Hacker Cinema
Blood Simple
1985 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Joel Coen
The owner of a seedy small-town Texas bar discovers that one of his employees is having an affair with his wife. A chaotic chain of misunderstandings, lies and mischief ensues after he devises a plot to have them murdered.
1 positive3 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
Some of the best content I've encountered is exactly this. A good example is "High Maintenance", which started as a Vimeo web series and cost $1000 / episode to produce. [1] Another example is Christopher Nolan's first film, "Following", which cost $6,000 to produce. "El Mariachi" by Robert Rodriguez famously had a $7,000 budget.
They could also pool their money, crowdfund, or otherwise shoot for a bigger budget, in which case they could mimic the first Coen Brothers movie, "Blood Simple", which had a $1.5 million budget. There's also "The Blair Witch Project" ($200k), "Clerks" ($230k), "Paranormal Activity" ($15k), etc. [3]
I truly hope this latest labor dispute causes an industry shift in the direction of creatives taking more control over production and distribution of their content. Musician Anton Newcombe said this about the recording industry, and I think it applies equally well to film studios:
"...it’s a mafia. And until they can write the letter that I’m writing, they are the postman, and I am the letter writer. Period. End of discussion."
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Maintenance
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Following
3. https://collider.com/movies-with-smallest-budgets/
Noir: my favorite genre. Here's some color noirs I don't think have lost anything for not being in B&W: Leave Her to Heaven; Black Widow (1954); Blood Simple; Le Samouraï; Chinatown; Body Heat; Femme Fatale (2002); The Last Seduction; Thief (1981); Basic Instinct; After Dark, My Sweet.
My favorite noir however is indeed B&W: Detour (1945). To me it is the quintessential noir film.
Yes, many Mosfilm classics seems to be on YouTube. I recommend Assa https://youtu.be/VOeDP6eUgD0
Such crisp, captivating film making from beginning to end. I do think the Soviet era is sort of mis-characterized in Western portrayals. Compare the Assa and the recent Chernobyl, both depicting about the same era.
Also "Assa" seems like a Soviet mirror image of how Blood Simple depcits the USA.
I guess.
And what about the claim that the Coens are thematically in debt to Leonard because they make movies about criminals undone by the complexity of crime? Look, for instance, at The Ladykillers, the Coen movie that most exemplifies this theme --- and a remake of a movie that predates Leonard's bibliography.
You can find any number of pieces on Coen influences; their diversity is supposedly a Coen strength. Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing, for example, owe much more to Dashiell Hammett.
Elmore Leonard is surely an influence (and, in particular, to Ethan Coen's published writing), but I don't think it's their most important. Surely, we'd have Coen movies without Leonard.
I don't know that you can say that about Tarantino.