Coen Brothers Quotes

I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.

I don't think every movie should be in 3D. I hope the Coen brothers don't do their next movie in 3D. I don't think they have any plans to.

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do.

The Coen Brothers, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro have really made something of themselves and impacted people. I'd love to work with them sometime, too.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

Look at the Coen brothers. All their minor characters are as interesting as their protagonists. If the smaller characters are well-written, the whole world of the film becomes enriched. It's not the size of the thing, but the detail.

I'm crazy about the Coen brothers, I'm crazy about Sean Penn. I love the usual suspects like Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and people like that.

Making movies is never going to get better than working on a Coen brothers project.

I don't know of an actor that the Coen brothers would come to and say, "Hey, I've got a movie for you to be in, if you want to do it," that would say, "No." That's the truth.

In fact, one of the funny stories from that set [of Hail, Caesar!] is we were shooting my scene, and around lunchtime, Terrence Malick shows up on set. He was uninvited and no one knew who he was. But I knew, just looking at him. I was like, "Holy moley, that's Terrence Malick!" So I went and told the PA, "Hey, Terrence Malick is here, and I think he wants to see the Coen brothers. He wants to talk to Joel and Ethan." He just showed up unannounced, uninvited, and I guess they spent their lunch hour with him.

You can do weird things on TV - there are happy stories, sad stories, dark stories. But with a movie, it always has to end satisfying. Unless you're the Coen brothers, and it ends with somebody getting shot in the head.

[The Coen brothers] hire the same people over and over again, so there's a shorthand between all of the people they're working with.

It feels like you're being invited into a kind of community [working with the Coen brothers].

It was easy and fun [filming in Hail, Caesar!], and I think it's easy to be intimidated by the Coen brothers, because they're quiet. They don't heap praise, especially upon themselves. It's not like they're walking around thinking they're the greatest thing on Earth.

Everyone that works under the Coen brothers , in every department - makeup, hair, production design, wardrobe, so on and so forth, grip, lighting, tech, everything - they're the best. So to be on a set when you're working with the very best in the industry was a real privilege.

Their way of working [the Coen brothers] is always kept pretty mysterious. I was so curious to see how they make these movies. It was just such a joy - they seem to have so much fun making their movies.

Nobody knows anybody. Not that well.

Obviously I would love to work with all these great directors like the Coen Brothers, Tarantino. Robert Rodriguez is a dream director of mine.

As a director, I do very few takes, because I feel like you hire the right actor and they'll do the job right. And the directors that I've worked with and had the best luck with - Jason and [ Steven] Soderbergh and the Coen brothers - all have been that kind of director.

Coen brothers movies are not always what life looks like but it's definitely what life feels like.

And they're [Coen brothers] so smart, they're so witty, they have such an extraordinary way of communicating with an audience in a such a clean way - with just a few lines or just a gesture from a character, they say so much.

The Coen brothers said something that helped me, "When you put the book down, you have a certain feeling, a certain understanding. That's what they need to feel when they walk out of the theater. That's your job, to literally put this book on film, you won't make a good movie, you'll do no service to anyone.

I don't believe in director's cuts where you make things longer. The coolest thing was when the Coen brothers did a director's cut of 'Blood Simple,' and they made it shorter.

I always wished there was somebody like the Coen Brothers and they appeared. And so yeah, my favorite role that I've ever done was in The Man Who Wasn't There. That's my very favorite character I've ever played.

I always say, I'm certain I changed 'Watchmen' less than the Coen brothers changed 'No Country for Old Men.' I'm certain of it. But you don't hear the Cormac McCarthy fans, like, up in arms about it. They should be. It's like an amazing Pulitzer Prize-winning book.

Everything the Coen brothers do is brilliant.

Same with the Coen brothers and Warren [Beatty]. And then slowly you get to know each one of them as a person, and that becomes a kind of separate entity, where you just know the human being.

I'm not a very efficient filmmaker. There's a lot of guys, filmmakers like the Coen Brothers who shoot a whole movie and maybe don't use 12 setups. I'm in awe of people like that; I'm just not that guy.

There are movies that I love tonally, that I would love to emulate. Anything from Wes Anderson or the Coen brothers is right in my wheelhouse, as something that I would aspire to. I love that kind of indie, fun, colorful, funny, sweet, heartfelt but dark film.

That experience [in Hail, Caesar! ] ruined me for all future experiences, because the Coen brothers are the best. They're arguably the greatest of all time, if there is such a thing.

There are some filmmakers like the Coen brothers that are very precise. They make shooting boards, they do it shot by shot, and they follow every single line in their own script. They make amazing movies, and I admire them so much, but I can't do that. I have no idea how the movie will exactly be. While shooting, I just try to create an accident that I don't control very well - grabbing things from different sources and ideas, and then having a sensation somewhere that it will make sense.

I am a big fan of the Coen Brothers; I like their kind of absurd, dark approach.

Anything that is absurd I see as a Coen brothers' influence! The Coen brothers are my favorite people period.