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.
98% of The Road consists of the two main characters, a father and son who never get names, avoiding gangs of cannibals and scrounging for food. Great book, but I realize that makes for kind of a boring downer of a movie trailer. Solution? Just slap some triumphant background music over it (starts at the 1:25 mark). Man, that worked perfectly. All Viggo did was eat some food and watch a town burn, but I felt all proud, like I was watching Sandra Bullock teach a black kid to play football or something.
(Viggo was terrified of life after pupation)
ZOMG, VIGGO MORTENSEN IS RETIRING!, reports every other site in the world. All apparently based on this quote:
“I have no plans to do another movie. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m open to seeing how I feel in a while, but right now I’m not saying yes to anything.”
I wouldn’t even bother reporting this if a thousand other sites hadn’t put VIGGO MORTENSEN TO RETIRE FROM ACTING in big headline text. Jeez, guys, at least have the journalistic integrity to put a question mark at the end. (That’s a joke, MTV). Key phrase: “I’m open to seeing how I feel in a while,” “right now I’m not saying yes…” Point being, he never said he was retiring. Being burnt out and taking a vacation is not the same thing as retiring. To put this in movie blogger terms so that you guys will understand, Viggo is simply saying, “I’m really exhausted from all this photoshopping Paula Abdul on top of Mexicans. I need to take a jerk break and the cats could use a-pettin’.” In conclusion, CROTCH FIGHT!
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is a hell of a book, the kind of thing you wish they’d make more movies out of instead of crap like The Lovely Bones. It’s about a man and his son (who never get names) wandering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland of cannibals and roving bands of outlaws. Though so far, reviews of the John Hillcoat-directed movie adaptation have been sort of mixed. I wasn’t a huge fan of Hillcoat’s last movie (The Proposition), but Viggo Mortensen is perfect casting. That dude has looking like the survivor of an apocalyptic cataclysm down pat.
It also stars Kodi Smit-McPhee as the boy. I don’t know much about this kid other than that he clearly has a couple of a-holes for parents. Really? It wasn’t enough to stick him with a hyphen, you also had to make his first name a misspelled version of crappy name to begin with it? AND you put an ‘I’ at the end? Was he supposed to dot that with a heart? You only had nine months to come up with something he wouldn’t have to drag around like wheelbarrow full of cement his entire life, so well done. Might as well have named him Stealmylunchmoney McPussy. Then again, that was my nickname, and look how well I turned out.
USA Today has a new batch of pictures of Denzell Washington in The Book of Eli, from the Hughes Brothers (who, unlike the Coen brothers, are actual brothers - the cool kind). If the pictures look familiar, it’s because this movie is a lot like The Road.
In a post-apocalyptic world, a lone hero (Washington) guards the Book of Eli, which provides knowledge that could redeem society. The despot of a small, makeshift town (Oldman) plans to take possession of the book. [Wiki]
In this frame, says co-director Allen Hughes, Elie comes upon a fork in the road. “Eli’s iPod has run out of juice and to the right is the road that leads into Carnagie’s (Gary Oldman) town. Eli makes the decision to go into town, power up his iPod and refill his canteen.” [USA Today - a few more pictures there]
And the script was written by the editor-in-chief of PC Gamer, which is perfect because video game concepts are like movie concepts that have been warmed over and generalized. Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go into town and power up my wrist for a dismissive wank. A dismissive wank that will post the apocalypse.
