Coen Brothers

Question: In which U.S. state does most of the action in Fargo take place?

Answer: Despite being named for the largest city in North Dakota, most of Fargo takes place in Minnesota’s Minneapolis and Brainerd. Fargo is, however, where the first scene of the film—the meeting between Jerry Lundegaard and his wife’s future kidnappers—takes place.

Question: Which Coen brothers’ film featured the on-screen debut of Academy Award-winning actress (and Joel Coen’s wife) Frances McDormand?

Answer: Long before she became one of her generation’s most-respected actors—a reputation cemented by her Oscar-winning turn in the Coens’ Fargo (1996)—McDormand made her film debut in Blood Simple, which was released in 1984, the same year she married Joel.

Question: What happens in the final scene of A Serious Man?

Answer: The dark comedy A Serious Man follows the staid suburban family man Larry Gopnik, who sees his fortunes vacillate over the course of the film, which ends on a foreboding note as a tornado appears on the horizon.

Question: What is the name of Ulysses Everett McGill’s hair pomade of choice in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Answer: McGill is one of three escaped convicts who are searching for some buried treasure, but he’s also on the lookout for his favorite brand of pomade, Dapper Dan.

Question: In The Big Lebowski, what “really tied the room together?”

Answer: The plot of The Big Lebowski is set into motion when mistaken thugs assault the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski and micturate upon his rug, which really tied the room together.

Question: Which 13-time Academy Award-nominated cinematographer has filmed 12 of the Coen brothers’ movies?

Answer: Deakins filmed a dozen Coen brothers films, from Barton Fink (1991) to Hail, Caesar! (2016). Although he has been nominated for 13 Oscars, the unlucky cinematographer has never won an Academy Award.

Question: What baby item does Hi steal from a convenience store in Raising Arizona?

Answer: An ex-convict who often fails in his attempts to go straight, Hi enters a convenience store to steal diapers (”and, uh, whatever cash you got”), which eventually leads to a madcap police chase.

Question: What word does the Dude say 147 times in The Big Lebowski?

Answer: While the Dude does say all of these words over the course of the film, the one he utters most frequently—and with a surprising variety of emotional resonance—is “man.”

Question: Portrayed by John Wayne in the original 1969 film, Deputy U.S. Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn is played by which actor in the Coen brothers’ 2010 remake of True Grit?

Answer: While his most iconic Coen role is as the lovable slacker protagonist of The Big Lebowski, Bridges appeared in another one of their films as the grizzled manhunter Cogburn.

Question: Which one of director Steven Spielberg’s films did the Coen brothers cowrite?

Answer: While the Coens usually film what they write, the pair have produced scripts that were made by other directors, such as Spielberg’s Cold War drama Bridge of Spies.

Question: What is the name of the novelty song that the title character of Inside Llewyn Davis records with the John Glenn Singers?

Answer: Folk singer Llewyn Davis makes some much-needed cash by joining the John Glenn Singers to record the space-race novelty song “Please Mr. Kennedy,” a plea to avoid being sent into outer space by the then president of the United States.

Question: What is the villainous Anton Chigurh’s weapon of choice in No Country for Old Men?

Answer: The Coens’ neo-noir western features an Oscar-winning turn by Javier Bardem as the assassin Chigurh, who disposes of his victims with a pneumatic bolt gun, which is typically used to put down cattle at slaughterhouses.

Question: What is the profession of the title character in Barton Fink?

Answer: Barton Fink begins the film as a New York playwright who takes a high-paying job as a writer in Hollywood. His subsequent writer’s block and meetings with his mysterious neighbor set off the events that lead to Fink’s life’s unraveling.

Question: Who has edited the majority of the Coen brothers’ films?

Answer: The most frequently credited editor on the brothers’ films is Roderick Jaynes, who is actually not a real person but is instead a pseudonym for Joel and Ethan Coen.

Question: Which character in Fargo meets his unfortunate end in a wood chipper?

Answer: In one of the most-striking scenes in the Coens’ filmography, the bungling kidnapper Carl Showalter ultimately ends up being fed into the business end of a wood chipper by his disgruntled partner Gaear Grimsrud.