Customer Reviews

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen: Collected Screenplays 1: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink

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The best movie EVER! The straight script, I had hoped to stumble onto some dialogue that wound up on the cutting room floor but to no avail. Being interested in screenplay writing I was curious how the Coen's conveyed all of the sight humor into their screen play. If your looking for screen play examples (the how to write a screenplay books are worthless) this has been very helpful to me. Too bad their aren't any story boards to go with it.

What is there to say? Joel and Ethan Coen are some of the best screenwriters working in the business. This book is a collection of their first 4 scripts filmed on the big screen. Please note that the scripts dont appear to be the final shooting version of the scripts, because last night I was watching Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple back to back and I noticed how some dialogue was changed and some scenes were excluded completely. There is nothing wrong with this and is probably even better so you can see the raw ideas the Coen Brother's had of their stories before filming them. Each one of these scripts are great on their own, and its amazing that they were written by two guys consecutively. Most writers couldn't write a script as good as Barton Fink or Raising Arizona, but these two brothers wrote them one after another. Barton Fink stands alone as the best script in this collection in my opinion. It is the ONLY film to have swept all the major categories at the Cannes Film festival. In conclusion, If you are taking a film writing course in college, or aspire to be a screenwriter and need some inspiration, then this collection is truly tremendous. All four of these scripts are great. I believe there is a Volume 2 of this book, but I would only get it for Fargo and The Big Lebowski, whereas in Volume 1 all the scripts are good!

A terrific collection of stories providing an insight into interesting story techniques, and combining dark humor with suspense. Even if you just read one or two of the screenplays, it's worth it.