Quotes

It's easy to offend people. People get uncomfortable, for instance, when the main character in a movie is not sympathetic in a Hollywood formula way. Our movies are loaded with things that aren't to everyone's taste. On the other hand, there's a scene in [O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)] where a frog gets squished that everyone seems to like. It's all right to do the frog squishing.

We aren't the grandfathers of any movement. In the 1980s, the so-called indie film movement was a media creation. What I found irritating is that 'independent' became an encomium. If it was independent, it was supposed to be good, and studio films were bad. Obviously, there are bad independent films and good studio films.

The movie people let us play in the corner of the sandbox and leave us alone. We're happy here.

The awards put a movie on people's radars. Festivals are good, even though the idea of putting movies in competitions -- this one is the best this, that one is the best that -- is ridiculous.

[re origin of Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)] Ethan Coen We were in the office and Joel said, "O.K., suppose Dave Van Ronk gets beat up outside of Gerde's Folk City. That's the beginning of a movie. [Joel Coen adds:] It was an idea we kept coming back to. We were thinking 1961 is interesting, because it's the scene that [Bob] Dylan came into, not the one he created or transformed, because people know more about that. Dylan once said something - and I'm paraphrasing him - "Really, all I wanted is to be as big as Dave Van Ronk." That's how limited that scene was, in terms of the people in the broader culture. [Ethan:]...We did start thinking about Dave Van Ronk, and in fact read his memoir, which is kind of great, "The Mayor of Macdougal Street." But the movie's not about Dave Van Ronk, although Oscar [Isaac], the character, has his kind of repertoire. It's his music. It's a fictional character we gave his music to.

We've always actually been remarkably commercially successful. Not in terms of making huge amounts of money, which we rarely do, but in terms of not losing money and making modest amounts of money. We're actually strangely consistent in that respect. We've been able to keep making movies because of that and also because, strangely, we've had studio patrons, starting from Barry Diller. Sometimes they're establishment people who know they're not going to make huge amounts of money, but they like your movies. They're moviegoers, too.