January-February 2011 Creative Screenwriting Page 22

creativescreenwriting January/February 2011

AFTER A WELL-DESERVED eight Oscar nominations and four wins --
including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay -- for 2007's No
Country for Old Men, a script that also took the WGA's Best Adapted
Screenplay award, so many reviewers suggested the film was a modern-
day Western that it came as no surprise that co-writer-directors Joel
and Ethan Coen finally decided to make an actual Western. True Grit
is based on the popular 1968 serialized novel by Charles Portis and is
a throwback to the stylized Western genre that the Coens grew up

appreciating. (The novel was first adapted in 1969 into an acclaimed
film that starred John Wayne.) While most of their work skews
toward R-rated adult fare, with this film they expanded their hori-
zon into the realm of a PG-13 film that will also work, in the words
of Norville Barnes from The Hudsucker Proxy, "You know, for kids."

As told to the Los Angeles Times, the brothers were inspired to make

the film after reading the book to their kids a few years ago. "A movie
that younger audiences wouldn't be excluded from -- that was impor-
tant," Joel said to the Times. "There was a reason I read it to my kid. I

thought he would be interested in it because the protagonist is a child.
For the same reason, I think it could be very interesting to kids as a
movie. That was the ambition from the beginning."

Tonally, the book and the film's well-written protagonist ultimately

bridges all age groups. "The tone of the narrator is very matter of fact,"
Ethan recently told Kristopher Tapley of InContention.com. "`Yes, I'm
a 14-year-old girl, but I went and found the coward Tom Chaney and
shot him,' and the matter of factness is actually a hallmark not just of

the book and of her character, but of
young adult adventure stories. They're
all, `This kid goes and plunges himself
into a strange adult world and these
things happen.' There is something un-
varnished about those stories that's part
of what makes them fun, part of what
makes them what they are."

Yet, don't call it a remake. As far as the

Coens are concerned, it's simply their
own loyal interpretation of Portis' novel
and is not "based" on the previous film.
As Joel explains to Creative Screenwriting,
any similarity between their film and the
previous work barely qualifies as an influ-
ence, "It's all subliminal... because we
haven't seen it since it came out in 1969.
So we only had a dim recollection of the
original movie."

Set a few years after the conclusion of

the Civil War, True Grit tells the story of
14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld),
who is joined in her quest to avenge her
father's death by Rooster Cogburn (Jeff
Bridges) -- a rough, boozy, one-eyed U.S.

Marshall -- and LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), an idealistic, by-the-book Texas
Ranger. As their journey into Indian territory deepens, the group learns
that justice is rarely by the book and their trail heats up as they close in
on the capture of Mattie's father's assailant, the "coward" Tom Chaney
(Josh Brolin).

SLUGGING IT OUT

The Coens like to write lean scripts that, interestingly, lack slug-

lines. "We've always been that way," Joel says. "We're just trying to

JEFF GOLDSMITH

The Coen brothers with Hailee Steinfeld on the set of

True Grit.