variety.com:

>Coen brothers to adapt 'True Grit'

New version will stay faithful to Portis' novel
By MICHAEL FLEMING

As their next film, Joel and Ethan Coen will put their spin on "True Grit," the iconic Western that won John Wayne an Oscar.

Not a traditional remake, the Paramount film will be more faithful to the Charles Portis book than the 1969 pic, also distributed by Par.

Portis' novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father's killer in hostile Indian territory.

But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens' version will tell the tale from the girl's p.o.v.

Pic will be their first period Oater.

Project reteams the brothers with Scott Rudin, their partner on the Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men." The Coens wrote the screenplay.

The original starred Kim Darby as the teen, Wayne and Glen Campbell as the lawmen, Jeff Corey as the killer and featured Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper as fellow outlaws.

"True Grit" originated at DreamWorks when that company was Par-based, but it was one of the projects that Stacey Snider and Steven Spielberg left behind since the original is part of the Paramount film library. Former DreamWorks prexy Adam Goodman, now a Par exec, is steering the project for the studio.

The Western steps in front of another novel adaptation the Coens have with Rudin: "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," based on the Michael Chabon novel and set up at Columbia.

The Coens just completed "A Serious Man," which they scripted, for Focus Features and Working Title.

They are repped by UTA.
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from rotten tomatoes:


Exclusive: Coen Brothers Talk True Grit
An update on casting and their take on the tale.
by Chris Tilly | October 27, 2009
Discuss Article

With the trades this morning carrying a casting announcement for the Coen brothers adaptation of True Grit, RT decided to go straight to the horses' mouths and ask the siblings about the news and their plans for the story.

According to Variety, Jeff Bridges will play U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne in the original) while Matt Damon is in talks to play the lawman and Josh Brolin is up for the role of the killer. Joel confirmed the story to RT, "Yes, Jeff, Matt and Josh, that's true - something that you read in the trades that actually turns out to be true!"

The 1969 original film was loosely based on the novel by Charles Portis, and revolved around a young girl hiring Cogburn to track down the man who killed her father. According to Ethan, this new version will be much closer to the source material. "It's partly a question of point-of-view" the writer-director explained. "The book is entirely in the voice of the 14-year-old girl. That sort of tips the feeling of it over a certain way.

"I think it's much funnier than the movie was so I think unfortunately they lost a lot of humour in both the situations and in her voice. It also ends differently than the movie did. You see the main character - the little girl - 25 years later when she's an adult."

He continued, "Another way in which it's a little bit different from the movie - and maybe this is just because of the time the movie was made - is that it's a lot tougher and more violent than the movie reflects. Which is part of what's interesting about it."

Joel added, "I don't actually remember the movie too well, but do I remember it being much more of a standard Western, and the book is just an oddity. It's a very odd book."

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Picked the book up at Borders on a whim and finished it in a few hours; great quick read if you have some time to kill.

It is a lot funnier than John Wayne's campy take on Rooster Cogburn. There is a good deal of complexity to the character and this particular story that I'm sure Jeff Bridges had fun with. I'm curious to see if they kept the "fill your hands..." line in there; hard to reshoot such an iconic and funny line yet it is one of the funnier parts of the book as well.
The rest of the casting is spot on.
It is also a whole lot more violent than the original movie likely either could get away with or even wanted to show. There is one scene in particular that I cannot wait to see what the Coen's do with; won't ruin it, but it does involve the sudden severing appendages.

just from what i recall:

1. Fargo and the threat of Asian difference
2. No Country and the threat of the new border politics (I realize it's adapted from the novel, but there's plenty of blame to spread)

seems like that liberal brand of racism that congratulates itself for not being John Wayne, but can't see what else it's doing.

>1. Fargo and the threat of Asian difference
>

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>1. Fargo and the threat of Asian difference

The Mike Yanagita scene? I don't believe there is any "threat of Asian difference", just Marge meeting an old high school friend who has intentions other than what Marge, who is married and pregnant, has in mind. Asian difference? Also, if you read the script, he's supposed to be slightly drunk in that scene which explains his emotional rawness. Not really Marge being scared of asian men, just another sketch to show how nice and highly regarded she is by others.


>2. No Country and the threat of the new border politics (I
>realize it's adapted from the novel, but there's plenty of
>blame to spread)

I don't follow, but the film and book are set against the stark "sameness" of southwestern Texas and Chihuahua in the early 80s, before the US became obsessed with border control or the bullshit "war on drugs" started; the subject of the origns of the events in the story are sort of the "last frontier" of true western life. The violence attributed to the Mexican drug runners is equally linked to white corporate criminal activity in Dallas. In neither the book or movie are the racial or national origins of Anton Chigurh even really explained.

I don't follow.

I'll have to get back to folks on the Fargo claim; it's been awhile since I've seen it, but I think it might go beyond Yanagita. Was the story derived from a true story about a Japanese woman having been spurned by an American lover? Again, I'll have to come back to this after doing some footwork.

As for NCFOM, just because Chigurh's background isn't specified, he certainly reflects the threat of a new global society that is encroaching upon the old West and by extension, the U.S. Given the Dallas connection, it would seem the film is commenting on global capital's rupturing of national borders, security, and culture, such that corporate execs would team up with drug cartels.

I get that it's drawing on themes from traditional westerns (I just watched the Ballad of Cable Hogue this weekend), but the frontier life depicted in NCFOM is specifically attuned to the threat of an evil so great and inscrutable that it forces the sheriff to retire. That threat could be new methods in the illegal drug trade, and it's also just the threat of urban and suburban society (reflected in the sheriff's comments on the old folks' home murders reported in the papers) but just as likely, it could be the threat of immigration. That's why it's irrelevant where Chigurh comes from, but that he comes from somewhere other than here. He's not native, he's foreign, he's an alien, of an alien race.

In some ways, while folks argue about how ambiguously the film ended, it's quite fitting that he seems to survive and escape, because that threat is still here. And even if according to your chronology it would be incorrect to say this has to do with current border issues, filtering the past through the present is worth considering and possibly unavoidable, or so say most historians these days.

>
>>1. Fargo and the threat of Asian difference
>
>The Mike Yanagita scene? I don't believe there is any "threat
>of Asian difference", just Marge meeting an old high school
>friend who has intentions other than what Marge, who is
>married and pregnant, has in mind. Asian difference? Also, if
>you read the script, he's supposed to be slightly drunk in
>that scene which explains his emotional rawness. Not really
>Marge being scared of asian men, just another sketch to show
>how nice and highly regarded she is by others.
>
>
>>2. No Country and the threat of the new border politics (I
>>realize it's adapted from the novel, but there's plenty of
>>blame to spread)
>
>I don't follow, but the film and book are set against the
>stark "sameness" of southwestern Texas and Chihuahua in the
>early 80s, before the US became obsessed with border control
>or the bullshit "war on drugs" started; the subject of the
>origns of the events in the story are sort of the "last
>frontier" of true western life. The violence attributed to the
>Mexican drug runners is equally linked to white corporate
>criminal activity in Dallas. In neither the book or movie are
>the racial or national origins of Anton Chigurh even really
>explained.
>
>I don't follow.

I heard or read (can't remember) the signifigance of the Mike Yaganita character. Made perfect sense to me:

Meeting him was a turning point in Marge. Her character is a trusting individual and always sees the best of people...gives them the benefit of the doubt. After she meets him and subsequently discovers he was lying about his wife and her leukemia....she returns to Jerry's car dealership to further interrogate him armed with a keener sense of distrust and suspicion.

Not sure why any of this should be considered racially insensitive.

>Meeting him was a turning point in Marge. Her character is a
>trusting individual and always sees the best of people...gives
>them the benefit of the doubt. After she meets him and
>subsequently discovers he was lying about his wife and her
>leukemia....she returns to Jerry's car dealership to further
>interrogate him armed with a keener sense of distrust and
>suspicion.

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Race rarely plays a serious role in the Coens work. Ethnicity sometimes, usually on a comic level--though if they're guilty of stereotyping anybody it's their own (Jews) more than anyone else. They also like to poke fun at poor white trash.

From what I can recall:

BLOOD SIMPLE: Dan Hedaya's character doesn't have an Italian name, but he channels a little bit of stock Sicilian thuggishness for the role. The whole thing is set in Texas. There's a sympathetic black supporting character.

RAISING ARIZONA: Poor white trash fest.

MILLER'S CROSSING: Stock Italian and Irish mobster stuff. The least sympathetic character in this film is Jewish.

BARTON FINK: Jews and drunken southern WASPs.

HUDSUCKER: Campy 50s white people. I can't remember this film too well. Anybody else?

FARGO: Some dumb midwest yokels gags. An awkward scene with an Asian man, though that doesn't really exploit his ethnicity. Peter Stormare is some kind of vague European.

BIG LEBOWSKI: Turturro is an over the top Mexican. Goodman is a militant conservative Jew. And there are some absurd Germans. Some disabled jokes that might offend, I guess.

O BROTHER: Poor white trash. Corrupt rich white people. A sympathetic black supporting character.

MAN WHO WASN'T THERE: Can't remember.

INTOLERABLE: Never saw it.

LADYKILLERS: Never saw it.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: Nobody on either side of the border really comes off that well. Chigurgh is ambiguous in his nationality/ethnicity.

BURN AFTER READING: Effete over-educated Yale type is ridiculed. The rest are middle class white urbanites.

A SERIOUS MAN: Jews! And a Korean character is somewhat comic and flawed, though not really any more flawed than anybody else in the film. Some intimidating WASPs.

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thanks for highlighting those characters. yeah, i would agree with you. it's not that they have an agenda or are stereotyping, but they do only use racial--and as you point out, class--difference for comic effect. it may not offend as much as older representations, but they haven't cleared the woods, and so even if they do a stellar job re-conceptualizing true grit (which i hope for), it will be worthing talking about what they achieve and don't achieve from it. let's not celebrate quite yet.

I don't understand what you mean by 'they haven't cleared the woods'....

Forgive me if I'm wrong but it seems you expect them to prove they're not racist. Why?

It's not that I expect anything from them, aside from really good filmmaking. (I love their portrayal of Chigurh, but I think to love his character, you have to read against the grain of the film, which seeks to render him completely alien to society--like when Woody Harrelson's character says that Chigurh has a ethics of a totally different kind: indiscernible to American, and human, mores.)

But when someone comes in posting that the Coens are going to take on the explicit racism of True Grit, I think it's important to remember that it doesn't mean they're going to do any better of a job. Yes, explicit racism is bad, but so are insidious forms. I love the Coens' work, but to think they've escaped the woods to the point that they can now be heralded as taking on the woods of the past, as it were, is too celebratory, and simplistic, for my liking.

>
>I don't understand what you mean by 'they haven't cleared the
>woods'....
>
>Forgive me if I'm wrong but it seems you expect them to prove
>they're not racist. Why?

>they do only use racial--and as you point
>out, class--difference for comic effect.

That's not what colonelk was saying. Like, at all. They've used racial difference as the butt of their jokes... when? Once, in Ladykillers? When else did this happen? In no other Coen film do they use racial difference for comic effect, and they CERTAINLY don't use "only" racial difference.

it may not offend as
>much as older representations, but they haven't cleared the
>woods

I fail to see how the burden of proving they aren't racist is on their shoulders. Especially since their entire career has been devoted to showing how dumb and greedy and clueless white people are.

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See above. They have nothing to prove; it's their critics, and those who would celebrate them for taking on the "racists" of the past, that concern me. Contrary to how I'm probably being interpreted--even a fair interpretation, I would agree--I don't expect contemporary culture to bring about different kinds of politics. So if Mad Men is celebrated for taking on misogyny, then I want to ask if it's possible those interpretations need to be complicated. (I guess here I'm taking a step back from labeling Mad Men's writers as sexist. Or at least, there are insidious forms of racism and sexism that deserve to be called out.) Same goes for the Coens--if they are celebrated, in advance even, for challenging the outdated mores of yesteryear, then let's see if that argument really carries weight.

But I hope I'm clear: all that I hope for and expect from the Coens is quality filmmaking. That's why I love to lurk in PTP--because the formal and aesthetic debates remain primary. But if we're going to talk about the cultural-political impact or legacy, then that's a different argument, and one I think I'm better equipped to chime in on.

>>they do only use racial--and as you point
>>out, class--difference for comic effect.
>
>That's not what colonelk was saying. Like, at all. They've
>used racial difference as the butt of their jokes... when?
>Once, in Ladykillers? When else did this happen? In no other
>Coen film do they use racial difference for comic effect, and
>they CERTAINLY don't use "only" racial difference.
>
>it may not offend as
>>much as older representations, but they haven't cleared the
>>woods
>
>I fail to see how the burden of proving they aren't racist is
>on their shoulders. Especially since their entire career has
>been devoted to showing how dumb and greedy and clueless white
>people are.
>

>That's not what colonelk was saying. Like, at all. They've
>used racial difference as the butt of their jokes... when?
>Once, in Ladykillers? When else did this happen? In no other
>Coen film do they use racial difference for comic effect, and
>they CERTAINLY don't use "only" racial difference.

Actually, I'd say that the Mike Yaganita (sp?) character does have some comic 'racial difference' elements in there.

The first time I saw the movie I laughed at his accent. We'd already been laughing at all the character's accents and here we have a Japanese (judging from his name) character who lived within this culture and the unique dialect he has as influenced by both his heritage and his social upbringing is hilarious. Perhaps also hinting at the common theme of culture shock experienced by immigrant children in these mostly homogenous communities.

The more I think about it, the more I respect the actor who played this role because it's a fairly obscure direction to speak like a Japanese man with an overexagerated Minnesota/Scandonavian accent.

Makes me wonder if it was in the script or if they just added that in casting to add some more layers to the fold. But hilarious indeed. Laughing at the way people talk is what this movie is all about.

That, and also demystifying the cool, morally ambiguous 'Malboro Man' psychopath that Tarantino had glorified in the time of Fargo's release. It's another thread altogether....but I always thought Marge was also lecturing Q Tarantino in that long boring car ride to jail. "And it's a beautiful day.....". Dude didn't look cool anymore. Just bored.

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but all the things i critique are things i love. i can only critique them because i spend so much time thinking about them, immersed in them.

doesn't really work so well interpersonally or romantically, though. lol.

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nm

the fuck took hollywood so long?

the whole "get new ideas" mantra?

do certain folks get a remake pass...if so, who else?

The Coens are very deliberately making a different adaptation of the book, not remaking the movie.

The pass only lasts until the movie comes out. Then it has to stand on its own merits.

But they've been doing pretty solid work since they bounced back with No Country, so I think people here are likely to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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No matter how successful this film is, it's not going to erase Wayne's legacy or anything. Despite winning the Oscar for it, I don't think anyone considers it one of Wayne's better films.

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