Ok, funny. Yesterday it was announced that Matt Damon and Josh Brolin were in talks to join Jeff Bridges (who’s still evidently in discussions) to star in the Coen Brothers’ remake of the John Wayne-starring 1969 Western, “True Grit,” for Paramount, and producers Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg.
The Coens response? “Yes. Jeff, Matt and Josh, that’s true — something that you read in the trades that actually turns out to be true!”
Ha. The difference between the Henry Hathaway-directed ’69 version and their take? It will be much closer to the source material written by Charles Portis, the original film only being a loose adaptation. “It’s partly a question of point-of-view,” Ethan Coen told IGN. “The book is entirely in the voice of the 14-year-old girl. That sort of tips the feeling of it over a certain way.”
People have wondered if this will be in the vein of “No Country For Old Men,” but Ethan suggests Portis’ original has a lot more wit to it, which stands to reason as many of his novels contain dry humor.
“I think it’s much funnier than the movie was so I think, unfortunately, they lost a lot of humour in both the situations and in her voice. It also ends differently than the movie did. You see the main character — the little girl — 25 years later when she’s an adult. Another way in which it’s a little bit different from the movie — and maybe this is just because of the time the movie was made — is that it’s a lot tougher and more violent than the movie reflects. Which is part of what’s interesting about it.”
Joel Coen suggests the peculiar novel is more attuned to their off-kilter sensibilities. “I don’t actually remember the movie too well, but I do remember it as being much more of a standard western, and the book is just an oddity. It’s a very odd book.”
More examples of Portis’ work being inherently comedic: Greg Mottola and comedian Bill Hader are working on an adaptation of Portis‘ “Dog Of The South, which is essentially a roadtrip story and a sarcastic noir tale about a man tracking down his wife who has left him for another man (Hader will star once they get funding, but that one is further down the road it seems).
Production on the Coens’ “True Grit,” is set to kick off March 2010.
