We create monsters and then we can't control them.

Joel Coen

Categorized in : Create Control Then Monsters

You're right that's a very important issue, it's something that I would be very interested to see movies address, but it's absurd to say, if I may say so, that anyone who happens to be in public life or in some kind of creative endeavor, to point a finger and say,' You should be helping this particular story'...

It's hard to be in (Los Angeles) for any length of time and not feel like it must have been great in the 40s and the 50s, so much of it has gone but there's enough of it left to suggest what it might have been like.

It's a different world and the exotic nature (of Hollywood), that's part of the attraction.

I always admired Stanley Kubrick for the fact that he managed to beat the system somehow. I think he kind of had it all figured out.

beat i-think think always

Our mother was a very religious and observant Jew, our father less so. She was kind of driving the religious education, so for us it was more a burden and an obligation when we were kids at that age.

age mother education father

The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.

true story architecture different

I guess there's a certain amount of poking fun at certain characters, but that's because there is something amusing about them or about the way they behave, so I guess you can say that that's poking fun at the character. But the character is your own invention, so who cares?

you fun character way

You love all your characters, even the ridiculous ones. You have to on some level; they're your weird creations in some kind of way. I don't even know how you approach the process of conceiving the characters if in a sense you hated them. It's just absurd.

weird you love way

Usually, I don't want to sit down and listen to the director gas on about his movie. I just can't actually imagine myself sitting down and having that much to say.

down myself sitting want

Maybe there should be less of a mystique around making movies. I just don't think that there's any real mystery there.

movies think mystery real

I've never really understood that. It's a funny thing; people sometimes accuse us of condescending to our characters somehow-that to me is kind of inexplicable.

me sometimes funny people

You're doing it to make the character as specific as possible, so that it's a specific individual that you're talking about, not that whole class of people.

doing you character people

The point at which we worked with some of these actors, they weren't really stars yet. Nicolas Cage was not a big star when we did Raising Arizona. A lot of these people were also virtually unknown, too, when we worked with them first.

some big stars people

I'd be perfectly happy never to have to answer anything again about how I work with Ethan, or whether we have arguments, or... you know what I mean? I've been answering those questions for 20 years. I suppose it's interesting to people.

you work happy people

If the material is challenging, it forces you to challenge yourself when handling it.

forces challenge yourself you

People that have been interested in our work for awhile... those are the last people you want to disappoint.

you want work people

It's a funny thing because you look at the careers of other filmmakers, and you see them sort of slow down, and you realize, maybe this becomes harder to do as you get older. That's sort of a cautionary thing. I hope it doesn't happen to me.

me you hope funny

I guess it beats throwing trash for a living.

guess living trash beats

When we do a movie with the studios, they wouldn't be asking us to do it, I don't think, if it was a movie they wanted to get into themselves. What you see is what you get with us, so they let us do what we want to do.

see think you want

Other kinds of movie stars, it's a different thing, they bring their persona to the part and that's what people like to see, and they are not really transforming in terms of their character.

see stars character people