Trivia


No Country for Old Men's facts:


Heath Ledger had been in talks to play Llewelyn Moss, but withdrew to take "some time off" instead.


"No Country for Old Men", the title of the novel the film is based on is taken from W.B. Yeats' poem, "Sailing to Byzantium".


For mostly budgetary reasons, the film was shot mostly in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Tommy Lee Jones convinced the Coen Brothers to film some scenes on location in West Texas.


The Coen Brothers used a photo of a brothel patron taken in 1879 as a model for Anton Chigurh's hair style. Looking at its weirdness after getting the hair cut, Javier Bardem said "Oh no, now I won't get laid for the next two months".


Contrary to most successful films made from books, much of the film's action is taken word for word from Cormac McCarthy's novel and to boot occurs in the same order of events. Bell's final speech in the film, for instance, can be read on the final page of the book.


The drugstore that Chigurh enters after blowing up the car is called the Mike Zoss Pharmacy. This is a reference to Mike Zoss Drugs, a pharmacy in Minneapolis where the Coen Brothers enjoyed spending time in their youth. The Coen Brothers also named their production company Mike Zoss Productions.


Joel Coen and Ethan Coen refused to give Josh Brolin an audition for the movie, so he asked director Robert Rodriguez to help him shoot an audition tape while Brolin was filming his Grindhouse (2007) segment (Planet Terror (2007)) for Rodriguez. Rodriguez shot and Quentin Tarantino directed the tape, which was shot in a $950,000 digital camera. Marley Shelton, who was playing Brolin's character's wife in Grindhouse, agreed to read the lines for Llewelyn's wife Carla Jean (eventually played by 'Kelly Macdonald (I)' ).


The weapon used by Anton Chigurh is a captive bolt pistol. It is most widely used in the slaughter of cattle to stun the animals before they are butchered.


Score music is used quite sparsely throughout the film, blending elusively into the background. Some can be heard during Bell's opening narration, during Chigurh's quarter speech, when Bell shows up at the aftermath of the motel shootout towards the end of the film, and the closing credits.


Joel Coen and Ethan Coen share the record of four Oscar nominations for a single person for the same film (in this case, shared by the two) with Orson Welles' four nominations for Citizen Kane (1941) and Warren Beatty's for Reds (1981). The Coens' four nominations are for Best Picture (as producers with Scott Rudin), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing (under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes). Welles was nominated both Best Picture (also as producer) and Best Director, as well as Best Original Screenplay (won, and shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz), and Best Actor. On the other hand, Beatty was nominated for Best Picture (also as producer), Best Director (won), Best Original Screenplay with Trevor Griffiths and Best Actor.
The credited editor for this film, Roderick Jaynes, is a pseudonym for Joel and Ethan Coen, who have co-edited all of their movies since Blood Simple. (1984) (in addition to co-directing and co-writing them). New York magazine reported that they devised the pseudonym when Guild membership rules would not allow two co-credited editors on the same film. Despite his non-existence, Jaynes was nominated for an Oscar for editing No Country for Old Men (2007) (as well as Fargo (1996)), but he has never won one. Joel Coen told New York magazine that if Jaynes had won the Oscar, the award presenter and not the Coens would have been the one authorized by the Academy to accept the award on "his" behalf. Joel Coen explained that the Academy doesn't "allow proxies to accept awards at the Academy Awards, ever since Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather."


While on location in Marfa, Texas, There Will Be Blood (2007) was the neighboring film production. While filming a wide shot of the landscape one day, directors Joel Coen and Ethan Coen had to halt shooting for the day as a gigantic dark cloud of smoke floated conspicuously into view. The source of this was found to be from Paul Thomas Anderson testing the pyrotechnics of an oil derrick set ablaze on the set of his film. The Coens had to resume filming the day afterward, when the smoke finally dissipated. Both this film and There Will Be Blood were the leading contenders at the Academy Awards a year and a half later.
In the novel (but not in the movie), Sheriff Bell says of the dope-dealers, "Here a while back in San Antonio they shot and killed a federal judge." McCarthy set the story in 1980. In 1979, in San Antonio, Federal Judge John Howland Wood was shot and killed by rifle fire by a Texas free-lance contract killer named Charles Harrelson. Actor Woody Harrelson (Carson Wells in the movie) is his son.


Javier Bardem originally questioned the role of Chigurh by telling the Coens: "I don't drive, I speak bad English, and I hate violence." To which the Coens responded: "That's why we called you." Bardem states that his dream was to be in a Coen Brother's film, thus taking the role.
This is the second film in history to share the Best Director Oscar between two directors -- the first was between Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise for West Side Story (1961).
Javier Bardem's victory at the 80th Academy Awards (Feb. 2008) makes him the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar.


In the scene where Llewelyn asks to buy the jacket from the kid on the bridge, the jacket is of the Templeton Eagles. Josh Brolin was raised in Templeton and asked the production if the jacket could be from his high school. "So we called the school and they gave us a Templeton Eagles windbreaker, and that was really moving for me when I watched the movie to see me put on the windbreaker and see Templeton Eagles just plain as day on this 60-foot screen. [That] was just great."


Llewelyn's shotgun is a Winchester Model 1897 (with the barrel sawed down and filed, and the shoulder butt sawed-off and the handle taped around), one of the first successful pump-actions.
The only firearm that Sheriff Bell uses during the film is a Colt M1911A1 .45ACP semi-automatic pistol.


This is the second film Tommy Lee Jones has been in where the villain flips coins for human lives. The first was Batman Forever (1995) (in which he played the villain himself).
Anton Chigurgh and Llewellyn Moss (played by Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin respectively) are seen dressing injuries a sum of five times in the movie. Five is also the number of locks that Anton breaks in the movie.

-imdb.com-

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

film of the year

Anonymous said...

filmnya lambat. tp suka kok dgn akting & plotnya.

Anonymous said...

bagus sih filmnya..

Mellyana's Guardians said...

Ya film ini memang sangat bagus, very recommended. Buat yg suka film kelas "berat", sangat disarankan nonton film ini. Hehe.