Joel Coen Biography

Joel Coen is an American Filmmaker Born November 29, 1954 in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis.. His film range in many genres and styles. His most acclaimed works include Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), No Country for Old Men (2007), True Grit (2010), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013). He produces and directs his own movies. He graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

joel and ethan coen | joel coen and ethan coen | ethan coen joel coen

Joel Coen  November 29, 1954) and Ethan Coen (born September 21, 1957 jointly called the Coen brothers, both American filmmakers. Their films span several genres and designs, that they regularly subvert or parody. Their most acclaimed works embrace Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton stoolie (1991), Fargo (1996), the massive Lebowski (1998), No Country for previous Men (2007), True Grit (2010), and within Llewyn Davis (2013).
The brothers write, direct and turn out their films conjointly, though till The Ladykillers (2004) Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They typically alternate advertising for his or her screenplays whereas sharing piece of writing credits below the alias Roderick Jaynes. They have been appointed for thirteen Academy Awards along, and separately for one award every, winning Best Original book for Fargo and Best image, Best Director and Best custom-made book for No Country for previous Men. The couple conjointly won the Palme d’Or for Barton stoolie (1991).

Joel Coen Movies | Joel and Ethan Coen Movies

Joel Coen Books

Raising Arizona (St Martin’s Original Screenplay Series)
• by Joel Coen
Fargo
• by Joel Coen
Blood Simple: The Screenplay (St Martin’s Original Screenplay Series)
• by Joel Coen
The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film
• by Joel Coen
Barton Fink & Miller’s Crossing
• by Joel Coen
The Hudsucker Proxy
• by Joel Coen
The Man Who Wasn’t There
• by Joel Coen
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Faber and Faber Screenplays)
• by Joel Coen
The Big Lebowski
• by Joel Coen
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
• by Joel Coen

Frances Mcdormand and Joel coen | Frances McDormand Joel Coen

Frances McDormand is the wife to Coen. They married in the year 1984.

Joel Coen brothers

Joel David Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957), collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers.

Fargo Joel Coen

Fargo is a 1996 black comedy-crime film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Frances McDormand stars as Marge Gunderson, a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that ensue after a desperate car salesman (William H. Macy) hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell).

Joel Coen Quotes

We create monsters and then we can’t control them.
If the material is challenging, it forces you to challenge yourself when handling it.
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.

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Joel Coen Interview

Joel Coen News

Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen On Singing Cowboys And Working With Oxen

Adopted From wunc.org
published on  February 13, 2019
This is FRESH AIR. I’m David Bianculli, editor of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. In anticipation of the upcoming Academy Awards, we’ll be listening back to interviews with some of this year’s Oscar contenders. We’ll start with Joel and Ethan Coen, whose films include “Blood Simple,” “Barton Fink,” “Fargo,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, “No Country For Old Men,” “A Serious Man,” “Hail, Caesar!” and “True Grit.”
The Coen brothers are nominated for an Oscar this year for best adapted screenplay for their 2018 movie “The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.” It’s also up for best costume design. The film is an anthology of six stories, sometimes comic, involving staples of the Western genre – a singing cowboy, gunfights, a wagon train, stage coaches, hangings, a grizzled prospector panning for gold. But what happens within each story is not what you’d typically expect from a classic Western.
Let’s start with the opening voiceover from the first story in the film in which singing cowboy Buster Scruggs is riding through the desert on his horse. His hands are not on the reins. They’re wrapped around his guitar because he’s a singing cowboy. Buster Scruggs, played by Tim Blake Nelson, sings and introduces himself to us.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS”)
TIM BLAKE NELSON: (As Buster Scruggs, singing) Dan, can you see that big green tree where the water’s running free? And it’s waiting there for you and me.
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE NEIGHING)
NELSON: (As Buster Scruggs) Whoa. A song never fails to ease my mind out here in the West where the distances are great and the scenery monotonous. Additionally, my pleasing baritone seems to inspirit old Dan here and keep me in good heart during the day’s measure of hoof clops. Ain’t that right, Dan?
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE NEIGHING)
NELSON: (As Buster Scruggs) Maybe some of y’all have heard of me – Buster Scruggs, known to some as the San Saba songbird. I’ve got other handles, nicknames, appellations and cognomens. But this one here I don’t consider to be even halfway earned. Misanthrope? I don’t hate my fellow man, even when he’s tiresome and surly and tries to cheat at poker. I figure that’s just the human material, and him that finds any cause for anger and dismay is just a fool for expecting better. Ain’t that right, Dan?
(SOUNDBITE OF HORSE NEIGHING)
TERRY GROSS, BYLINE: Joel and Ethan Coen, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thanks for coming back on our show (laughter). So Westerns usually end with the surviving good guys vanquishing the bad guys and restoring order to the town. But your stories don’t end that way in this Western anthology. Death can come suddenly no matter who you are. Did you ever ask yourself while you were writing and directing it if you think you might have survived living in the Old West – like, how…
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: …How long you think you would’ve lasted?
(LAUGHTER)
JOEL COEN: We just barely survived living in the Midwest.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: That’s funny. So each story is told as if it were a short story from a collection of Western stories. In one of the stories, it’s set in a stagecoach. And we slowly – it’s like a series of monologues within the stagecoach in which each character tells us something about who they are and what they believe. And one of the characters played by Brendan Gleeson – without giving much away about who they really are, one of the characters played by Brendan Gleeson sings a version of the “Streets Of Laredo” that I’ve never heard before.
The lyric I’m familiar with is the song set in the Old West where the guy singing the song sees a young cowboy in the streets of Laredo whose wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay. And the young cowboy explains that he’s done wrong. He’s been shot in the chest, and he knows he’s dying. And he instructs the other man how he wants to be buried and what to tell his mother. Gleeson sings a different version of it. This version is sung by a man killed by his lover. So I just want to play some of that song. So this is Brendan Gleeson.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS”)
BRENDAN GLEESON: (As Irishman, singing) As I was a walking down by the Lock, as I was walking one morning of late, who should I spy but my old dear comrade wrapped up in flannel – so hard is his fate. I boldly stepped up to and kindly did ask him, why are you wrapped in flannel so white? My body is injured and sadly disordered all by a young woman, my own heart’s delight. Oh, had she but told me when she disordered me, had she but told me of it at the time, I might have got salts or pills of white mercury. But now I’m cut down in the height of my prime.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)
GROSS: I think that’s pretty beautiful. Did you know he could sing?
J. COEN: No. We sent him this song probably a month or two before we started shooting, wasn’t it?
ETHAN COEN: Yeah, well…
J. COEN: And said, you know, take a crack at this. And Brendan sent it back, and we thought, oh, beautiful. That’s the original – well, I don’t know about the original. These are – you know, these are, like, folk songs. That ballad goes way back. That’s an early version of that song about a man who is – well, it’s about a man whose lover gives him a venereal disease. And he does have it.
GROSS: The use of the word disordered is so interesting in it. Like, what does he say? She disordered my body or (laughter)…
J. COEN: Had she but told me before she disordered me…
GROSS: Yeah, that’s…
J. COEN: …I might have got pills – salts or pills of white mercury.
GROSS: Right. I didn’t realize it was about syphilis or some STD.
J. COEN: Yeah, it’s about syphilis.
GROSS: Oh, yeah. I was trying to figure out what the white mercury pills were about. Like, those are not pills we take anymore.
(LAUGHTER)
J. COEN: Right, other ways of treating syphilis.
GROSS: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and you bookend the whole movie with an instrumental version of the “Streets Of Laredo.” So it is one of, like, the classic death songs about the Old West. Is that why you chose it? Because there is…
J. COEN: Yeah.
GROSS: …So much death in the movie.
J. COEN: Yeah, it’s a, you know, beautiful elegiac song about death. And it’s familiar to almost everyone. At least the melody is. But it was interesting to us to, you know, have it make its appearance in the movie, at least when you hear this song, with lyrics that people weren’t familiar with and that probably were more appropriate to the period.
GROSS: OK, stupid question. Did you ever hear the Allan Sherman parody version of “Streets Of Laredo”…
J. COEN: Of course.
GROSS: …Called “Streets Of Miami?” It’s really horrible.
(LAUGHTER)
E. COEN: We were really big on Allan Sherman.
(LAUGHTER)
J. COEN: Yes, he was a absolute giant in our youth.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Do you remember the lyrics?
J. COEN: Vaguely.
E. COEN: I don’t remember the “Streets Of Miami” very – no, not really.
GROSS: He stays at the Fontainebleau. He’s (laughter) – the Fontainebleau hotel. He’s taking a trip with his – instead of, like, a sidekick or something, it’s his, like, partner, Sammy. It has the line – and paid to the firm $60 a day. No, no. I mean charged to the firm $60 a day…
J. COEN: (Laughter) Charged $60 a day.
GROSS: …’Cause he’s expensing the trip (laughter). So another story I want to talk about from your film takes place on a wagon train. And that’s another trope of Westerns. Why did you want to do a wagon train story?
J. COEN: I think it really was our sort of, at a certain point, rummaging around in the Western genre thinking, well, we haven’t, you know – in thinking about the sort of subgenres – well, we haven’t done a wagon train movie, or we haven’t done a stagecoach movie; that might be interesting. So we came up with that. I have to say that it might’ve been a good idea on paper. But when we discovered – when we went out to shoot this wagon train movie, and most of it was shot over about a month in Western Nebraska, we realized it was just an incredible pain.
GROSS: Well, sure, ’cause you have, like, nearly – it looks like, like, a mile of wagons with people walking alongside of them. And there’s like – there’s horses and oxen. And it’s like, oh, wow (laughter).
J. COEN: Yeah, and the problem is that you have, you know, essentially, sort of a half-a-mile long chain of wagons. And the camera’s in a certain position. And when you say action, the first wagon moves. And 10 minutes later…
GROSS: (Laughter).
J. COEN: …The last wagon can start moving. And you’ve finally got everything going together, and then one oxen team will decide to cut sharply over to the right and ruin the shot. So you then have a choice, which is to reposition all of the wagons back where they were in relationship to the camera position, which will take an hour or so, or move the camera back and reposition the wagons but in a not as beautiful camera position for the shot. And this was, you know, over and over and over.
GROSS: Well, I remember after we talked about your movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” where there was a cat who was a co-star of the film. You said you would never work with a cat again. And so now you’ve put yourself in the position with this film of working with, like, oxen and horses, a dog. There’s an owl.
J. COEN: Yeah, but no cats.
GROSS: There’s (laughter) – but it seems to me like you set yourself up for trouble.
J. COEN: Yes, we did.
GROSS: Had you forgotten how hard it was just to work with a cat?
E. COEN: The problem is when you’re writing it, it’s so easy to write. So you just go, OK, you know, wagon train.
J. COEN: Yeah. There are 20 wagons. It’s easy to write.
E. COEN: Yeah…
GROSS: How many wranglers did you have working on this?
E. COEN: Many. I don’t even – you know, it varied. And the Nebraska thing – there were wranglers for every team and every few horses. But they’re great. But the animals are – sadly, they’re just animals. They – you know – sometimes they play ball, and sometimes they don’t.
J. COEN: What did the oxen wrangler say to you at one point?
E. COEN: Oh, Travis, the oxen wrangler – great guy. I – but I – you know. So I asked him if the oxen could – I don’t know what it was – come to a mark and stop or something. And he – it was something that seemed kind of simple to me. And he rolled his eyes with a kind of silent idiot look. And he said, you know, driving oxen is not as self-evident as people think it is.
GROSS: (Laughter).
E. COEN: And I thought, man, that’s – yeah. Why should that be different than anything else on a movie?

Note: This biography is based on the available information as of 2023, and real-time updates or developments are being updated by our editorial team.