Cormac and the Coens

Posted 24 October, 2007 in Film |

Time has an online link to a transcript of a discussion between Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Coen, who have just filmed McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. (Which opens in limited release on November 9, then opens wide on November 21. Go see it to remind yourself that American cinema — albeit very occasionally these days — can aspire to the level of art. Just see the damn film. That’s all.)

The discussion covers a number of topics, including an adaptation the Coens wanted to do of James Dickey’s novel To the White Sea,* Joel’s assessment of Miller’s Crossing as “just a damn rip-off,” McCarthy’s admiration for the films of Terrence Mallick, and his feelings about the vicisstudes of writing dialogue:

David Mamet has a collection of essays called Writing in Cafés, or something like that. He says that the ideal venue for a playwright is to write radio plays, because then you have nothing, just–this is what somebody said. That’s it. You have nothing to fall back on. That’s quite interesting. Plays are hard, and I suspect that a lot of people who write plays don’t really know how it’s going to play. I mean, how do you know? Like some years ago, my wife and I went to see Ralph Fiennes do Hamlet. And I’d seen movies of Hamlet, I’d seen kind of amateurish productions, and I’d read the play. But we walked out of that theater, and we stood there, and we went, “Holy s—.” Now how did Will know that was going to happen?

One small note here, slightly off topic. Why is it that major newsmagazines like Time are so timorous when it comes to printing profanity? If one of the great novelists of our time said “shit,” then just print the fucking word. It’s not like he tore open his shirt and exposed a nipple or anything really shocking like that. We’re all fucking adults here, after all, know what I’m saying? Fuck me.

*This is a movie I’d love to see. If Brad Pitt is too old to play the part now, might I suggest Ryan Gosling? No Country for Old Men has no music (except for one very brief scene), so can a movie with no dialogue be far behind?

2 comments to “Cormac and the Coens”

Alex, October 24th, 2007 at 10:33 am:

• There’s no upside for big mainstream magazines to print profanity. And there’d be a huge backlash. All those magazines lying around doctor’s offices, etc. where children can read them. Might as well be pornography, etc., etc. They don’t want the hassle. Mass media is the business of provding an anodyne product that makes people feel good about themselves. It’s not journalism.

Steven W. Beattie, October 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am:

• Point taken, Alex, but if the Globe and Mail can see its way clear to printing these words, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch for Time to do likewise. I can’t really picture too many kids in doctors’ offices picking up Time magazine and reading it closely enough to stumble across the one or two instances of profanity that might make their way into the mag’s pages. And anyway, they likely hear much worse in the schoolyard every day. All of which are shopworn arguments, I realize, and your point about mass media is dead on, I’m afraid.

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