Written Interview: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott of the New York Times interview Joel and Ethan Coen. Here’s an exceprt about their writing process:

Can we talk a little bit about how you write? Are you locked in a room together?

Joel It’s always been the same. We don’t split it up. You know: “You write this scene. You write that.” There’s a lot of just sitting around talking ideas before we start writing anything. So there’s kind of a long period of that, and then we generally start at the beginning and just kind of start hammering the scenes out. We don’t outline stuff or any of that, although there are some movies where we kind of have a pretty good idea of the shape of it. Or we even know how it’s going to end when we start, and then others where we just have no idea whatsoever, and it goes where it goes. They don’t all — —

Ethan This one actually — —

Joel Don’t get finished. They get put aside for a while, you know.

Ethan The rule is: It goes where it goes, although in the case of this one, we kind of knew either at the beginning or near the very beginning, that it was going to circle back.

Who’s typing?

Ethan Usually me, because I type faster, but sometimes Joel. We’ll just talk the scene back and forth, and occasionally, one of us will sit down and say, “Oh, wait, I’ve got something.” If it’s an idea that consists of a few lines, an exchange, one of us will type without consulting the other.

Are you comfortable throwing out each other’s bad ideas?

Ethan Oh, sure, yeah.

Joel Perfectly comfortable, very comfortable. But you know, someone asked us once how we adapt novels, and Ethan said, “Joel holds the book open by the spine, while I retype it into the computer.”

For the rest of the interview, go here.

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