The mountain music... is compelling music in its own right, harking back to a time when music was a part of everyday life and not something performed by celebrities.
Ethan Coen
Don't bang your head against the wall about what you can't do.
I don't know we have a method. We show up at the office. Is that a method? That's about the extent to which it's been formalized, asystematised. We show up at the office and talk, talk a scene through.
Two heads are better than none.
What is striking in Minnesota is the invisible horizon line. On a grey day, when there's snow on the ground, the sky and the ground are one tone. Everyone appears to be hanging in mid-air.
You don't go around thinking about how characters in a movie, in the stories you make up, relate to people in general.
Whenever you're specific with ethnicity or religion, people find reason to take offence.
Being non-commercial is never an ambition. Movies come together at different points for fortuitous reasons. You do them as you get the opportunity, as opposed to doing them when you choose to or design to.
'The Big Lebowski' was something we wrote for Jeff Bridges, and we set it aside for a couple of years because he wasn't available.
Dave Van Ronk is not an obscure figure. He's the biggest figure on an obscure scene, playing a kind of niche music that we knew and liked.
In 'True Grit,' we had a vulture, a trained vulture... that was a pain and that was - even by vulture standards - probably a stupid vulture, and that was frustrating.
Barton Fink is just too self-important as an artist to get much sympathy.
It was never an ambition to grow up and win an Academy Award, so when it happens, you go, 'Weird!'
We don't outline, so we don't have prospective tasks to divide up. It's just, we start at the beginning and talk the first scene through, write it up, proceed to the next.
Mainstream movies used to be more adventurous because people went to them.
A writer, by definition, is pathetic.
It's more interesting for me as an audience member to see a movie about a loser.
We do worry that we might be making something we've made before. It's important that we make something we've never made before.
Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.
Of course, 'True Grit' is a Western, but we never considered our film a classical Western and honestly never thought about genre at all. We didn't talk about John Ford or Sergio Leone, even though we like their films. Really, we were driven only by our enthusiasm for Charles Portis's book.
We wouldn't have done it if we didn't think we could have fun with it.
Like any kind of writing, there are good days and frustrating days. But even frustrating days can be rewarding sometimes.
It's important to tell the story you're telling in the right way, which might involve black people or people of whatever heritage or ethnicity - or it might not.
We're not big on taste. And actually, if you don't pander to undue sensitivities, then it ends up usually not being much of a problem.
We tend to do period stuff because it helps make it one step removed from boring everyday reality.
We haven't had to defend anything to anybody.
I have never had feeling in my toes. My uncle, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, once told me in confidence he had the same syndrome, leading me to believe it is genetic.
That cowboy look - the hat and the bandana - that's not a fashion statement. That clothing is purely practical.
'I Love You, Man' was kind of funny.
I mean, Joel talks to the actors more than I do and I probably do production stuff a little more than he does.
There is some pleasure in doing a movie and problem solving on a specific movie and getting a movie made, but once they are done, we don't look at them again, much less relate one to another.
It's tough being a Jew.
All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.
That's interesting: people deriving their identities from their music.
I think some superstars feel they get trapped in their established screen persona over and over again. That's what they get hired to do.
You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.
When the movie's done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.
There aren't reasons why you like this song or this piece of music, or don't like it. It's just, it's either right or wrong, you know?
It's not that I don't like TV. It's alien to me. I haven't watched a television show in decades.
People respond to real problems from the heart.
There's something strange - not in a bad way - about going back to where you grew up or recreating where you grew up. It's strange and stimulating.
We loved the language in Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country,' which is really about the region, while in 'True Grit' it's more about period: people did speak more formally and floridly.
Whatever faith you have, you have that crisis: what am I doing?
When you're younger, you kind of assume you'll be fine at whatever. Then you get older, and you're either unsuccessful and you wonder why, or you're successful and you wonder why.
'Once Upon a Time in the West' is a great movie.
Midwestern Jews is a different community, is a different thing than New York Jews, L.A. Jews. It's just different. It's the whole Midwestern thing.
Sergio Leone has this weird western opera thing.
We used to watch the muscle movies on Saturday matinees, such as 'Hercules Unchained.' Then we'd go outside and do a remake of it.
Sometimes you can just hear the actor in the language.
'Barton Fink' owed something to Roman Polanski. As a director, he always goes beyond the obvious narrative drift.
