The Big Lebowski (1998), The Dude talks to Jeffery Lebowski in a dark room with fire; In O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Devil's henchmen capture Pete with thunder in the background; In Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Miles meets with Myerson in the dark room with only a glare of light showing Myerson's face; In Fargo (1996), Shep starts beating up Carl in a dim-lighted room.

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.

Resides in New York City with his family.

As his brother, he graduated from Simon's Rock Early College in Great Barrington, MA. He later attended New York University's undergraduate film program to finally graduate after four years there.

In his childhood, he saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Super-8 camera.

Born to Edward Coen, an economist at the University of Minnesota, and his wife Rita, an art historian at St. Cloud State University.

As of 2008 joined (along with his brother Ethan Coen) 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 (2007)'. The others are Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), 'James L Brooks' for Terms of Endearment (1983), Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather: Part II (1974), Billy Wilder for The Apartment (1960) and Leo McCarey for Going My Way (1944). James Cameron also won three Oscars for Titanic (1997) 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 (1961), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007). (Wise/Robbins and the Coens actually won the award).

Directed 4 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Michael Lerner, Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, and Javier Bardem. McDormand and Bardem won Oscars for their performances in one of his movies.

The first Coen brothers film where both he and brother Ethan Coen are given directing and producing credits was The Ladykillers (2004). They have shared these duties on all of their films, but Joel has always been listed as director and Ethan as producer.

Personal Quotes

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.

The bigger stars we've worked with have been without the movie-star vanities or meshugaas that you read about and dread. [George Clooney], for example, was the opposite. He has no entourage. He's a big movie star, but a nice guy.

[Ethan Coen] had a nightmare of one day finding me on the set of something like The Incredible Hulk (2008), wearing a gold chain and saying, "I've got to eat, don't I?"

[Ethan Coen] once described the way we worked together as: one of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat. That's why there needs to be two of us - otherwise he's gotta type one-handed. That's how you "collaborate" with someone else.

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