Ethan Coen

It is 1967 and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him since she has fallen in love with one of his more pompous colleagues. His domestic woes accumulate: his unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is shirking Hebrew school, and his daughter is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. Also a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation, thus putting in jeopardy Larry's chances for tenure at the university. As if all this wasn't enough, he is tormented by the sight of his beautiful next-door neighbor sunbathing nude--P. [4] of cover.

A serious man

Joel Coen

The Big Lebowski begins with a case of mistaken identity which escalates when Jeffrey Lebowski-alias The Dude-attempts to seek recompense for the despoliation of his ratty-ass little rug, and then finds himself entangled in a kidnapping caper as a bagman-a situation that goes from bad to worse due to the interference of his hapless bowling partners. In this film the Coen brothers have taken on the preoccupations of Raymond Chandler, but have given them a postmodern spin, while at the same time leaving Philip Marlowe's ethos intact as The Dude wanders through the fractured world of nineties L.A. trying to do the right thing. Like the award winning Fargo, The Big Lebowski is suffused with a droll humor and a verbal felicity that is as delightful as it is startling.

The Big Lebowski

A hapless private investigator who loses his hearing after having one ear bitten off, a maverick weights-and-measures man who gets pulled into a sinister blackmailing scheme by a seductive Japanese woman, a college kid so desperate to avoid an office job that he tries to break into boxing and organized crime: the characters in Gates of Eden grapple with their place in the world, trying to comprehend what fate has placed before them. With these stories -- sometimes heart-felt, sometimes brutal, always wildly entertaining -- Ethan Coen delivers everything you would expect from such an original imagination.

Stories

Gates of Eden

The Man who Wasn't There

These three short plays by Oscar-winning screenwriter Coen explore the theme of hell--both on earth and in the hereafter. Clever, provocative, and engaging, these plays showcase yet another talent from one of the most celebrated contemporary writers.

Almost an Evening

These four early works by the internationally lauded filmmaking team deal with the subject for which they are best known: corruption and crime in situations that combine the real and the surreal with the hilarious. Of the scripts included here, Barton Fink--an intense look at the psychological ruin of a New York playwright trying to make it in 1940s Hollywood--is a masterful culmination of these themes.

Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen: Collected Screenplays 1

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an American western anthology film written, directed, and produced by the Coen brothers. It stars Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, and Tom Waits. It premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2018, where it won the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay and is scheduled to be released November 16 on Netflix after a theatrical run. Six chapters each present a different story from the wild frontier. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs tells the story of a sharp-shooting songster. In Near Algodones, a wannabe bank robber gets his due and then some. Meal Ticket is a gothic tale about two weary travelling performers. All Gold Canyon is a story about a prospector mining for gold, while a woman finds an unexpected promise of love, along with a dose of life's cruel irony, on a wagon train across the prairies in The Gal Who Got Rattled. Finally, ghostly laughs haunt The Mortal Remains as a Lady rains judgment upon a motley crew of strangers undertaking a final carriage ride.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Collected interviews with the writer/directors whose films include Barton Fink, Raising Arizona, Fargo, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Interviews

The Coen Brothers

A provocative, humorous collection of poems by one of the movie-making "Coen Brothers" covers a wide array of bizarre topics, from Mamie Eisenhower in love to the poet's own battle against amphetamines. 25,000 first printing.

Poems

The Drunken Driver Has the Right of Way

From brilliantly funny and darkly surreal pastiche, to poignantly evoked small-town lives, the stories in Ethan Coen's outstanding debut collection are instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with the award-winning Coen Brothers' films. Yet at the same time they belong in the great tradition of American fiction writing. Peopled with mobsters and hicks, and peppered with sparkling dialogue, some are delicious send-ups of genre classics by authors such as Chandler and Hammett, while others are miniatures of private desperation drawn with a humour and tenderness which places them alongside the best work of Raymond Carver. Their great achievement, however, is that they are unmistakably the work of Ethan Coen, each one meticulously crafted, exhilaratingly imaginative, breathtakingly daring and hilariously funny. Ethan Coen's first venture into writing fiction is a triumph which will be welcomed as much by lovers of great fiction as by the Coen Brothers' legions of fans.

Digte. A remarkable range of poems that are funny, ribald, provocative, raw, and often touching

The Day the World Ends

Inside Llewyn Davis chronicles a struggling young folk singer, played by Oscar Isaacs, who arrives in Manhattan in 1961 and tries to navigate the treacherous waters of the the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, as well as having to deal with a disaffected girlfriend, his father's dementia, the suicide of his musical partner, and the loss of his friend's cat... Suffused with the music of the time, the film is an emotional journey inside the soul of Llewyn Davis.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Joel and Ethan Coen are among America's best-loved and most lauded independent filmmakers. With their latest work, O Brother, Where Art Though?, The Oscar-winning team returns to the period-piece films of their earlier career (Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy) and showcase once-again their pitch-perfect ear for hilarious and outrageous dialogue, as well as their penchant for the fantastic. Based on Homer's Odyssey, the movie stars George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, along with Coen-mainstay John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as fugitives from a chain gang who embark on a mystical and musical journey through 1930s Mississippi. History and allegory are expertly entwined as, along the way, the three escapees encounter a blind prophet, are tempted by sirens, do battle with a Cyclops (in the form of a one-eyed Klansman), fall in with George "Baby Face" Nelson on a bank heist, and cut a blues record with a young guitar prodigy who bears a striking resemblance to the real-life Robert Johnson.

O Brother, where Art Thou?

(Book). Quintessential Coen brothers fare but different. Inside Llewyn Davis has a certain kinship with Les Miserables . In it almost all the principal actors Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Justin Timberlake sing. While not quite a musical, Inside Llewyn Davis is built around full-length performances of folk songs that were heard in the grubby cafes of the Village in a year when Bob Dylan, who kind of, sort of shows up in the movie, had just appeared on the scene. Bob Dylan, Paul Clayton, the Rev. Reverend Gary Davis, Joni Mitchell, Tom Paxton and myriad other singers of the era are invoked in the film. Its story bounces through actual places like Gerde's, the Gaslight Cafe and the Gate of Horn in Chicago without explicitly portraying real artists or folk music powers like the impresario Albert Grossman. Working with the producer Scott Rudin, their collaborator on both True Grit and No Country for Old Men , the Coen Brothers shot the film in New York City and elsewhere last year and finished the movie at their own pace. They could have rushed it into the Oscar season but chose to bide their time. T Bone Burnett, who provided the old time music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? , also produced the music for Inside Llewyn Davis . Mr. Burnett has helped to re-create the brief flowering of a folk scene that in the early '60s made Washington Square and its environs an unlikely crossroads for musical influences from Appalachia, the Deep South, the Far West, New England almost anywhere but New York's neighborhoods, from which some of its heartiest practitioners, and Llewyn Davis, arrived.

Inside Llewyn Davis: The Screenplay

Director Joel Coen's and producer Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984, River Road Prods/Circle Releasing/Palace) is a contemporary noir thriller set in Texas. A taut, convoluted plot and imaginative direction made the independent release a word-of-mouth hit and established the Coen brothers' reputation for originality. Actors John Getz, Frances McDormand, and Dan Hedaya appear in the story in which a woman commits adultery, and her enraged husband hires a killer for revenge. Blackmail, violence, and mistaken assumptions lead to an edgy, exhilarating climax.

The Screenplay

Blood Simple

Woody Allen

Elaine May

THE STORIES: In TALKING CURE, Ethan Coen uncovers the sort of insanity that can only come from family. Elaine May explores the hilarity of passing in GEORGE IS DEAD. In HONEYMOON MOTEL, Woody Allen invites you to the sort of wedding day you won't forget.

Relatively Speaking

Stephen Lowenstein

Interviews with twenty acclaimed filmmakers--including Bary Levinson, Oliver Stone, Ang Lee, and Pedro Almodovar--reveal the directors' experiences working on their first film.

Twenty Celebrated Directors Talk about Their First Film

My First Movie

Set in the midst of the bleak midwinter snow drifts of the American Midwest, Fargo is a story of murder and mayhem. Jerry Lundegaard plots the kidnapping of his wife to rescue his precarious financial situation, but events career out of control when one of the perpetrators he has hired to do the job goes haywire. In a senseless universe, it falls to Marge Gunderson (chief of the Brainerd Police Department and the moral centre of the film) to set things to rights. Like the Coen brothers' auspicious debut feature Blood Simple, Fargo concerns itself with dirty deeds done for money, but the grimness of the tales is alleviated by the laconic humour with which the characters greet their fates. The intricacy of the plotting is executed with brillance, yet the writing also reveals humanity at its core. Fargo was honoured with the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay of 1996.

Fargo

The Big Lebowski begins with a case of mistaken identity which escalates when Jeffrey Lebowski - alias The Dude - attempts to seek recompense for the despoilation of his ratty-ass little rug, and then finds himself entangled in a kidnapping caper as a bagman - a situation that goes from bad to worse due to the interference of his hapless bowling partners. In The Big Lebowski the Coen brothers have taken on the preoccupations of Raymond Chandler, but have given them a postmodern spin, while at the same time leaving Philip Marlowe's ethos intact as The Dude wanders thorugh the fractured world of nineties LA trying to do the right thing. Like the award-winning Fargo, The Big Lebowski is suffused with a droll humour and a verbal felicity that is as delightful as it is startling.

Ethan Coen

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