January-February 2011 Creative Screenwriting Page 26

creativescreenwriting January/February 2011

of-shit character and there's an instance of it. Actually, didn't we put
it in The Big Lebowski?" Joel thinks about it for a moment and says,
"That dialogue? Yes." Ethan adds, "And we cut it out. I think [John]
Goodman, who's a similar character, was gabbing--" Joel cuts in, "--
About malum in se and we cut it out. It originally came from -- 'Firing
Lines' -- William F. Buckley used to talk about it. And I think in one
place where we saw it, he was having a discussion with G. Gordon
Liddy, if I'm not mistaken. I may be wrong about that."

ADAPTIVE ABILITIES

Though, technically, this is the Coen's fourth produced adaptation,

their 2004 remake of the 1955 film The Ladykillers and their looser
adaptation in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which is based on Homer's
"The Odyssey," the brothers have penned more than a few as-of-yet
unproduced adaptations. These include everything from a remake of
the 1966 Michael Caine-Shirley MacLaine film Gambit (that's heading
to the screen, but without their direction), their work-for-hire adapta-
tion of Elmore Leonard's "Cuba Libre," their more recent adaptation
of Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and, of course,
their endlessly stalled adaptation of James Dickey's "To the White Sea."

What's so fascinating about their adaptation of Dickey's novel is

that, in Sea, they wrote a 90-page script that really has no more than
11 total pages of dialogue, as it's a first-person subjective adventure
story about a downed U.S. airman trying to find safety behind enemy
lines in Japan. The lack of dialogue was the initial challenge that drew
the usually dialogue-heavy writers to the project. "It was attractive,"
Ethan recalls. "That was part of why we thought, `Oh, this would be
interesting to do.'"

The artistry on that project is evident in the Coens' use of descrip-

tion, which follows a near haiku fashion. Rarely did they ever write a
full paragraph on the page, usually nailing what they needed to con-
vey in just one to three sentences tops, with plenty of white space in
between, which makes for a fast and engaging read.

Consider this To the White Sea passage, which has U.S. airman,

Muldrow, hiding in the cab of a crane in Tokyo harbor, when its Japan-
ese operator shows up for work in the morning and settles in:

Showing Their True Grit

He is reading the newspaper.

He turns a page.

There is a long silence.

With an absent shift of weight, the sole of his right foot twists on the floor.

The foot has been resting on the silk of a tufted-out piece of the stowed parachute. Its slick twist
underfoot is apparently sensible.

The foot twists again, experimentally, and there is another creak and shift of weight as the man
leans to look down at the floor.

After a moment, fingers reach down to feel. A murmur.

Another still beat.

But now a drop of blood hits the white silk. And another drop. Blood patters down onto the
silk.

We are close on the man's eyes: they do not move.

We pan down to his slashed throat.

Muldrow holds the man's head by his hair, holding the head forward, forcing the flow of blood
outward onto the floor.

It patters now onto the cab floor like rain on a tin roof.