Secondary characters are of great importance in the films of the Coen brothers.

This means that everything serves the story. Imagine Fargo but in Florida. Imagine Inside Llewyn Davis Nowadays. They just wouldn’t work. The setting, both geographical and historical, means something when they use it. The same can be said for their use of costume design, set design, props, and hair. This is especially true of the manner of speech of their characters. A common lesson for new screenwriters is to avoid making each character sound like the writer and therefore like each other. But how then, if we can say that the character was written by the Coen brothers, aren’t they guilty of it? In short, the fact that no two Coen characters are the same helps us identify them as Coen characters.

The Coen brothers voice characters with unique voices

During Filming Fargo, Peter Stormare famously remembers reading the line “Where’s the Pancake House?” in the script, to which the actor asked his directors, “Shouldn’t this be the Pancake House?” “And they said, ‘Yes, but you always speak in the plural.’ So that was it.” Stormare says. “I think they got it from someone they knew. They go through everything very anally.” This subtle decision to add one grammatically incorrect letter was enough to not only create a new favorite line for many fans, but also to communicate to the actor and audience that these characters exist in the world that the Coens represent. That these characters have life and independent thoughts, just like in real life. That these characters existed long before the opening credits started and will continue to exist after the movie ends. Oh no every the character still survives, especially in Fargo!

“Welcome to Los An-gull“Hey, Mr. Fink!” Steve Busiemimessenger Chet is featured in the film Barton Fink in the most peculiar way. In fact, it is represented by not being present at all! John TurturroBarton Fink of the Barton Fink company arrives at the hotel he was going to stay at and discovers an unmanned check-in desk. creepy. Is there something wrong. He rings the bell, but a hatch behind the table opens and the messenger goes upstairs. What was he doing there? They never bother to tell us, but the mystery of the image is so startling that we are already glued. Oddly enough, Chet waits until he’s fully upright and poses, pressing his finger against the bell to stop the ringing before finally saying a word. How best to illustrate that Fink, the New York playwright, is in a strange new world? The icing on the cake is the fact that Chet pronounces “Angeles” in a less commonly used but more accurate Spanish way.

Another low-level pro in a messenger hat is Chet, an elevator operator at Proxy Hudsucker. In this movie, everyone talks like characters from the 50s. Billy Wilder movie. Tim RobbinsThe protagonist Norville looks like an absent-minded and excitable Labrador. Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Mahoney And Paul Newman everyone talks like mid-Atlantic cigar eaters, “see?” How then can a small character stand out to have full impact when he later returns to develop the plot? Well, as for the Coens, they increase this figure to eleven!

“Hey buddy, my name is Buzz. I’m confused. I make the elevator do what she does.” He raises his stretchy hat with both gloved hands before robotically offering his hand to Norville for a handshake. Such a character is hard to forget, and again, it shows how different the world our hero enters, despite even the “normal” world before it was also enhanced and animated.

Iconic details make the Coen brothers more memorable

When someone thinks about Javier Bardemiconic Anton Chigurh from Old people don’t belong here, one might think of his sarcastic tone when he growls the word “Friend-o”. Most likely, they will remember his unique and peculiar hairstyle or the unorthodox method by which he kills people with a captive bolt stunner. The Coens could just as easily write any other character in Old people don’t belong here like blank canvases and his audience probably wouldn’t mind or notice. The character of Chigurh is so complex, interesting and instantly iconic for these reasons that they have already managed to cement the film in the minds of the public. However, they do not stop there. To emphasize how strange this man is even in his own world, they complete the setting with a number of characters, each of whom is remembered for how well they highlight Chigurh’s quirks.

“I remember dates, names, numbers. I saw him on the twenty-eighth of November.” This is one of the first lines given Woody HarrelsonCarson Welles in the same film. He is hired to identify and neutralize Chigurh, which immediately makes him a magnet for comparison as a character. This person is also a trained assassin who thinks differently than normal people, so if he were completely normal, it would not only undermine his own quirks, but also add humor to how weird Chigurh is, which we might even start laughing at the villain. instead of being afraid of it. The Coens balance the scales by giving Wells his own quirks, like the rest of us, but ones that highlight just how dangerous Chigurh is.

Wells’ quirk is that he thinks like a computer and nothing escapes him. “You know, I counted the floors in this house from the street. One is missing.” The person he’s talking to knows exactly what this secret floor is for, and while it doesn’t affect the movie’s plot, it does show us exactly who Welles is in his very first of very few scenes. It also makes Wells such a smart and tactful person that when he ends up being killed by Chigurh, it only makes Chigurh more menacing.

The Big Lebowski is a vessel for countless supporting characters

WITH The Big LebowskiJoel and Ethan Coen set out to write a story in which the most passive and contented person is thrown into Raymond Chandlerstyle secret. Breaking all the “rules” of scripting, it’s the least qualified and least qualified person to take on the task, making the trip fun and exciting. It also allows Dude (Jeff Bridges), a character so unique and well-defined that he inspired a real-world religion called “Dudeism” to somehow go straight amidst a cavalcade of even funnier yet still believable characters.

The Nihilists (one of whom is played by Peter Stormare), a wheelchair-bound millionaire with the same name as The Dude, his diligent young wife Bunny (Tara Reid), his tightly coiled helper (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his naked daughter, an abstract artist (Julianne Moore). Not to mention perhaps the Coen Brothers’ greatest supporting character, Jesus (John Turturro). The whole movie tells Sam Elliotta stranger drinking sarsaparilla, a cowboy who tells a story to the public while sitting in a bar on a bowling alley. It may not make much sense, but it certainly creates a feel that is unique to the film and keeps audiences coming back for more.

Mike Yanagita says everything

When the cunning cop Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) finds himself at the center of an investigation into a sort of murder in Fargoshe finds time to meet up with an old school friend, the even tougher Mike Yanagita (Steve Park). This turns out to be completely irrelevant, and he cries to her (obviously a married and pregnant woman), hoping that she can cure him of his suffering after the death of his wife. Marge later discovers that Mike’s wife is alive and that he is seeking attention with a questionable mental state. While this episode appears to be completely deleted, it does two things:

First, it confirms that this world, despite all its craziness, is real and exists outside the plot, in the center of the story. Second, this inadvertently inspires Marge to rethink the case, despite the scene being seemingly irrelevant to the case. She realizes that some people are liars and that they can be quite persuasive by hiding dark intentions. The Coen brothers could have had such an impact on Marge’s investigation and on the film as a whole in countless ways, but they took the opportunity to introduce Mike Yanagita in one scene, and This which makes it a Coen Brothers film.

One would expect that their use of secondary characters would make the non-standard worlds that are presented to us more unusual, but in fact the opposite is true. Legitimizing the tone of the world as a whole, the Coen brothers argue that each character has the potential to become the protagonist of their own ongoing story. The filmmakers know that they are introducing their audience to a world that does not belong to them, but the main character is used to this world. How, then, can you relate the new experience of the protagonist (which will make this chapter of his life the most worthy of a story) with the experience of viewers who are not in this world? Simple. You personify the world in the secondary characters that inhabit it.

In keeping with the “no small details” mantra, these characters are only minor characters in terms of screen time, not in terms of their personality. The Coen brothers ensure that the short amount of time viewers have to interact with these little characters is made up for by the reason to remember each one. Whether it’s a memorable exit, a way of speaking, or a remarkable hairstyle and costume. Like cheerful one-scene prostitutes in Fargo would say, “Like I said, he looked funny!”