Joel Coen - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography (Read)

Joel Coen - biography, date of birth, place of birth, filmography, clips, Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Actor.

Born November 29, 1954, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA - American screenwriter, director, producer and editor.

Joel Coen has a brother, Ethan Coen, and a younger sister.

At school age, Joel and Ethan made money mowing lawns on a Super-8 movie camera and began re-filming films that were broadcast on television. The brothers' first own original project was the amateur short film The Lumberjacks of the North, starring all of their community friends.

Brothers have graduated from St. Louis Park High School, then a four-year liberal arts college Simon's Rock Early College in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. After graduation, Joel entered New York University for a four-year film course. During his studies, he makes a half-hour black and white film Soundings (a sketch about a woman who, during intimacy with a deaf partner, fantasized aloud about sex with his best friend, eavesdropping on her from the next room). After graduating from university, Joel was hired as his assistant director and cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. During this time, Ethan was studying at the Philosophy Department of Princeton University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1979. His final work was the essay "Two Views on Wittgenstein's Late Philosophy."

In the early 1980s, Joel got a job as assistant editor for Edna Paul, who specialized in low-budget horror films. Soon, director Sam Raimi invited Paul's entire group to shoot his first full-length film, the horror film Evil Dead.

In 1984, the brothers wrote and produced their first joint film, Blood Simple. The operator was Barry Sonnenfeld mentioned above. Together they prepared a layout for a trailer, which allowed attracting an investor of $ 1.5 million.The action takes place in Texas (Joel Cohen admitted in an interview that the choice of location was influenced, among other things, by the availability of cheap foreign labor and the lack of control over it. use by trade unions). The film tells the story of a bar owner who hires a private detective to kill his wife and her lover. The film contains elements that indicate the Coens' future directorial style: respect for the traditions and standards of the genre (in this case, noir), unexpected plot twists that arise around a relatively simple story, black humor. The main female role of the film is played by Frances McDormand, who will later become the wife of Joel Cohen and star in many of the brothers' films. The first work of the directors was highly appreciated by critics.

During the same period, the Coen brothers, together with Sam Raimi, wrote the script for the film Crime Wave (1985). Two killers, insane cartoon characters, commit a contract murder. By coincidence, the accusation falls on the main character - Victor, who recalls the previous chain of events in the electric chair. Grossing $ 3,500 in its first weekend demonstrations, the film flopped at the box office and received the most negative reviews from critics.

The Coen brothers' next work was the 1988 film Raising Arizona. The story of a couple in love: ex-convict Huy (Nicolas Cage) and police officer Ed (Holly Hunter), who is unfortunately sterile. When a local trade tycoon appears on television with his five newborn twins and jokes that there are "more children than you can handle," Huy steals one of the boys. The film also stars Frances McDormand, John Goodman, William Forsyth and Randall "Tex" Cobb. The film - a comedy, a farce, has become a kind of opposite to the previous film by the Coen brothers "Blood Simple", performed in the noir style. The American Film Institute placed the film in the list of the 100 funniest American comedy films at 31st place.

In 1990, the Coen brothers released the crime drama Miller's Crossing, starring Albert Finney, Gabriel Byrne and John Turturro. The film tells about the hostility of gangster groups during the era of the prohibition in the United States. The film was highly praised by Time magazine, including it in the list of the 100 best films released on screens since the publication of this edition.

The next year, the directors released a film on the verge of black comedy and thriller "Barton Fink" (1991), which received a number of top-level cinematic awards, including two Cannes Film Festival awards and its grand prize, Palme d'Or. This was their first collaboration with cinematographer Roger Deakins over the next 15 years.

In 1994, the Coen brothers (again with Sam Raimi) released Hudsaker's Handy, an eccentric comedy stylized in the finest burlesque genre directed by Frank Capra, Howard Hawkes or Billy Wilder. Critics, however, saw nothing but a glossy aesthetic in the film. The film was not a commercial success at the box office.

A completely different situation developed with the 1996 crime thriller "Fargo". The hero of the film, experiencing serious financial problems, orders the kidnapping of his own wife so that her father can pay the ransom from his own savings. But the kidnappers deviate and the situation spirals out of control. The film was a commercial success: with a budget of $ 7 million, total revenues around the world in mid-2011 exceeded 60 million. Critics were almost unanimous in positive assessments: “For films like Fargo, I love cinema” (R. Ebert , Chicago Sun Times), "The Coens show maturity and skill ... Brilliant cast ..." (Peter Stuck, San Francisco Chronicle). The role of Marge Olmsted-Gunderson played by McDormand was recognized by AFI as the best in the corresponding category, the Coen brothers received an Oscar for Best Screenplay. In total, the film and the crew received 55 top cinematic awards.

In 1998 the movie "The Big Lebowski" was released.

The next film by the Coen brothers was "Oh, where are you, brother?" (2000) - the story of the travel and adventures of three escaped convicts in the United States during the Great Depression. In accordance with the opening credits, the film is based on Homer's Odyssey, although the directors themselves have not read the epic, they are familiar with it only from various film adaptations and used only a few storylines. The picture showed good results at the box office (over $ 70 million in fees with a budget of 26 million). Professional criticism was reserved and sympathetic. Negative reviews were mostly related to the statement that the film lacks integrity, the Coen brothers were unable to collect several scenes and sketches into a single work: "Each of the scenes is wonderful in its own way, but the film left me in uncertainty and dissatisfaction" (Roger Ebert, "Chicago Sun Times ").

Over the next six years, the Coen brothers released three feature-length films: the noir thriller The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), the romantic ironic comedy Unbearable Cruelty (2003), the black comedy Games of Gentlemen (2004) and one of the short films love stories in the almanac "Paris, I love you" (2006). If the first of the mentioned films of this period was awarded 23 prizes (plus 32 more nominations), the others remained outside the attention of the largest cinematic events and authoritative film critics. Moreover, some of them called the beginning of the 2000s a period of “stagnation” or idle time for directors: “Some films could not have been made, but the only way to understand this is to make them” (Some movies just don't need to get made - but the only way to find out is to make them, reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle).
The thriller based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy “No Country for Old Men” (2007) was adopted in a completely different way. A tough, multi-layered narration, devoid of the will of the authors of the musical series, almost instantly turned the picture into a cult film (95% positive out of 100% reviews on Rotten Tomatoes) and a movie classic (according to the classification of Empire magazine). The film received 98 top cinematic awards (not counting 48 more nominations), among which the most honorable are 3 BAFTA awards, 4 Oscars and 2 Golden Globes.

The Coen brothers continued their cinematic career with the crime comedy Burn After Reading (2007). In it, the directors create another world with "private manifestations of idiocy in a global context." At the same time, according to them, they do not put any political meanings into their film. “If someone reads them in our paintings, then we are not against it. But not for it either. "

As it happened before, directors change their atmosphere, styles, genres from film to film. The 2009 film "A Serious Man" is a drama with elements of black humor. The Coen brothers acknowledge the high degree of biographical character of the plot: “History does not exactly repeat our childhood. We tried to create the atmosphere that surrounded us in our small commune. We went to a Jewish school, studied Hebrew, we had a bar mitzvah, our father was a professor at a Midwestern University, we were surrounded by approximately such neighbors - all this is largely an autobiography. But if we talk about history, it is invented from beginning to end ”. Some critics accused the film of the lack of correct coverage of interethnic relations, the ethnic caricature of the characters, drawn with the directness characteristic of the Coen brothers, "reaching sadism."

On December 22, 2010 the premiere of the western "Iron Grip" took place, which became the highest-grossing film by the Coen brothers and one of the highest-grossing westerns in the history of cinema. The film was nominated for the Academy Award in 10 nominations, but did not win any of them, losing the main awards to the films The King's Speech! and "The Fighter".

In 2013, the Coen brothers staged their second musical tape in their careers - "Inside Lewin Davis", based on events from the life of the American folk musician of the 1960s Dave Van Ronk (1936-2002), blues guitarist, creator of the new folk scene -york district of Greenwich Village, where Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Joni Mitchell performed. All songs in the film were recorded live using a single instrument.

In 2016, the film "Long Live Caesar!" was released, which takes place in Hollywood in the 1950s. The plot is based on facts from the biography of Eddie Mannix, executive producer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and, concurrently, a "cleaner" - a man who hid certain details of the personal life of movie stars in order to protect the public image of the studio. The film was warmly received by critics and paid back its budget almost three times.

All Information About: Joel Coen - Biography, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Filmography.
Author: Jane Watson