Granted I have a bit of a thing for curmudgeonly old men, but in this recent, rare interview with The Wall Street Journal, No Country for Old Men/The Road/Blood Meridien author Cormac McCarthy provides plenty of evidence of his own awesomeness.  That’s not an opinion, it’s objective fact.  Here are some of the highlights, although I’d recommend reading the whole thing.

WSJ: People have said “Blood Meridian” is unfilmable because of the sheer darkness and violence of the story.

CM: That’s all crap. The fact that’s it’s a bleak and bloody story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on the screen. That’s not the issue. The issue is it would be very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary. [Editor's Note: I always thought Blood Meridien seemed much more movie-adaptable than The Road]

Besides Coca-Cola, the other thing that is universally known is cowboys and Indians. You can go to a mountain village in Mongolia and they’ll know about cowboys. But nobody had taken it seriously, not in 200 years. I thought, here’s a good subject. And it was.

[The Road director John Hillcoat]: Didn’t you start “No Country for Old Men” as a screenplay?

CM: Yeah, I wrote it. I showed it to a few people and they didn’t seem to be interested. In fact, they said, “That will never work.” Years later I got it out and turned it into a novel. Didn’t take long. I was at the Academy Awards with the Coens. They had a table full of awards before the evening was over, sitting there like beer cans. One of the first awards that they got was for Best Screenplay, and Ethan came back and he said to me, “Well, I didn’t do anything, but I’m keeping it.”

“Yes, just like a Jew…” muttered Mel Gibson, who happened to be walking by at the time.

CM: [on his 11-year-old son] John draws all the time, but I have to say he’s not very good, and I was very good. I was a child artist. A wunderkind. I did all kinds of stuff. Big showy paintings of animals. I haven’t done it in years. All that stuff vanished. I never followed it up.

Is it wrong that I love it when people say disparaging things about their children?  “Look, son, it’s great that you love to draw, but the truth is, you’ve inherited your mother’s inept ox hands.  But don’t worry, when the apocalypse comes, I’m saving two bullets to keep the cannibals from taking us alive.  Sleep tight.”