A potted guide to the Coen brothers
The Coen brothers have remained remarkably consistent since making their debut, Blood Simple, in 1984. That film highlighted a quirky, jet-black humour and a willingness to turn standard stories on their heads. Nearly 20 years later, they haven't lost their sardonic wit and their desire to mess with cinema's classic stories. Blood Simple is an oddball film noir which doesn't go quite where you'd expect it to.
Like the films which followed, it's very violent. 'Violence means drama,' says Joel. That film was witty, but the follow-up, 1987's Raising Arizona, was downright hilarious. It featured Nicolas Cage in top form as a petty criminal who kidnaps a child because his wife Holly Hunter can't have one. The gags are frantic, and Cage is off his head as the well-meaning, would-be adoptive father. Who could forget the hold-up in which he steals nappies for his new kid?
The subsequent film, Miller's Crossing, is their masterpiece. This gangster drama becomes so abstract that it needs at least two viewings to figure it out. Critics once asked the Coens about the metaphysical symbolism of a scene in which a hat listlessly blows through a forest. They replied that they just liked to watch hats blowing listlessly through forests.
The Coens went downbeat for 1991's less successful Barton Fink, a claustrophobic story about a screenwriter (John Turturro) who moves into a shady hotel in 1940s Hollywood. Packed with movie references, the film has its fair share of plot twists, and is fuelled by a sinister performance from John Goodman. Then came The Hudsucker Proxy, a kind of play on Howard Hughes' 1931 newsroom drama The Front Page, in which Jennifer Jason Leigh plays a reporter who just won't stop talking. 'We do like our characters to talk a lot,' says Joel.
Fargo, which features a standout performance by Joel's partner Frances McDormand, is their most popular film. Like a funny Twin Peaks, the film probes the darker side of small-town life. The jokes are sharp - and occasionally grisly. 'We don't go out to antagonise anyone with our humour, but there are certain things that if we think they're funny, we'll put them in,' says Joel. 'We don't expect everyone to like everything.'
The Big Lebowski stars Jeff Bridges in a slightly bitter Los Angeles story: 'LA interests us as outsiders,' say the New York-based brothers. O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn't There were both recent critical hits. Joel is usually credited as writer/director, and Ethan as producer/writer, but in reality they share many roles. 'It's bad taste to be credited too many times,' says Ethan. Watch out for the name Roderick Jaynes in the credits - this is the brothers' pseudonym. Roderick, claim the brothers, is nearly 100 and 'the world's foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes'.