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It all started with a random switch of channels.

I was 11 years old and I was flipping through the channels on TV on a wintry weekend, possibly in 1996. I came across this movie that I wasn't familiar with, I knew it vaguely. I recognized Nicolas Cage and I barely recognized Holly Hunter. The first time I watched this movie, I was bowled over; it was mix of slapstick comedy and idiosyncracy that I had never seen before on film, more so than any commercial movie.

Of course, the movie that I'm talking about is Raising Arizona, the second film from a filmmaking duo that would come to be the most influential filmmakers in my life.

The Coen Brothers.

It has been 25 years since these two siblings made their very first film, Blood Simple. Talk about a way to introduce yourselves into the film world, a low-budget film noir that was more taunt and suspenseful than any Hitchcock film or even Jaws. The Coen Brothers were in their late 20s-early 30s when they made this movie. Usually, in a director's first film, it is common to see the amateur production value manifested throughout the movie, a sign for a beginning director promising to present brilliant and audacious movies in the coming future.

Blood Simple did not look like a directorial debut at all. Blood Simple was a brilliantly written, cleverly made movie that would signal the beginning of an illustrious body of work in the 25 years after their first film.

The Coen Brothers are the reason why I want to be a filmmaker. They have given me the inspiration to reflect how frenetic and brutal and strange life can be. The Coens have been criticized for creating characters dismissed as phony caricatures, stereotypes that could have been derived from life.

I have met people easily comparable to the characters shown in the Coen Brothers movies. I have seen my share of Johnny Caspers, Jerry Lundergaards, Walter Sobchaks, Chad Felderheimers. How many times have we read in the paper about sadistic serial killers that could not be far removed from characters like Gaer Grimsrud or Karl Mundt?

Miraculously, I've met my share of Marge Gundersons. My heroes are Barton Fink and Tom Reagan.

The Coens have created characters that are reflections of people we've either met or heard about in real life.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the funniest thing about the Coen Brothers is they have this huge portal in their head. Once you get into that portal, you could never get out and you see these weird images in their head that are usually shown in their movies. The Coens have been labled as offbeat and eccentric. These labels are dismissive. The Coens are the quintessential definition of originality. They have created ingenious pieces of cinema that give viewers an cerebral exercise, moviegoers hope for challenging movies that amuse, startle and even move them.

Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading and A Serious Man.

All of these films have one thing in common: they are original masterpieces.

God Bless you, Joel And Ethan Coen. Continue to go against the conventional grain.

Continue to make us think.

Happy 25th anniversary,
Navid Sitarian