SOURCE: "Bloodlines," in Film Comment, Vol. 21, No. 2, March/April, 1985, pp. 14-19.

In the following essay, which includes an interview with the Coen brothers and Barry Sonnenfeld, their cinematographer, Hinson discusses the making of Blood Simple.

In his novel Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett wrote that after a person kills somebody, he goes soft in the head—"blood simple." You can't help it. Your brains turn to mush. All of a sudden, the blond angel whose husband you just buried starts getting strange phone calls. You reach into your pocket for your cigarette lighter—the silver-plated one the Elks gave you with your name spelled out in rope on the front—and it's not there. Your lover limps in early one morning with blood on his shirt and a .38, your .38, stuffed in his jeans and announces, "I've taken care of it. All we have to do now is keep our...