If you plan to play a game, the content of the game is arranged among several American literary and art circles Interesting, out-of-four and whimsical conversations, you might be playing worse than what happened in Midtown Manhattan earlier this month. The people who participated in this conversation were filmmakers Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen. The brothers made these sharp, personal and somewhat silly movies, such as "Ice Storm" and "Oh Brother," "Where Are You" and so on, and the novelist Cormac McCarthy, whose work "All the Horses" won the National Book Award, and "The Road" won the Pulitzer Prize. If this is a reality show, then let's call it "the creepy island of genius".
McCarthy and the Cohen brothers collaborated in a recently completed film, adapted from McCarthy's novel "Old Nowhere", this thriller tells of a serial killer and a messed up drug deal. The film is aggressive, like an elegy dedicated to the Great West of the United States. There is a scene where dogs chase people in the river, which can be said to be the most exciting scene ever.
McCarthy is known for two things: his curiosity to explore everything and extreme isolation. The 74-year-old has only accepted three interviews in his life. But here, he and the Coen brothers are chatting casually, and the brothers always like to finish the other thing that hasn't been finished. Lev Grossman of Time magazine was invited to record this conversation. The conversation took place in a comfortable hotel room, facing Central Park in early autumn, with a pleasant view. However, no one glanced out the window.
Cormac McCarthy: You two guys seem to like those outrageous things. Have you ever thought about it?
Joel Cohen: I don’t know if it’s outrageous, but we planned to make a film and an adaptation. It’s James Dickey’s novel "To the White Sea", which is about the rear wing on a B-29 bomber. The machine gunner was shot down over Tokyo.
Cormac: It was the last thing he wrote.
Joel: I wrote it last. This guy in Tokyo is catching up with the bombing period, but the story is not about this. He walked all the way from Honshu to Hokkaido. Because he grew up in Alaska, he planned to escape to a colder place, and estimated that he could survive there. He doesn't speak Japanese, so there is no dialogue after 5 to 10 minutes of the movie.
Cormac: Well, that's a difficult task.
Joel: But it's interesting. We tried to shoot it, but no one wants to invest in such an expensive film about the Tokyo bombing, and there is no dialogue yet.
Ethan Cohen: And as an escape movie, that guy died in the end.
Cormac: Everyone is going to die, just like Hamlet.
Ethan: Brad Pitt wants to play this role, and he regrets it. But he is a bit too old now.
Joel: But you know, there are some things here that were still there when we arrived at "Old Nowhere", which is exactly what we are interested in. Because it is talking about such a thing, what a person is busy with, reveals for us who this person is, and this is part of the whole story. Because in this movie you see this person busy with everything, just to survive and finish the road, you can only rely on these, and there is no dialogue at all. It is these things that interest us.
Cormac: David Mamet has a collection of essays called "Writing in a Cafe", or something else. He said that for a playwright, the ideal writing situation is when writing a radio drama, because then you don't have any. How can I say, this is what someone said. By the way, there is no retreat. It is very interesting. The script is always difficult to do. I suspect that most people who write scripts don't really know exactly how the play will be performed in the future. I mean, how do you know? Just like a few years ago, my wife and I went to see "Hamlet" by Ralph Fiennes. I have watched several "Hamlet" movies, I have watched a lot of amateur productions, and I have read the script. But that day we walked out of the theater, stood there, and then left, "What...thing". How could Will predict that his scene will be like this? (Everyone laughs) So I have a question, when you guys were still shooting, when did you feel that a movie was going to be finished?
Joel: During the whole filming process, I have different feelings in different scenes. This thing can be used to time the watch. The final effect of the movie is actually obvious. I think when you watch pornographic films, you will be very excited about the things you shoot every day, and you are quite optimistic about how it brings out the feeling. But when you put them together for the first time, you can't wait to go home immediately after reading the rough cut, cut the veins and lie down in the bath to death. But after that, slowly, maybe that feeling will come back again, just back to the original point.
Cormac: However, I still don't understand how you could do that. Let me figure it out. After you watch those damn frames 45 times, it might be nothing. Obviously this is not the actual situation, but...
Ethan: Well, you are actually solving the problem, you are making trouble. Only when the film is finished do you feel uncomfortable.
Cormac: Tell me about that terrible dog. Josh (Brolin, the actor of Moss) really scared the dog? Did you press the button and the dog came straight into your vein?
Joel: The dog is really scary, but it's not an ordinary animal actor.
Cormac: It's a dog trained to kill.
Joel: It's a dog trained to kill.
Ethan: The dog trainer has a small toy, bright orange. As long as he shakes this toy in front of the dog, the dog will start to drool, go crazy, desperately trying to grab the toy. So the dog has to be chained up. Before each shoot, Josh will show the toy, put it in his crotch, and then jump into the river...
Joel:... He has no idea how much this dog can swim. Hurry, so the dog slowly approached him...
Ethan:...When Josh crawled out of the river wet, he took the toy out of his crotch and said, he asked and answered, "You What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm an actor." (Everyone laughs)
Cormac: There are a lot of good American movies, you know. I am not very cold with foreign movies. I think "Five Songs"③ is a very good movie.
Joel: It's really great.
Cormac: "Days in Heaven" ④ is too good to say.
Joel: Exactly. He is amazing, Terry Malik, very interesting.
Cormac: Very strange, I don't know what happened to him. I once met Richard Gere in New Orleans and I said to him, "What happened to Terry Malik?" He said, "Everyone is asking me, and I have no idea." But soon Later I met Terry, he just, he just didn't want to live that kind of life anymore, at least he said that, he decided not to live that kind of life anymore. It's not that he doesn't love movies, it's just that, assuming you can do the same thing without having to hang around in Hollywood...
Joel: He is a great American director.
Cormac: "Miller's Crossroads" ⑤ can also be classified in the middle. I didn't mean to embarrass you, but it's really, really good.
Joel: Oh, that's just a damn imitation.
Cormac: Yeah, I didn't say that it is not a copy, I know it is a copy, I just want to say it is very good. (Everyone laughs)
Ethan: Have you ever encountered a subject that is too exaggerated in terms of novel writing? Don't guess, we know that you reject those overly exaggerated subjects.
Cormac: I don't know, when you write a novel, you are somewhat abstinent. Just like I am not very interested in some Latin American writers, magic realism or something. You have to know that just making people believe what you are saying is hard enough in itself, so why bother to make it magical? There is a kind of ambiguity in this paradox.
Ethan: So this is not what you thought for a while.
Cormac: No, not at all. Because I think that is a bit misleading. You can use exaggerated themes in the movie, because you have to figure it out, hey, this is the movie. But I don't understand (writing). And there are so many things you want to do. You have to know that your days are getting shorter and shorter in the future, you have to...
Joel: Do the important things?
Cormac: Yes, that's what it means. I have a friend who is a little older than me and said to me: "I won't buy unripe bananas anymore." (Laughs) I'm not that way yet, but I understand what he is talking about.
① Cormac McCarthy (Cormac McCarthy) American writer, original author of "Old Nowhere", Pulitzer Prize winner. ②William
Shakespeare
③"Five Easy Pieces" (Five Easy Pieces), an American movie, filmed in 1970, directed by Rob LaFelson, starring: Jack Nicholson
④ "Days in Heaven" ( Days of Heaven), filmed in 1978, starring: Richard Gere
⑤ "Miller's Crossing" (Miller's Crossing), an early work of the Coen brothers (1990), gangster theme.
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