More McCarthy Movies

"No Country for Old Men" was great. Despite any grudges I may still hold over the discrepancy between the praise and awards received by "No Country" and the considerably smaller amount of praise and awards received by what I thought was the superior movie, Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood", "No Country" provided both the suspense, incredible plot, and pseudo-Western violence for Johnny Moviegoer to leave the theater satisfied as well as plenty of evidence of the Coen Brothers' deft film chops to appease your neighborhood, one-of-a-million pretentious film student.

What Johnny may not have known and what Toby Tight-jeans down the street would have been quick to tell him in the utmost of condescension, is that the film was based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, "No Country for Old Men." "No Country" is the second film to be adapted from a McCarthy novel, 2000's "All the Pretty Horses" was based on McCarthy's novel of the same name.

McCarthy has been widely regarded as America's premier living novelist for some time now, though prior to his breakout year in 2007, Cormac McCarthy was quite reclusive, living on a small farm with his young son in New Mexico, I believe. McCarthy stepped into the limelight after winning a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with his 2006 novel, "The Road". Oprah then selected the novel for her book club--an honor I'm not so sure--and McCarthy granted her his first interview in several years.

Soon thereafter, McCarthy's name was being tossed around in the summer of '07 in anticipation of the Coen Brothers' film based on his novel, "No Country For Old Men." He began to do more interviews and seemed to have become comfortable with the limelight he had avoided for so many years.

Part of the problem I have with the Oscars all but snubbing of "There Will be Blood" and its favored son treatment of the Coen Brothers with the four awards it gave to "No Country", is that "No Country" is as much, if not more so, a product of McCarthy's often dark, dystopic imagination and writing skill as it is a product of the Coen Brothers' film making skills. Take the time to read "No Country for Old Men", and you will see that the Coen's provided only the polish and elbow grease needed to turn McCarthy's silver trophy of a novel into a glimmering gold statue. I do understand that the film and the novel produce art differently and "No Country" would have been ruined if not handled with the care and precision of the Coen brothers , but that intense suspense and incredible plot that "No Country" flaunts is copyrighted by McCarthy, not the Coen's.

But enough groveling and to the point, there are three McCarthy novels currently being produced as films. They are "Outer Dark", "The Road", and "Blood Meridian: or, the Evening Redness in the West." I will address "Outer Dark" first.

Outer Dark

I have not read "Outer Dark." But I will offer this to illustrate the type of novels McCarthy writes. I was sitting in a pizza place eating one day, and a girl across the small room noticed that I was reading "Blood Meridian".

"Oh, Cormac McCarthy. I had to read "Outer Dark" for a class I took on Gothic Literature. I hated it. It was so creepy and dark and all I remember from it is (spoiler alert) that some baby dies. That guy's fucking weird."

First off, Cormac McCarthy is not weird, he's honest, direct, and deals with grim topics at times. As I said I have not read "Outer Dark", so I will provide this short synopsis from Wikipedia.com:

Outer Dark is U.S. novelist Cormac McCarthy's second novel, published in 1968. The time and setting are nebulous, but can be assumed to be somewhere in the Southern United States, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. The novel tells of a woman (Rinthy) who bears her brother's baby. The brother, Culla, leaves the nameless infant in the woods to die, but he tells his sister that the newborn died of natural causes and had to be buried. Rinthy discovers this lie, and decides to set out and find the baby for herself. Meanwhile, the baby has been discovered in the woods and taken by a nameless Tinker. Culla soon follows Rinthy, intending to return her to their home. Over the remainder of the novel the two characters follow separate paths. Rinthy encounters often generous people who offer their help in different ways. Culla, however, finds difficulty in his attempts to locate his sister and is constantly pursued by three frightening and violent strangers.

Good and evil. The woman with good intentions is welcomed by her path while her evil counterpart is impeded by it. I once told a friend that in reading Cormac McCarthy there are only three colors you need to be familiar with; black, white, and red; good, bad and blood. I am currently finishing up "Blood Meridian" and will follow that up with "Outer Dark" in preparation for the film.

As for the movie version, according to IMDB.com, Stephen Imwalle will be directing and producing his adapted screenplay. The film is currently in post-production and set to release sometime this year. Imwalle presented segments of the film while in-production at the 2005 Cormac McCarthy Society Conference. Azel James will be playing what IMDB.com calls the lead role, Culla Holme. According to Edge Studios website, http://artbyegr.com/html/movie_stills.html, the film will deal with absolute evils and how they are not without redemption. The roles were filled with non-professional actors to employ a more honest execution of the story, this is the sort of detail that has me really looking forward to the movie. I feel like a lot of movies are ruined by the actors we know too well.

The film was shot in Western North Carolina, most of the action takes place outdoors, and artificial light was used at a minimum. It was partially done in a hand held documentary style in 16mm film to convey a realistic feel, which was contrasted with "tight shots and static camera set ups."

I apologize that I cannot offer more about this one, but once I have read the book I will post on it more extensively. Now, onto areas of more, albeit slight, expertise.

With "Outer Dark" in post-production I'm assuming that will be the first to release. The next to release is, I'm assuming, "The Road" which is now filming.

The Road

"The Road" is a post-apocalyptic father and son tale. The father is leading his son through a world of burned trees, falling ash, and an ever-present cold due to the ash clouding out the sun. They travel by foot and carry what little remains of their possessions and whatever they can scrounge along the way in a shopping cart. Their ultimate destination is the coast, but along the way they run into trouble with traveling packs of cannibals on their trail, safe houses that end up being quite unsafe, and the usual day-to-day problems a father and son face in a world in which almost no life remains.

This premise may sound boring to some people, and a little too dark for others, but in the novel, which I hope is translated to the film, you get attached to the father--constantly sick and getting closer and closer to death as the story rolls on, but always trying to appease his son's worries and fears and find a safe place for the two of them to sleep. The boy's mother dies before the apocalypse hinted at in the story and is seen only in flashbacks and if I remember correctly, it is revealed that she killed herself before the father and son were forced onto the road by the decline of civilization.

John Hillcoat will direct the screenplay Joe Penhall has adapted from the McCarthy novel. I've seen a lot said online about Hillcoat's last movie, 2005's "The Proposition". I understand that it is a sort of grim story as well and a lot of people have expressed their relief that "The Road" will be handled by Hillcoat. I have to see "The Proposition" before I can really say anything about Hillcoat at all, but like "Outer Dark" I will comment further later.

According to imdb.com, Viggo Mortensen will play the father, which sounds just right. When I was reading "The Road", I envisioned Brad Pitt as the father just because he could definitely look the part. However, Pitt made it abundantly clear that it takes a lot more than just looking the part to pull off a role in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", which I thought was brought down by Pitt's performance as well as the casting of Sam Rockwell as Charlie Ford.

So, I'm behind Viggo. I think a lot of comparisons could be drawn between his Tom Stall role in "History of Violence" and his upcoming father role in "The Road". Like Stall, the father in "The Road" tries to keep the violence and darkness in their lives from his son. Granted, the father will not turn out to be an ex-hitman halfway through "The Road", but the occasional outbursts of violence which Viggo should own, combined with the sentimentality of his relationship with his son will at least ring a little reminiscent of "History of Violence".

As for the son, a young actor who I have never heard of before named Kodi Smit-McPhee will play the role. I don't have much to say about him except that child actors are usually hit or miss. All I can say is that I wish the role could've been filled by "There Will Be Blood"'s Dillon Freasier. But, Smit-McPhee certainly looks like what the boy in "The Road" could be imagined to look like, but like I said you can either have a solid performance like Freasier's to keep the movie rolling, or you could have it completely screwed up by a kid who just isn't quite old enough to get it yet. We'll see.

Also, just as a side note, this Smit-McPhee has been rumored as playing a young Wolverine in the upcoming X-Men spin-off movie "Wolverine".

Charlize Theron will play the mother. This is another spot where I hope the actor doesn't screw up the role. There isn't much of the mother in the book so I'm wondering why such a big name was cast to fill the role. I mean, I liked "The Legend of Bagger Vance", but "The Road" is not a Disney sports movie starring Will Smith, ok? We're talking post-apocalypse here! I could pledge to a lifelong hatred of Theron depending on her performance and the effect it has on the movie.

Also, Guy Pearce is on imdb's cast list for "The Road". I like Guy Pearce a lot, I think he's a great actor and I'm looking forward to seeing him in "The Road". I'm crossing my fingers that Pearce will play the cannibal that Viggo's character guns down early in the movie. Not that I don't want to see a lot of Guy Pearce, it's just for some reason I can see him fitting that role really well.

All in all, I've got super high hopes for this movie. "The Road" is basically my favorite book and judging by my hearing that only 8 actors and 30 extras were casted for the entire movie, it's looking good.

Blood Meridian: or the Evening Redness in the West coming soon