Ethan Coen

The Coen Brothers are noted for their unusual writing process of not only eschewing outlines, but of not even concerning themselves what their story is about or who their characters are before beginning to write their screenplays. They will simply begin writing any scene they think up that they find to be interesting. Then, if they think of an interesting idea for a following scene, they will write that one, and then another, and so on and so forth until they have a first draft, discovering what the story is along the way. Then, they will heavily revise what they have until they feel they have a shootable screenplay. They have noted that because of this, they will often get writer's block around the mid-point of any given screenplay, and will begin another screenplay in the meantime in order to remain productive. For example, the entirety of बार्टन फिंक (1991) was written while they were battling writer's block with मिलर्स क्रॉसिंग (1990), and the first 40 pages of The Big Lebowski (1998) was written while they were stuck with बार्टन फिंक (1991).

It's easy to offend people. People get uncomfortable, for instance, when the main character in a movie is not sympathetic in a Hollywood formula way. Our movies are loaded with things that aren't to everyone's taste. On the other hand, there's a scene in [O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)] where a frog gets squished that everyone seems to like. It's all right to do the frog squishing.