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Ballad.
Dominic Corry is in New York to see the Coen Brothers� latest opus, The Ballad of
Buster Scruggs starring Tim Blake Nelson (above).
The Coen brothers unveiled their latest work The Ballad of Buster Scruggs at the
New York Film Festival last week, and it�s yet another masterpiece from the
peerless filmmakers. Perhaps even more so than their acclaimed True Grit (2010),
which garnered ten Oscar nominations, Buster Scruggs betrays their extreme
affection for�and deep knowledge of�the Western, cinema�s first and longest-lasting
genre.

The Netflix-backed project was erroneously initially reported to be a TV series,

but according to the brothers it was always planned as an anthology film comprised
of six individual stories. Each one embodies and gently subverts a particular
Western sub-genre, from the singing cowboy films typified by those starring Gene
Autry, to the fatalistic grime of Sergio Leone�s spaghetti westerns, to a wagon
train drama, with multiple stops in between, ending on a dark tale that wouldn�t be
all that out of place as a Twilight Zone episode.

It�s funny, tragic and savagely ironic in the manner only the Coens seem to be able
to pull off. The stories feature a host of amazing actors doing fantastic work,
including, but not limited to: Liam Neeson, Bill Heck, Zoe Kazan, Tom Waits, James
Franco, Stephen Root, Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson and the great Clancy Brown (albeit
briefly), whose presence elevates anything he appears in. The only person missing
was the late Walter Brennan, the Western genre�s all-time greatest old coot who I
am confident is smiling down upon this film from wherever he may currently reside.

Zoe Kazan, Joel Coen, Tim Blake Nelson and Ethan Coen at NYFF 56. / Photo: Evan
Agostini

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) is absolutely hilarious as the title
character (the aforementioned singing cowboy), whose story kicks off the anthology.
He joined the Coens on stage following the screening for a discussion of the work.
Here�s some highlights:

On the origins of the project:

Joel Coen: The first story [we wrote] was the first story in the movie. These are
stories that were written over 25 years really, so that goes way back, that one.
They follow, with a couple of exceptions, in a kind of chronological order in terms
of when they were written, roughly. They just got put in a drawer because they were
short movies and we didn�t know what we were gonna do with them. We probably didn�t
even expect to make them until maybe eight or ten years ago when we started
thinking, �well, maybe we could do these�. They could be seen as a sequenced series
of stories or tracks on a record album or something like that. It�s a weird animal
in terms of the format.

On whether or not they considered merging the stories into one larger narrative:
JC: No. Like I said before we had these stories, they were all westerns so there
was that and then they seemed to relate to each other, but kind of retrospectively,
rather than consciously when we started doing it. There was never the impulse to
[combine them] but as I said it�s kind of a strange form but it grew out of just
the odd nature of how they came into existence.

On the experience of the actors:

Tim Blake Nelson: We all got to read the entire script before we shot our
individual constituent parts, unrelated to the others, but I think probably as
actors we all felt a responsibility toward the genre of each film in which we
appear. Because what I think is astonishing about this is it�s six different movies
within the Western genre but then each one is in the vernacular of a sub-genre in
and of itself. And that, at least for me, and I�m pretty sure with the other
actors, just underscored one�s responsibility to appear indelibly within the genre
in which you appeared. And so understanding that and then getting to see the
successes of the others, it was just really rewarding to encounter that in all the
stories. So that�s what was most gratifying about seeing the whole, was
experiencing the success of others.

On the public confusion over whether or not this was a series or a movie, and
whether or not any stories got culled:
JC: I think that�s an artifact of what a strange animal it is. None of us really
knew what to call it or how to classify it. Aside from the confusion about the
classification, what we were going to shoot, the length of all the stories, which
vary, there was never anything we were considering doing differently. There were
never any more stories, and they were always intended to be seen together as a
group.

On the large presence of animals in the film, which prominently features a dog and
and owl, among other critters:
JC: Flies are very hard to work with. There are a lot of animals. We do tend to
load the movies up with domestic animals don�t we? It�s a Western, there are
horses. It is true, I have to say, you do a Western, you spend 90% of your time
dealing with and thinking about the horses.

Ethan Coen: And the oxen. The oxen were new to us. I asked Travis, who was the oxen
wrangler, we wanted the oxen to do something specific for a take, and I asked him
if he could do that and he just sighed. He looked at me like I was an idiot and
said, �Driving oxen is not self-evident�.

On collaborating on this film with longtime composer Carter Burwell:

EC: As Tim said, they�re all Westerns but they�re such different kinds of stories,
we would talk about to what extent the music should play off those different
[genres] and to what extent it should tie the things together. It�s a question we
confronted. They�re so different. How much are you gonna accent the differences and
how much are you gonna say it�s all the same movie [with the music]?

JC: It�s something that wasn�t just limited to the music, it�s an issue that came
up in terms of the shooting styles and the color timing look of the movie, and how
much to differentiate between the different stories and how much not to. How much
to push that and how much to pull back a little bit in terms of your original
instincts about it. And that went through a lot of iterations. It�s the kind of
thing that�s very easy to iterate and re-iterate now that color timing is done in a
computer as opposed to photo-chemically, so that went back and forth a little bit
too and sort of found its place.

On how Joel and Ethan have evolved over the years as filmmakers:
TBN: Yeah they finally know what they�re doing. They figured it out on this movie.
[Big laughs from the crowd.] At a previous Q&A I suddenly realized the oxymoronic
nature of who and what Joel and Ethan are as directors and filmmakers, because
they�re incredibly, unbelievably, in an unparalleled way, meticulous and prepared
as filmmakers. So that when you get to the set there really are no decisions being
made during the shooting time that could�ve been made earlier, and that rigor pays
off in an interesting way because it allows for the actors inside of that
meticulous preparation, to be utterly free, to have all the time an actor could
possibly want. So I think it�s the amount of preparation, with which I became
familiar on O Brother, and I�d never encountered before in any movie I�d done with
any director, or directors. And it�s repeated once more here, with the added
challenge I think for Joel and Ethan that they were making effectively six films
with six different linguistic principals inside the language of the Western and I
found the specificity with which they were working on the one I�m in, unbelievable
in terms of its extremes and its fearlessness. And the way that they were pushing
me, and in certain cases allowing me to do certain stuff. And then seeing the whole
movie, watching five other versions of that, was truly astonishing. So what I guess
I really mean to say is that the opposite of my joke is true: they continue to be
unparalleled in terms of the work they put in, the preparation they do, and the
specificity borne out of the shooting and also in the result.

�The Ballad of Buster Scruggs� is available on Netflix and in select theaters from
November 16. Letterboxd recommends seeing it on the big screen if you can!

BY DOMINIC CORRY ON OCTOBER 10, 2018

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