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Home , Barry Sonnenfeld, Billy Bob Thornton, Blood Simple, Carter Burwell, Frances McDormand, Jennifer Jason Leigh

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART SPOTLIGHTS FILMMAKING PARTNERS JOEL AND ETHAN COEN DURING THE MONTH OF AUGUST IN ONGOING EXHIBITION FROM THE COLLECTION

Nine Films from to No Country for Old Men Feature Coens' Core Team of Collaborators

Collaborations In The Collection: Joel And Ethan Coen August 2–28, 2008 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters

New York, July 16, 2008—The Museum of Modern Art showcases the genre-bending films of brothers Joel and Ethan Coen from August 2 through 28, 2008, as part of Collaborations in the Collection, an initiative begun in 2007 to highlight collaborative relationships in cinema that have forged dynamic and memorable films. This ongoing exhibition, drawn from the 22,000 film titles in the Museum’s collection, samples a wide range of classic and contemporary film collaborations, both well-known and rarely noticed. Collaborations in the Collection is organized by Jenny He, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art. Joel and Ethan Coen, whose partnership is one of the most prominent filmmaking collaborations in contemporary cinema, have produced such award-winning films as (1991) and the Academy Award–winning No Country for Old Men (2007). The brothers go beyond writing and directing to also share producing and editing responsibilities, although they frequently go uncredited or use pseudonyms. In addition to collaborating with each other, the Coens repeatedly work with the same (, , Frances McDormand, , ); casting directors (Donna Isaacson, John Lyons, Ellen Chenoweth); (, ); composer (); costume designers (Richard Hornung, ); editor (Roderick Jaynes, a pseudonym for the duo); (Dennis Gassner); and sound editor (Skip Lievsay). Collaborating with the same actors and crew allows the Coens to embark on new collective challenges. Beginning with the dark crime feature Blood Simple (1984) and continuing through the elegant take on gangster films in Miller’s Crossing (1990) and the literary adaptation of No Country for Old Men (2007), the –based have paid homage to a host of genres while adding their own memorable characters, idiosyncratic touches, and cinematic style. ’s (1987) cast of oddballs—psychotic cops, escaped convicts, swingers, inept government officials, and a possible bounty hunter—are offset by Barry Sonnenfeld’s intentionally fake, storybook-inspired , while Dennis Gassner’s impeccable sets in (1994) serve a script that combines the warmhearted fairy tale lessons of , the screwball elements of ’s comedies, and the verbal sparring of ’s films.

The Museum of Modern Art acknowledges Miramax Films for the generous donation of No Country for Old Men.

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No. 79 Press Contact: Margaret Doyle (212) 408-6400, or [email protected]

For downloadable images, please visit www.moma.org/press

Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

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The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org

COLLABORATIONS IN THE COLLECTION: JOEL AND ETHAN COEN

SCREENING SCHEDULE

Saturday, August 2

3:00 Blood Simple. 1984. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld. Editing by Roderick Jaynes, Don Wiegmann. Casting by Julie Hughes, Barry Moss. Production design by Jane Musky. Costume design by Sara Medina-Pape. Sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With Frances McDormand, , Dan Hedaya, M. Emmett Walsh. Nothing is simple in the Coen brothers' bloody debut. A cuckolded husband, cajoled by a slimy private investigator, enters into a plot to off his cheating wife and her lover—but the dead never really stay dead. On their first feature film, the Coens worked with McDormand, Burwell, Sonnenfeld, and Lievsay, who would all go on to become members of their core collaborative team. 99 min.

5:00 Raising Arizona. 1987. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld. Editing by Michael R. Miller. Casting by Donna Isaacson, John Lyons. Production design by Jane Musky. Costume design by Richard Hornung. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , , John Goodman, Frances McDormand. In this madcap comedy, incorrigible convenience-store robber H. I. McDunnough marries corrections officer Edwina, and they settle into a sublime domestic life. Only one thing is missing: a little bundle of joy. When they discover they cannot conceive, Ed convinces H. I. to steal a baby from Nathan Arizona, an unpainted-furniture tycoon and father of quintuplets. But soon psychotic cops, escaped convicts, swingers, inept government officials, and a relentless

(perhaps imaginary) bounty hunter complicate their criminal quest for familial bliss. Wanting the film to resemble a children’s storybook, the Coens relied on Sonnenfeld’s cinematography to render everything overtly painterly—to the point of fakeness. Their collaboration with Sonnenfeld introduced many of the idiosyncratic touches that would come to characterize their work. 94 min.

7:00 Miller's Crossing. 1990. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld. Editing by Michael R. Miller. Casting by Donna Isaacson, John Lyons. Production design by Dennis Gassner. Costume design by Richard Hornung. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , , , John Turturro, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi. Byrne plays a 1930s Irish mobster at the center of a dense knot of twists and turns, double-crosses, and sleights of hand in this elegant take on the gangster film genre, complete with rat-a-tat-tat dialogue and mannered shoot-outs. Miller’s Crossing is the Coens’ last collaboration with Sonnenfeld, who characterized the crew as “a team of filmmakers.” 115 min.

Saturday, August 16

2:00 Barton Fink. 1991. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Roderick Jaynes. Casting by Donna Isaacson, John Lyons. Production design by Dennis Gassner. Costume design by Richard Hornung. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With John Turturro, John Goodman, , Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi. A liberal New York playwright travels to Hollywood to write a wrestling screenplay for the Wallace Beery. The film starts off as a light satire on the movie industry, but soon takes a decidedly dark turn toward the bizarre. Barton Fink won the Best Film, Best Direction, and Best Performance (for Turturro) awards at the , the first time a single film had swept those categories. The film features such Coen regulars as Turturro and Goodman, both of whom have since appeared in four of the Coens’ twelve features to date. Gassner, whom the Coens have worked with on six films, displays in Barton Fink some of the Art Deco touches that would be fully realized in the next Coen film, The Hudsucker Proxy. 116 min.

4:30 The Hudsucker Proxy. 1994. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, . Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Thom Noble. Casting by Donna Isaacson, John Lyons. Production design by Dennis Gassner. Costume design by Richard Hornung. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , , , Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito. When the president of Hudsucker Industries jumps to his death from the forty-fourth-floor boardroom, the fat cats on the board of directors, hoping to gobble up company stock on the cheap, promote an imbecile to the presidency. But their patsy proxy Norville Barnes, the moron from Muncie, somehow comes out on top—with the help of some divine intervention. The Coens relied on their frequent collaborators to help create the now well- known Coen trademark of bending genre to their needs. Gassner’s impeccable Art Deco sets are gorgeously lit and photographed in an expressionistic manner by Deakins to server a script combines the warmhearted fairy tale lessons of Frank Capra, the screwball elements of Howard Hawks’s comedies, and the verbal sparring of Preston Sturges’s films. 111 min.

7:00 . 1996. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Roderick Jaynes. Casting by John Lyons. Production design by Rick Heinrichs. Costume design by Mary Zophres. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi. A man in dire financial straits schemes with crooks to kidnap his wealthy wife for ransom. When the thugs end up committing a triple murder during the

kidnapping, the very sharp (and very pregnant) local police chief quickly closes in on the hapless, bumbling conspirators. Speaking on the value of working with the same , Joel Coen says, “[Roger] understands what we are after, and frequently comes up with stuff on the spot that reflects what we want to do in a scene.” In turn, Deakins reflects on the fluidity of the brothers’ working style: “Either of them will be talking about the shot, lenses or whatever. They just swap around duties. I think having a relationship with them on a couple of films before [made it easier to respond to new dilemmas]. Once you’ve got a pattern of working, you know…what each other’s wants are.” 98 min.

Sunday, August 17

2:00 . 1998. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Roderick Jaynes, . Casting by John Lyons. Production design by Rick Heinrichs. Costume design by Mary Zophres. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , John Goodman, , John Turturro, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi. A case of mistaken identity exposes Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski—a poor L.A. slacker—to a world of thugs and nihilists in this surreal chase tale, complete with signature Coen-brother fantasy sequences. The Coens, along with Goodman, Turturro, and Deakins, return to the setting of to craft a film that’s worlds away from Barton Fink in both tone and style— proving that comfortable collaborations and originality are not antithetical. 117 min.

4:30 The Man Who Wasn’t There. 2001. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Roderick Jaynes, Tricia Cooke. Casting by Ellen Chenoweth. Production design by Dennis Gassner. Costume design by Mary Zophres. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , Frances McDormand, , Jon Polito. The Coen brothers' black-and-white homage has a familiar set-up: a blackmailer, a cheating wife, a loathsome big shot, and a scheme gone awry. But the narrative similarities do not indicate a remake of their previous films. Differing from the –inspired Blood Simple, whose fantastical elements were overshadowed by its gritty realism, and the Raymond Chandleresque The Big Lebowski, whose irreverence and absurdities diluted its noir intentions, The Man Who Wasn’t There, seemingly influenced by James M. Cain, upends genre expectations—an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary circumstances goes beyond his capabilities to resolve injustice—as the title character instead chooses to be an observer in his own story. 116 min.

7:00 No Country for Old Men. 2007. USA. Written and directed by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. Music by Carter Burwell. Cinematography by Roger Deakins. Editing by Roderick Jaynes. Casting by Ellen Chenoweth. Production design by Jess Gonchor. Costume design by Mary Zophres. Supervising sound editing by Skip Lievsay. With , , . Winner of the 2008 Academy Award for Best Picture, No Country for Old Men is a deceptively simple crime story about a drug deal gone wrong, the guy who stumbles across the ill-gotten cash, and the sociopath chasing after the money. It also transcends its narrative to reveal an elegy to simpler times and a meditation on innocence lost. This film, Deakins’s ninth and Burwell’s eleventh collaboration with the Coens, is a fitting example of the collaborative environments intrinsic in the brothers’ films. A.O. Scott, in his glowing review for , speaks of a “nonbiological Coen fraternity” that includes Deakins and Burwell. Peter Travers, in his review of “the year’s very best” film, makes emphatic note of Deakins as “a poet of light and shadow” and Burwell as a composer who nails “every nuance without underlining a single one of them.” Similarly, Variety’s Todd McCarthy specifically points out Deakins’s “stunning location work and precision framing” and Burwell’s “discreet score and expert sound work.” 122 min.

Friday, August 22

4:30 Blood Simple. Saturday, August 2, 3:00.

6:30 Raising Arizona. See Saturday, August 2, 5:00.

8:30 Miller’s Crossing. See Saturday, August 2, 7:00.

Monday, August 25

6:00 Barton Fink. See Saturday, August 16, 2:00.

8:30 The Hudsucker Proxy. See Saturday, August 16, 4:30.

Wednesday, August 27

6:00 Fargo. See August 16, 7:00.

8:00 The Big Lebowski. See Sunday, August 17, 2:00.

Thursday, August 28

6:00 The Man Who Wasn’t There. See Sunday, August 17, 4:30.

8:30 No Country for Old Men. See Sunday, August 17, 7:00.