Signs You're Living In A Coen Brothers Movie

Do people around you misuse words?Do they pick up other people’s phrases and reuse them in unexpected contexts? The Dude of The Big Lebowski is a major offender as far as this is concerned, borrowing from everyone from Maude the painter (“in the parlance of our times”) to President George H.W. Bush (“This aggression will not stand”).

Is there bizarre and hilarious wordplay going on around you? In The Hudsucker Proxy, Norville Barnes’s examination of Waring Hudsucker’s leads him to confuse “fail” and “fall” to comedic effect. In Hail, Caesar!, Hobie Doyle continuously mispronounces Laurence Laurentz’s last name (lau-RENTZ), and when he finally gets it right, Laurentz tells Doyle can call him Laurence.

Does this exchange from Burn After Reading seem too familiar to you? 

"Linda: You should put a note up in the ladies' locker room.

Chad: Put a note up? 'Highly classified sh*t found, Signals Intelligence sh*t, CIA sh*t? Hello? Did you lose your secret CIA sh*t?'"

If you answered yes to any or all of the above, chances are you're living in a Coen Brothers movie. Interestingly, the brothers themselves have a surprisingly difficult explaining where this quick wit comes from.

The Coen Brothers love them some fools. From Brad Pitt’s sidesplitting turn as Chad the fitness oaf in Burn After Reading to Tim Blake Nelson’s compassionate portrayal of Delmar O'Donnell in O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?, the writing-directing-producing-editing duo love to pepper their films with colorful dunces.

And it’s not just side characters who get the dummy treatment. Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski (The Big Lebowski, duh) and H.I. McDunnough (Raising Arizona) don’t seem like they keep their wits about them any better than the dopes they run up against. If you find yourself spending time with lug-headed personal trainers who are trying to blackmail the CIA, you might just be living in a Coen Brothers movie. 

Have you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a criminal conspiracy that may or may not have anything to do with you and seems as much a haphazard accident as a well-conceived scheme? If so, you may be a hapless rube Coen protagonsit. 

From Blood Simple through 2017's Hail Caesar!, 11 of 17 Coen Brothers movies involve a criminal plot tied into a nebulous conspiracy of some kind. The characters involved are almost always in way over their heads, barely scratching the surface of the cruelty and violence of the world.

Is someone narrating your life? Is that person articulate, deliberate, and in possession heightened observational skills? If your life isn't Stranger Than Fiction, it might be a Coen Brothers picture. 

“Way out west there was this fella I wanna tell you about.” Sam Elliott’s deep western drawl intones at the beginning of The Big Lebowski, setting up our most unlikely hero. H. I. McDonough’s (Nicolas Cage) dream narration shows Leonard Smalls, AKA The Angel of Death, and his mean motorcycle ride through the desert in Raising Arizona. Ed Crane’s (Billy Bob Thornton) voiceover in comedic noir The Man Who Wasn't There helps the audience understand a laconic character. Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) gives a few monologues in No Country For Old Men that serve as a form of voiceover, spreading thick themes over substantive images like butter on toast. 

Do you keep seeing the same people over and over, in different outfits, with different hair styles, performing different jobs? Is there a continuity in the faces and voices of the people populating your life, even if they seem slightly different each time you see them? If so, guess what? Yeah, it's true. You're probably living in a Coen Brothers movie. 

When the Coen Brothers have a good relationship with an actor, they milk it for all its worth. John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, George Clooney, John Polito, and Frances McDormand (whose husband is Joel Coen, fyi, in case you didn't know) all make regular appearances in Coen Brothers movies. 

And you won't just see familiar names in front of the camera. The Coens frequently collaborate with crew members. They’ve worked with composer Carter Burwell for every movie save two (O’ Brother and Inside Llewyn Davis) and director of photography Roger Deakins has framed all but five of their films. Sound editor Skip Lievsay and sound mixer Peter Kurland have helped define how a Coen Brothers movie sounds from the very beginning. When the Coen Brothers find someone they like to work with, they work with them every chance they can.

That group of men over there. Listen in. What are they talking about? Are they exchanging words with rapid-fire wit, sometimes throwing in non-sequiturs that recall earlier conversational points?

In the board room of Hudsucker Industries, a team of suits repeatedly bring up numbers (“not including the mezzanine”). In Hail, Caesar!, men of the cloth can’t help but turn a conversation about whether the depiction of Jesus in a movie will appeal to Americans into a debate about the nature of Christ. Pappy O’Daniel (Charles Durning) and his advisors in O’ Brother, Where Art Thou? engage in an iced-tea fueled exchange about election campaign strategy that includes heated debate about the use of midgets and a candidate's behind being paddled and kicked. 

If you suddenly find yourself beholden to such bizarre, hilarious, erudite debates, you may well be living in a Coen Brothers movie.