Product Description

Flamboyant visual style, richly conceived characters, crisp dialogue and brilliant casting - Joel and Ethan Coen have pulled off the ultimate balancing act. Despite having their movies financed and distributed by major studios, they have somehow managed to remain true independents, rejecting commercial cliches, and never giving up on their own fiercely idiosyncratic vision. From their startling noir debut, Blood Simple to the cons-on-the-run comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, all their movies reveal a distinctive stamp. In this first ever biography of the sibling film-makers, Ronald Bergan traces the brothers' Jewish roots, their beginnings as film geeks in the suburbs of Minneapolis, their battles to get their first feature made and released. It is a fascinating portrait of the most imaginative, original, successful writer/director filmmakers to have emerged in the last twenty years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #489841 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"Why do you want to write a biography of us ? ... we're boring" was Joel Coen's initial response to Ronald Bergan. He has a point. Choking on his kir in disbelief that they have never heard of Kieslowski, this former chronicler of the lives of Jean Renoir and Sergei Eisenstein might not seem ideally suited to writing about two fans of Doris Day musicals and the comedies of Cheech and Chong. That the book remains so readable is due to Bergan's style, highly critical but, like the films covered, irreverent bordering on rudeness. Never over-cerebral, Bergan has clearly done his research as he covers their output from the earliest remakes ("Lassie Come Home" as "Ed ... A Dog") to "O Brother Where Art Thou?" The brothers themselves, chain smokers who pepper their dialogue with "heh-heh"s, come across as Smart and Smarter. Joey Ramone lookalike Joel loves dog movies whereas Ethan is an outrageous sentimentalist. The Coen Brothers is not the ideal introduction for newcomers, nor for particularly sensitive fans, but for those who enjoyed, or were bemused by, Cheshire and Ashbrook's quirkier guide to the weird and wonderful Coen Brothers, this is a good follow up --Stephen Portlock

SCREENTRADE
'The background information on each film is stunning ... THE COEN BROTHERS is a must for any self-respecting Coen fan.'

From the Publisher
Reviews
'Well researched and entertaining' Financial Times

'Ronald Bergan brings out the good humour and eccentricity of the Coens and their films' The Economist

'Good on the techinical aspects, the author also meticulously details references' The Observer

'The best assessment to date, you'll discover all the relevant themes and variations in the life and work of this dynamic duo' Flicks

'The biogrpahy paints an interesting and comprehensive picture of the Coens and their work...essential reading' Hot Dog

Customer Reviews

Waste of a good subject
The Coens are among my favourite filmmakers and I was looking forward to learning a lot more about their films. Boy was I disappointed with this feeble book.

Bergan makes light of responses from the Coens that they would not be able to spend much time co-operating with him on this project. His jokey manner may have been an attempt at a double-bluff to conceal the fact that he simply didn't have the access required to produce a decent biography. It becomes rapidly evident that the vast majority of the book is culled from previous interviews and secondary sources. The result is patchy and superficial.

Ironically, the constantly self-regarding Bergan includes one section about how he was in a private bar with the Coens and that he would have tried harder to interview them if he'd known he was going to write this book. Aside from containing no information of any real interest (it's presumably there to indicate to the reader how important the author is), it also accidentally highlights the complete inadequacy of Bergan's research.

Alas, Bergan tries to make up for the lack of material by attempting the occasional analysis of the Coens' films, motivations and influences - a job for which he proves himself woefully inadequate. Most of the time his assertions are risibly contrived. Often, incapable of coming up with any cohesive idea, he resorts to unconvincing and highly tenous comparisons with other movies, seeming to be more interested in showing off his own film knowledge than in casting any light on the Coens' work. One gets the impression that Bergan doesn't actually understand the movies at all.

As if this wasn't bad enough, this is all presented with a fifth-form writing style that resorts all too often to peurile puns. Bergan is also fond of throwing in savage adjectives - for example, a director's work is described as *mindless* mainstream movies. While such editorialising might be forgiven if it added depth to what the author was saying, that certainly isn't the case here. More often than not, such dismissive terms are entirely gratuitous, having no relevance to what is being said. One suspects they are in there simply to indicate how brilliant Bergan thinks he is. Indeed, the whole book has a rather patronising tone.

What a waste.

fascinating insight into two of modern cinema's mavericks
Bergan knows his stuff. A biography veteran, here he follows the career of the Minnesotan pair, from trying to find a distributor for Blood Simple right up until O Brother Where Art Thou? Their films are patchy (I hated Fargo, but thought that Big Lebowski and Barton Fink were great) but as personalities, they're worth the attention. Bergan's stance is an intriguing one: sometimes he is very critical of their work but you get the feeling that he wouldn't devote his time to this if there wasn't a spark of admiration for them. He is a very perceptive writer and the academic material introduced here from other sources is very accessible. He manages to place them in today's cinema. They may have started in the indy sector but the fact that they can get stars of the box office clout of George Clooney and now Brad Pitt means that they are now part of Hollywood. Coen Brothers contains some interesting snippets and Bergan puts it all together with style and class.