In this extra special live event To the White Sea makes study group history as we explore deep secrets, hidden connections, and cinematic revelation in the work of the Coen brothers. In our quest for the truth we're joined onstage by Connoisseur of Context Griffin Newman, longtime Coens collaborator Skip Lievsay, and script supervisor of The Ladykillers Joni Tefoya (Heidi Gardner). Legendary storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson also joins us via video essay for an incredible look at shots that recur across the Coens’ filmography. Thank you LIFE WORLD and everyone for coming out!

Producer: Michael Tyburski

Graphic Designer and Live Visuals: Jason Katzenstein

Audio Technician: Alex Bliss

Audio Equipment: Caley Monahon-Ward

Life World Staff: Sarah Wilson, Ian Faria

Catalog of Coens - Video Link

Boo! In this special episode we announce our live show COENS SECRETS UNLOCKED and unveil our new miniseries exploring the stage play work of the Coens. We kick off COENS THEATER VOL. I with the radio play SAWBONES, which debuted in April 2005 as part of Carter Burwell’s Theater of the New Ear. Sawbones is a thrilling and bewildering triptych, simultaneously a 60s western TV show, a suburban melodrama, and a fire tower natural disaster thriller. Join us as we unpack a lost work of the Coens and Burwell at their most symphonic and triple-braided. And we’ll see you all soon at LIFE WORLD!

Coens Covered: Sawbones, The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple

Plus: K-CoreaINC.K (section a) (Dir: Ryan Trecartin)

Theater of the New Ear - April 2005 performance at St. Ann’s Warehouse, broadcast later on SiriusXM.

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Today is all about mega presences—performances with so much character, life, and musicality breathed into them by their actors that they seem to haunt an entire film and stick with you long after the credits have rolled and the house lights have come on. And we are thrilled beyond words to be joined by a one-of-one artist, the great Will Oldham!

Jumping off from a rather intense skydiving scene in To the White Sea, Will talks to us about how you can craft a performance by drawing on formative experiences and memories of people you once knew. He also tells us about how you can perform for an audience by in some sense becoming the audience, and brings awesome insights to all of the Coens films we cover, often bringing in counterpoint scenes from other films that unlock the richness of the performances.

Special thanks to Rebecca Bulnes and her grandmother Maria for helping us with the Spanish translation of a pivotal moment in Blood Simple in a brand new segment called To the White Sea: The Latin Beat.

Coens Covered: No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis

Plus: Jackass 3D, Minnie and Moskowitz, Longlegs, One Battle After Another, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

Laughter—why does it happen? Brilliant filmmaker and comedy consigliere Ian Faria joins the study group to break down comedy in all its forms, be it slapstick physical violence, zinging dialogue, or a slow-burn silent reveal. Ian is just wrapping up post-production on a feature with his comedy group Simple Town and has much to share. This episode is the whole ball of wax and you're just gonna love it—definitely stay tuned to the very end for a surprise...!

Coens covered: No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading

Plus: Friendship, Simple Town Goes to London

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

Today we’re joined by writer, researcher, and podcaster Edward Ongweso Jr. to discuss “the essence of The Dialectic,” as a highly-fictionalized Herbert Marcuse proclaims in Hail, Caesar! Dialectics: what are they, what is their function, and how might their theory and praxis manifest multifariously across the Coens’ body of work? We discuss the history of the term, how the concept of keeping two ideas in tension is expressed within individual characters, and we finally tackle the loop-de-loop structure of Inside Llewyn Davis. This conversation is a deep dive and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Ed’s podcast: This Machine Kills

Ed’s substack: The Tech Bubble

Coens Covered: Hail, Caesar!, Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Fargo

Plus: No Direction Home

**You can also support us directly at https://ko-fi.com/tothewhitesea**

To the White Sea is back to discuss HONEY DON’T!—the slapjacking new film from Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke—and we’re bringing a new episode format to attempt to wrap our minds around this monumental moment. 

We’ve gathered some of our favorite minds of filmmaking and film analysis—Melissa Tuckman, Ben Brewer, and Emilio Diaz—for an unrehearsed panel discussion affectionately dubbed The McDunnough Group. We explore important issues of the day including how this new film differs from a Joel and Ethan collaboration, how a more varied filmmaking approach impacts the experience of the viewer, and whether the film successfully defines its moral universe. Thank you so much to all of the panel guests. Special thanks to Focus Features.

Coens Covered: Honey Don’t!, Drive-Away Dolls, The Big Lebowski, The Ladykillers, Burn After Reading

Plus: Supervixens, Before Sunset, Punch-Drunk Love, Love Lies Bleeding, Death Proof

Today we’re excited to be joined by Will Menaker and Hesse Deni—cohosts of Movie Mindset, as well as Chapo Trap House and Seeking Derangements respectively—to split the everlasting light of cinema via a prism of great importance: tensions between the old and the young in the films of the Coen brothers.

Jumping off from a thrilling duel between Muldrow and the blind swordsman we unpack the trope of The Old Gunslinger vs. The Kid, and from there fan out across a galaxy of cigar-chomping geezers, stoned Bar Mitzvah boys, goldbricking veterans of forgotten wars, and house partying dybbuks.

Thank you to Will and Hesse for this life- and movie-affirming conversation! Thank you also to the great Chris Wade for helping setting this up.

Coens Covered: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Miller’s Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy, A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski, Inside Llewyn Davis

Plus: Armageddon, The Heart She Holler

Like a seashell to your ear, we are here. In this extra special episode of To the White Sea we are thrilled and honored to welcome Academy Award-winning sound editor Skip Lievsay, who has worked on more Coen brothers movies than the Coen brothers themselves! This paradox wrapped in an enigma will be unraveled along with so much more.

Together we listen closely to scenes of “perfect quiet” when the volume of the soundtrack drops down to almost zero, yet it’s in this zone where a whole galaxy of perception may be unlocked. We explore how these quiet scenes build tension, intimacy, tactility, and subjectivity. We also discuss Skip’s fascinating working relationship with the Coens, as well as Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and Darren Aronofsky.

Immense thanks to Skip Lievsay, Kyle Miller, Mitchell Wareham, and Nina Leitenberg for their time and effort. Mega special thanks to Kate Sanford making this connection.

Coens Covered: Blood Simple, The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn’t There, No Country for Old Men, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Plus: The New World

Surprise! We're back with a new episode. We jump off from the idea introduced to us by J. Todd Anderson, by way of Alfred Hitchcock, that filmmaking is about two things (and according to J. Todd only these two things): suspense and surprise. We analyze ways in which films create a “burden of knowledge” in the mind of the audience, and how this can dramatically affect the way scenes play out on a screen and behind our eyes. Sometimes you’re ahead of the characters, and sometimes they’re way, way ahead of you.

Check us out in the new episode of Blank Check where we kick off their Coen brothers mini series Pod Country for Old Cast with the first film in the Coens ouvre, Blood Simple!

Coens Covered: Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink, True Grit, Intolerable Cruelty, The Man Who Wasn’t There

Hello study group! We will be back soon with more mainline episodes of To the White Sea. To tide you over we bring you a delightful side-quest / amuse-bouche. A couple months ago we went on Hit Factory to discuss A Simple Plan, directed by frequent Coens collaborator Sam Raimi. We enjoyed our discussion with Aaron so much, and thought it Coens-adjacent-enough to put it out as a bonus. Hope you enjoy it too!

Thanks to Aaron & Carlee for giving us the go-ahead to release this premium episode, and please consider supporting their amazing show on Patreon, which is all about the films and politics of the 1990s.