Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen adapted the screenplay and directed the dramatic movie No Country for Old Men, based on the critically acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy. No Country for Old Men follows Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who comes across the scene of a shootout with dead men everywhere, a stash of heroin, and lots and lots of cash ($2 million to be exact) just sitting there waiting to be taken. Moss can't resist the temptation and with the act of removing the cash from the crime scene, he sets in motion a horrible chain of events involving a sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) who has to investigate the case and a vicious killer (Javier Bardem) whose job it is to track down the money.
The Appeal of No Country for Old Men: Producer Scott Rudin acquired the rights to Cormac McCarthy’s novel and sent it to the Coens. “He sent it to us in galleys about a year before it came out,” explained Joel Coen. “He asked us if we were interested in doing it and we read it and both, we’d read other Cormac McCarthy books just for pleasure and liked him a lot, but this one we thought could make a really interesting movie.”
Filming in New Mexico: Ethan Coen said the decision to shoot in New Mexico had a lot to do with economic incentives. “As you know, the story takes place in West Texas. We shot for two weeks based in Marfa, West Texas for the stuff you really see landscape because New Mexico offers spectacular scenery, but not of that kind. It is a very different landscape. So we shot, as everybody is in New Mexico now, for economic reasons. And because it does offer things, while it’s not West Texas, there are things we could shoot there we couldn’t have shot in Flemington, New Jersey.”
The Casting Process: Josh Brolin wasn’t really on the Coens radar, but his people doggedly pursued the filmmakers in order to get them to see how much Brolin had to offer. Joel Coen explained how they found their cast: “Javier [Bardem] was cast much before Josh was. Tommy [Lee Jones] and Javier were cast fairly early on. Tommy first, he was on the short list of people who could really do this part, both from an age point of view and he’s one of the sort of great American actors of a certain age and who can convincingly be from that area. In fact, he is from that area.”
Laughing, Ethan Coen interjected, “Tommy would love to hear that. We asked him to do it because he’s so f--king old.”
“In fact he got up my a-- about it one day,” said Ethan Coen. “‘I'm only 59 years old.’ Javier is a little more complicated. Look, if you have a chance to cast Javier Bardem in a movie, even if it’s a stretch, which I don’t think it was in this movie, you should do it. He’s fantastic. The problem is once we cast Javier and Tommy in those two parts, it’s a movie about three men, each of whom sort of has equal weight in the movie. So you’ve got a problem. You’ve got to find somebody who can be an equal in the movie with those two guys. We saw everybody and we were not happy with anyone until we met Josh. He came in and read for the part and that was that.”
But Josh Brolin came with some baggage. Right after he got the part and right before filming began, Brolin was involved in a motorcycle accident and badly injured his shoulder. “He had a motorcycle accident about a week or two before we started shooting, and then lied to us brazenly about the implications of the accident,” joked Joel Coen. “So we felt completely at liberty to ignore the fact that he was in pain.”
Javier Bardem’s Appearance as a Ruthless Killer: Joel Coen said the haircut wasn’t Bardem’s idea but that he embraced it when they suggested the look. “Actually the feeling of the wardrobe and the haircut came from the art department. [The art department] does a lot of research, mainly photo research, because it’s a period thing - although a recent period - it’s 1980 Texas border area,” explained Ethan Coen. “So they don’t just kind of make it up from scratch. They look at archive pictures of the time and place and the wardrobe department had found this picture of a guy at a bar in West Texas in 1979. It was that alarming haircut, and actually that kind of wardrobe as well. We looked at it and thought, ‘Well, he looks like a sociopath.’ And Javier really enjoyed it as well.”
A Shift in Tone: Although much of the first part of the film has very limited dialogue, the tone shifts toward the end. “This is true of the novel and one of the things that was interesting to us about the novel as well, it does undergo a shift three quarters of the way through,” said Joel Coen about the shift. “The reason for that, and what that engenders or what that means and how that works as a story and all the rest of it, was part of what was so interesting about the novel.”
Collaborating with Cinematographer Roger Deakins: The Coens and Deakins have been working together on films since the early 1990s. Asked how the process works, Ethan Coen replied, “It varies, actually. Roger didn’t do the one we just finished shooting, but he did this movie and the 7 or 8 previous to that. Except when his schedule doesn’t allow it, we actually do a draft of the storyboards for the movie ourselves and then a draft, in effect, with him. We kind of redraft with him and the storyboard artist. We did that on this movie. We have kind of a general discussion about how the movie is going to look and then we all think and forget about it when we are actually shooting the movie. We forget about everything we’ve decided and just take it day by day, scene by scene. That’s probably the norm for how most people work on movies.”
Page 2: Clooney and Pitt in Burn After Reading
