Cinema Science

From Awards Daily.

At the end of this weekend’s NYTimes piece on Ethan Coen’s foray into writing three short plays for the stage, the younger Coen brother mentions their upcoming project:

“Our next movie is all about Hebrew school,” Mr. Coen said, with excitement, “in a big way.” It starts shooting in Minnesota this spring.

Candidly autobiographical, “it’s about a family of four in the Midwest, in 1967,” he said, “and one of the kids is about to be bar mitzvahed. Yes, horrible things happen.”

Ever vigilant to bring you the latest updates, I linked around and found this breaking news in the Minneapolis Star Tribune from, er… last November:

Their new Minnesota film won’t exist in the same offbeat imaginary universe as “Fargo,” Ethan said. “For one thing, the period is 1967 and it also takes place in a Jewish family in a Jewish community. We grew up in St. Louis Park, which was and is a heavily Jewish suburb. It’s more that than the Scandinavian ethnic thing that was in ‘Fargo.’”It’s summer,” added Joel, “so we’re not dealing with one of the hallmarks, at least in people’s minds, of Minnesota life, which is the cold.”

But in some ways it promises to be a similar upper Midwestern comedy of manners. This is a Minnesota story, the Coens insisted, born out of specific memories of their youth.