Ethan Coen Net Worth

Ethan Coen's Quotes

• It's easy to offend people. People get uncomfortable, for instance, when the main character in a movie is not sympathetic in a Hollywood formula way. Our movies are loaded with things that aren't to everyone's taste. On the other hand, there's a scene in [O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)] where a frog gets squished that everyone seems to like. It's all right to do the frog squishing.
• We aren't the grandfathers of any movement. In the 1980s, the so-called indie film movement was a media creation. What I found irritating is that 'independent' became an encomium. If it was independent, it was supposed to be good, and studio films were bad. Obviously, there are bad independent films and good studio films.
• The movie people let us play in the corner of the sandbox and leave us alone. We're happy here.
• The awards put a movie on people's radars. Festivals are good, even though the idea of putting movies in competitions -- this one is the best this, that one is the best that -- is ridiculous.
• [re origin of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)] Ethan Coen We were in the office and Joel said, "O.K., suppose Dave Van Ronk gets beat up outside of Gerde's Folk City. That's the beginning of a movie. [Joel Coen adds:] It was an idea we kept coming back to. We were thinking 1961 is interesting, because it's the scene that [Bob] Dylan came into, not the one he created or transformed, because people know more about that. Dylan once said something - and I'm paraphrasing him - "Really, all I wanted is to be as big as Dave Van Ronk." That's how limited that scene was, in terms of the people in the broader culture. [Ethan:]...We did start thinking about Dave Van Ronk, and in fact read his memoir, which is kind of great, "The Mayor of Macdougal Street." But the movie's not about Dave Van Ronk, although Oscar [Isaac], the character, has his kind of repertoire. It's his music. It's a fictional character we gave his music to.

Interesting Facts about Ethan Coen

1. Brother of Joel Coen.
2. Graduated from Princeton University, where he once tried to explain a missed deadline by saying that he had lost one of his arms during a hunting accident.
3. Works so closely with his brother Joel Coen that the two of them have been jokingly referred to as "The Two-Headed Director".
4. Alumnus of Simon's Rock College, Great Barrington, MA, with brother Joel Coen. This is a fully-accredited college for students who typically enter at age 16 - before graduating high school.
5. Ranked #88 in Premiere's 2003 annual Power 100 List with brother Joel Coen. They had been ranked #92 in 2002.
6. Brother-in-law of Frances McDormand.
7. He and brother Joel Coen have had final cut on all of their films since Blood Simple (1984), their debut film.
8. Frequently includes kidnapping plots in his films.
9. Has used the character name of Marva Munson in both of his past two films. First, in Intolerable Cruelty (2003) (Judge Marva Munson) and secondly, in The Ladykillers (2004) (Marva Munson).
10. Worked as a statistical clerk at Macy's before setting off to make Blood Simple (1984).
11. He (along with his brother Joel Coen) is part of the prestigious group of individuals to have won Oscars for writing, directing and producing in the same year, for the film No Country for Old Men (2007). The others are Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983), Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather: Part II (1974), Billy Wilder for The Apartment (1960) and Leo McCarey for Going My Way (1944), and Alejandro G. Iñárritu for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). James Cameron also won three Oscars for Titanic (1997) but they were for directing, producing and editing.
12. Only three times in Academy Award history have director-collaborators been nominated for Best Directing Oscars: Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story (1961), Warren Beatty and Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men (2007). (Wise/Robbins and the Coens actually won the award).
13. The first Coen brothers film where both he and brother Joel Coen are given directing and producing credits was The Ladykillers (2004). They have shared these duties on all of their films, but Joel has always been listed as director and Ethan as producer.
14. Has a younger sister named Deborah, who is a psychiatrist.
15. Was briefly married to a woman named Hillary in 1985. Has two children, a son Buster Jacob Coen and a daughter Dusty, with current wife Tricia Cooke.
16. His mother, Rena Neumann Coen, died of kidney disease in 2001.
17. Along with his brother Joel, has directed six actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Michael Lerner, Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Javier Bardem, Jeff Bridges, and Hailee Steinfeld. McDormand and Bardem each won Oscars for performances in their separate movies.
18. The Coen Brothers are noted for their unusual writing process of not only eschewing outlines, but of not even concerning themselves what their story is about or who their characters are before beginning to write their screenplays. They will simply begin writing any scene they think up that they find to be interesting. Then, if they think of an interesting idea for a following scene, they will write that one, and then another, and so on and so forth until they have a first draft, discovering what the story is along the way. Then, they will heavily revise what they have until they feel they have a shootable screenplay. They have noted that because of this, they will often get writer's block around the mid-point of any given screenplay, and will begin another screenplay in the meantime in order to remain productive. For example, the entirety of Barton Fink (1991) was written while they were battling writer's block with Miller's Crossing (1990), and the first 40 pages of The Big Lebowski (1998) was written while they were stuck with Barton Fink (1991).
19. As of 2018, he and Joel Coen wrote five films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009),True Grit (2010) and Bridge of Spies (2015). Of those, only No Country for Old Men (2007) is a winner in the category.
20. Both he and his brother Joel are huge fans of Stanley Kubrick.