Tricia Cooke

Written by a childhood friend of the Coen Brothers from interviews conducted during the filming, The Making Of... is a look at the process the Coens go through from meticulous storyboarding to final shoot. The book was clearly written well before the movie achieved its current cult status, and it's a little weird to read Ethan say that he hopes they can get the Gypsy Kings cover of Hotel California for the now famous Jesus bowling scene.

In addition to the Coens, he also interviewed the storyboard artist, the cinematographer, the production designer, and the costume designer. In the last section of the book, we get to see three complete scenes from the original script, to storyboard, costume design, to screen stills, with specific commentary on their role and vision for each scene from each of the above participants. The brothers are notorious for having their movies meticulously planned out before shooting, and you can see it in this last section, where the scenes look just like the script and the storyboards with almost no changes.

The tone of the book is very casual, and Robertson likes to get the occasional gentle ribbing of his friends in, which was sometimes fun, sometimes a little irritating. As a huge fan of the film, and of the Coen brothers in general, it was an interesting, quick read and I think I got a good glimpse of the process.… (meer)