Introduction: Hollywood as alternate reality in the films of the Coen brothers
Paint it black: film noir, Blood simple, and The man who wasn't there
What's up, doc?: anarchic comedy in Raising Arizona, The ladykillers, and Burn after reading
Joel and Ethan do Hammett and Chandler: Miller's crossing, The big Lebowski, and the hard-boiled tradition
How the sausage gets made: inside the Hollywood film industry in Barton Fink and Hail, Caesar!
Star-crossed lovers: The Hudsucker proxy, Intolerable cruelty, and the American tradition of screwball comedy
Laughing to keep from dying in the suburbs: black comedy in Fargo and A serious man
From soggy bottom to Greenwich Village: American music in O brother, where art thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis
Into the sunset: variations on the western in No country for old men and True grit.