The Coen Brothers. Interviews

Publisher's Description

Joel and Ethan Coen (b. 1954, 1957) started their careers in obscurity on a shoestring budget cajoled from family and friends in Minneapolis. Working entirely outside the studio system, the Coen brothers scored an unlikely first success in 1984 with their postmodern noir film Blood Simple. Two decades and nearly a dozen movies later, the Coens are now among the best-known writer/directors in Hollywood, turning out major studio releases featuring such stars as George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Tom Hanks.

The Coens' films all share a distinctive, quirky ambience that critics have come to identify as "that Coen brothers feeling. " Tricky moving camera work, frequent use of the voiceover, homages to directors and cinematic genres, a fascination with unexpected and off-kilter violence, and omnipresent black humor are all defining elements of the Coens' cinematic world.

From such highly stylized movies as Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There to more mainstream but dark comedies such as Raising Arizona, Intolerable Cruelty, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coens are equally at home with existential despair and comic exuberance and are known for scripts packed with an obvious love for language. This collection of their most important interviews spans twenty years and is the most comprehensive published on the brothers.

Articles

3		Hal Hinson, Bloodlines
17		David Edelstein, Invasion of the Baby Snatchers
24		Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, Interview with Joel and Ethan Coen
36		Steven Levy, Shot by Shot
41		Jean-Pierre Coursodon, A Hat Blown by the Wind
46		Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, A Rock on the Beach
55		Jim Emerson, That Barton Fink Feeling: An Interview with the Brothers Coen
62		Tad Friend, Inside the Coen Heads
72		Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, Closer to Life than the Conventions of Cinema
81		David Bennun, This Is a True Story
84		Gary Susman, Making It Clear: The Coen Brothers
87		Doug Stone, The Coens Speak (Reluctantly)
90		Ray Pride, Coen Job
93		Andy Lowe, The Brothers Grim
100		Michel Ciment and Hubert Niogret, The Logic of Soft Drugs
109		Karen Jaehne, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and the Big Lebowski
113		David Bennun, The Coen Brothers
119		Nicholas Patterson, Gates of Ethan
127		Jonathan Romney, Double Vision
133		Jim Ridley, Brothers in Arms
137		Nathan Rabin, Joel and Ethan Coen
142		Terry Gross, Filmmaker Ethan Coen
149		Andrew Pulver, Pictures That Do the Talking
160		Gerald Peary, Joel and Ethan Coen
163		Kristine McKenna, Joel and Ethan Coen
188		Smriti Mundhra, Interview with Joel Coen
194		Dixie Reid, Stealing the Show: Tom hanks and the Coen Brothers Gang Up to Remake The Ladykillers
199		Peter Bradshaw, My Father Lived in Croydon

This book is cited in

Monica S. Cyrino and Meredith E. Safran (eds.), Classical myth on screen, New York, 2015