Coen brothers with its head turned around as it looks back over its hindquarters. Up to 2003, Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing, due to guild rules that disallowed multiple director credits to prevent dilution of the position's significance. The only exception to this rule is if the co-directors are an "established duo". Now that they were able to share the director credit the Coen brothers have become only the third duo to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. The first two pairs to achieve this were Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (who won for
Joel S. Birnbaum Joel S. Birnbaum Joel S. Birnbaum is a technology executive who served as senior vice president of Hewlett-Packard. Birnbaum earned a bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University, and a doctorate in nuclear physics from Yale University in 1966. He worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center from 1965 to 1980, eventually becoming director of computer sciences there. From 1980 until his retirement he worked for Hewlett-Packard, where he directed the Computer Research Center of HP Labs. In 1984 he was promoted to vice president at HP and director of HP Labs. He became a senior vice