Blood Simple

…much attention in 1984 with Blood Simple, a sleek thriller that they cowrote and financed through private investors. The critical success of the film enabled the brothers to make a deal with an independent production company that granted them complete creative control. The films that followed highlighted the Coens’ versatility…

…and Ethan Coen’s first movie, Blood Simple (1984), and McDormand married Joel Coen the year the film was released. Her primary focus remained theatre, however, and that same year she made her Broadway debut in a revival of Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! In 1985 McDormand had a recurring guest…