The Coen Brothers
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Notable Festivals: Cannes (Best Director), Stockholm, San Sebastian Academy Award Wins: Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay Inducted Into the National Film Registry: 2006 In 1996, directors Joel and Ethan Coen achieved their first mainstream success story with a project that would take them back to their homeland: the snow covered sprawl of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their quirky…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes (In Competition) Ever since they first started working together on 1981’s THE EVIL DEAD, the Coens and fellow director Sam Raimi had endeavored to write an ambitious screenplay about corporate fatcats and towering Gotham spires they called THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. They had completed the screenplay as early as 1984, and tried…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes (Palm d’Or, Best Director, Best Actor) As mentioned before, the Coen Brothers hit something of a mental block while writing MILLER’S CROSSING, so they stepped away from it and traveled to New York and for 3 weeks, where they hammered out a new story intended as a vehicle for their MILLER’S CROSSING…
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Notable Festivals: San Sebastian (Best Director) The Coens’ third feature film, MILLER’S CROSSING, would up the ante in nearly every department to become their most ambitious film to date. Their infamously labyrinthine gangland tale about shifting loyalties and reckless violence pulled inspiration from a variety of sources like Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1961), Sergio Leone’s A…
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Notable Festivals: Cannes (Out of Competition) For their follow-up, the Coens approached Circle Films with a long-gestating script of theirs titled “The Hudsucker Proxy”. The anticipated budget proved too high for Circle to reasonably cover, however, so the Coens turned their attention to a much smaller and more realistic idea. Influenced by the madcap capers…
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Notable Festivals: Toronto, Sundance (Grand Jury Prize), New York Independent Spirit Awards: Best Director, Best Male Lead My first experience with a Coen Brothers film was 1998’s THE BIG LEBOWSKI. I must have been somewhere around 17 or 18 at the time, and when I saw it, the film itself had already been out for…