How the Coen Brothers Write Their Scripts

In an interview on the WGA site, Ethan and Joel Coen are uncharacteristically fulsome in their answers about their latest filmTrue Grit and offer some fascinating insights into how they write their scripts.

If anyone has to be convinced of my repeated plea for screenwriters to stop worrying about the '3-Act structure' or building a ready-made template for their story, the Coens have done a very persuasive job for me.

They don't set out with a clear outline and then squeeze everything in. Joel says:
'It’s much more the case that there’s a discussion about what comes next extending a certain way into the script that often gets batted about verbally and then just gets written as opposed to writing it all down with one subset of A, B, C, D, and E, you know? It’s like, "Okay, this will happen, and it will lead to this, and then we don’t know what."'

Ethan agreed: 'That’s true. It’s kinda mushy. We don’t do an outline in terms of mapping out the whole thing but then, on the other hand, we don’t exactly write scene A and then stop and say, "Ok, what’s scene B?"

Joel: Yeah, it might be, "Ok, this will happen and lead to this and this and then we get here, and we’ll figure it out." If we’re writing scene B, we have some clear idea of what scene C might be and a slightly fuzzier idea of what D might be and a vague idea of what the ramifications of that might be – or maybe not. It just kind of falls off into darkness.'

True inspiration for all screenwriters!

Read the full interview with the Coens by Dylan Callaghan at http://www.wga.org/

The King's Speech Wins Critics' Choice Best Original Screenplay

What do you think of the screenwriters' Critics' Choice Awards? David Seidler has won the Best Original Screenplay for The King's Speech and Aaron Sorkin Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network.

Both screenplays were pretty good, and Colin Firth certainly deserved his win for Best Actor.

Check out the full list here and make up your own predictions for the Oscars.

Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler (The King's Speech)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network)


Best Picture: The Social Network

Best Actor: Colin Firth (The King's Speech)

Best Actress: Natalie Portman (Black Swan)

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (The Fighter)

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (The Fighter)

Best Young Actor/Actress: Hailee Steinfeld (True Grit)

Best Acting Ensemble: The Fighter

Best Director: David Fincher(The Social Network)

Best Cinematography: Wally Pfister (Inception)


Best Art Direction: Guy Hendrix Dyas (Inception)

Best Visual Effects: Inception

Best Sound: Inception

Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3

Best Action Movie: Inception

Best Comedy: Easy A

Best Picture Made For Television: The Pacific

Best Foreign Language Film: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Best Documentary Feature: Waiting For Superman

Best Song: If I Rise (127 Hours)

Best Score: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (The Social Network)

The Joel Siegel Award: Matt Damon

The Music+Film Award: Quentin Tarantino