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There’s an argument to be made that Joel and Ethan Coen are the greatest American filmmakers of the last half-century, as they have had a consistent track record of making great movies, many of which are considered all-time masterpieces.
There’s not a single genre that they haven’t tackled, and each Coen brothers picture is filled with delightful characters, memorable dialogue, and truly thought-provoking moments. That being said, they’re also Hollywood’s ultimate outsiders, something they learned very early on.
A truly great directorial debut can change the way a filmmaker is perceived, and that’s exactly what the Coens had on their hands when they made the neo-noir thriller Blood Simple. The low-budget crime flick about the affair between a bartender, played by John Getz, and the wife, played by Frances McDormand, of Dan Hedaya’s ruthless mob boss is 96 minutes of pure tension, with beautifully dark cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld, who would go on to be a very successful filmmaker in his own right.
Although the Coens knew that they had something good on their hands, they found it challenging to sell Blood Simple. “We brought the film around to all these different studios and had’ em bone us,” Joel recalled, where they “sat there and listened to their garbage.”
The duo were perplexed by a meeting they had with one executive who continuously ignored what they said, ate sunflower seeds, and barraged them with questions about other films, including a controversial comedy released the same year.
Out of nowhere, the exec asked them, unprompted, “Why is Revenge of the Nerds making so much money?” They didn’t know, and they cared even less, but it was their first introduction to the industry’s main motivating factor, and something that would come to define their shared career.
Joel and Ethan had made a movie that was absolutely nothing like Revenge of the Nerds, but the implication was that something more along those lines would be a lot easier to sell, and thus turn a bigger profit, than an atmospheric, auteur-driven work like Blood Simple. It had nothing to do with anything they were there to talk about, and it left them completely baffled.
Walking out of the meeting, Ethan threw out a barbed, “If there’s anything else you want to know about the movie business, feel free to call me,” and just like that, the Coens knew that if they wanted to make films on their own terms, free from interference and accountancy, independent cinema was the way.
It didn’t get them any closer to selling their first feature, though, which would go on to premiere at the New York Film Festival before playing at the Sundance Film Festival. Although the film was only a modest success on the indie circuit, it proved to the industry that the Coens were worth taking seriously, which gave them more freedom to pursue their next project and almost all the rest.
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