Casting underway for Coen Bros.' 'True Grit'

By Sarah Sluis

The Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit, a classic Western follow-up to their modern Western hit, No Country for Old Men, has lined up two more actors. Matt Damon is in talks to take on the Texas Ranger role, and Josh Brolin is in talks to play the hunted man. In the movie, a fourteen-year-old girl (who has not been cast) enlists the ranger and a U.S. Marshal to help her track down her father's killer. The role of the marshal, an Oscar-winning role for John Wayne in the 1969 original, will be taken on by Jeff Bridges (The Dude in The Big Lebowski). With top producers Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg behind the film, and a fast-track from Paramount, this movie is scheduled to head into production this spring, for a release the following year.

Why has the 40-year-old film, based on the novel by Charles Portis, interested the filmmaking duo? Let's consult the archives.

1. Weird, affected dialogue. In Roger Ebert's review of the original, he notes that "Portis wrote his dialog in a formal, enchantingly archaic style that has been retained in Marguerite Roberts' screenplay." The Coen Bros. are known for utilizing accents and unusual speech, which is already present in the original work.

2. The Eye Patch. George Clooney has his pomade in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men has his bowl cut hairstyle. The Dude has his bathrobe and his white Russian in The Big Lebowski. This irresistible bit of costuming (working in tandem with Wayne's star image) just amplifies the characterization of Wayne as an "unwashed, sandpapered, roughshod, fat old rascal with a heart of gold well-covered by a hide of leather" (from Ebert's review).

3. Cash, Crime, Cover-ups and Complications. The U.S. Marshal and the Texas Ranger are both in it for the money. According to Ebert's review, the ranger "claims he has a reward for the killer (who also, it appears, plugged a state senator in Texas)." Sounds like an ulterior motive could come in play--a complication--in Coens' treatment.

Many of the Coen Bros.' films include journeys to either find the booty or hide it (the baby in Raising Arizona, the buried treasure in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the kidnapping/money in Fargo, the money in No Country for Old Men). Inevitably, things do not go according to plan, and Coen Bros. take pleasure in piling on the complications and twists to make things interesting.

The Challenge: According to many reviews, John Wayne makes the movie. The absence of Wayne's star presence could be a problem. In fact, both Roger Ebert and the Variety review use the same word, "tower," to describe Wayne's presence. Ebert notes that "one of the glories of True Grit is that it recognizes Wayne's special presence...He is not playing the same Western role he always plays. Instead, he

can play Rooster because of all the Western roles he has played. " He also mentions a parodic scene that works because of Wayne's star image. Making this movie without Wayne will require screenwriting and directing magic.

Roderick Jaynes is 'A Serious Man'

By Sarah Sluis

A Serious Man is the latest from the Coen Brothers. It's a maddening look at Jewish life in the Midwest in 1967, and our critic Ethan Alter called it "one of their very best...films to date." It opens tomorrow in

New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis (where the film was shot).

I went to a screening myself last night, and was amused to find the following bio in the press pack for the Coen Brothers' editing pseudonym:

RODERICK JAYNES (editor)

Roderick Jaynes began his career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the 1930s. The U.K. native eventually moved into the editing department, where he worked on some of the British film industry's more marginal features from the 1950s and '60s.

With the demise of the Carry On series, he retired from film editing, only to emerge from retirement to work on Joel and Ethan Coen's first feature Blood Simple. He has since worked on most of their films.

Mr. Jaynes resides in Hove, Sussex, with his chow Otto. He remains widely admired in the film industry for his impeccable grooming and is the world's foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes, many of them drawn from life.

As a footnote, Roderick Jaynes also holds the distinction of receiving an Oscar nomination for editing in 1997 with Fargo and in 2008 for No Country for Old Men.

As for A Serious Man itself, it's another classic Coen Brothers movie, with its characters panting to keep up with the break-neck pacing, their misfortunes piling up higher than they can deal with them. In this case, it's middle-class Jewish professor Larry Gopnik, whose wife has just left him for another

man. He also has self-absorbed kids, is burdened with a criminal, mildly insane brother, and faces mounting professional problems. The movie is pesteringly elusive (the Coens certainly love to torture their audience--or at least viewers like me), and in the end we're left asking the same questions as Larry. Why did this happen? Did he do something wrong? Was there some kind of curse?

One of my favorite parts of the Coens' movies are the supporting characters. They're always given specific character traits and pieces of business that add a bit of the absurd to the goings-on: in A Serious Man, for example, the uncle is always draining his sebaceous cyst, hogging the bathroom or using his portable suction unit in the living room, a detail which I'm sure will inspire many more people to see the movie--so watch the trailer instead, which is the best one I've seen in awhile (read about the making of the trailer here).