Variety reports that the Coen Brothers next movie will be an adaptation of Charles Portis' western novel TRUE GRIT, which became a classic movie starring John Wayne, who won an Oscar as the ornery bounty hunter Rooster Cogburn.
Not a traditional remake, the Paramount film will be more faithful to the Charles Portis book than the 1969 pic […]Portis' novel is about a 14-year-old girl who, along with an aging U.S. marshal and another lawman, tracks her father's killer in hostile Indian territory.
But while the original film was a showcase for Wayne, the Coens' version will tell the tale from the girl's p.o.v.
I'm already looking forward to it.
When I visualize scenes from the book, Brian Dennehy is Rooster Cogburn. I do not suppose the money men will go along with that, though. I can live with Tommy Lee Jones.
Having read the book a couple of times and seen the movie like a million times, I have to say that the movie was an accurate and faithful adaptation. The only real difference was (40 year old spoiler alert) that the Glenn Campbell character died in the movie. In the book he lived, but the change really didn’t affect anything because the character is never seen in the book once they leave the camp of Lucky Ned Pepper.
They use the language of the book. The Maddie character doesn’t use contractions in the book or the movie. We only see Rooster Cogburn when Maddie is around.
I have to say, of all the books they could adapt because the movie wasn’t faithful, True Grit would be way down on the list.
I had heard their next project was an adaptation of Michael Chabon’s wonderful “Yiddish Policeman’s Union.” Any word on that?
I just read the book a couple of weeks ago and I agree with Jim. The John Wayne version was very faithful to the original and I don’t know how great a pov shift they can use to make it more Maddie-centric.
The biggest departure from the book in the original production was the casting of Wayne. Cogburn in the novel is about forty…I like the movie a lot, but the Coens seem closer to Portis’s odd sensibilities…
I don’t want to start a flame war, but Wayne was great as Rooster. Granted he didn’t have a mustache, but he played the part as written, and it was written in the movie the way it was written in the book. Again< I wish to point out whole lumps of dialogue from the book were used in the movie. Maddie is in every scene, with the exception of her father's death. The movie follows the book scene for scene. The only exceptions are Lebeof's death and the very end. But the movie was a very faithful adaptation.