Blood Meridian

[redhawk23]

So today I finally finished reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I bought it over the summer and read about half of it before school started and didn't get back to it until late last week. Whilst looking for any plausable explaination of the ending, and any help digesting what I just read I came across news that a film adaptation. At first I was like no way. This books is obnoxiously brutal. I wouldn't call it unfilmable, just that Hollywood wouldin't want to. No one would in anyway have the balls to tackle it in the "right" way. That was until I read that it is being made by director Todd Field, director of Little Children. Now I still have no idea what this movie will turn out as but Fields involvement gives me hope. While Blood Meridian is very different from his other films, I think of anyone he would have the balls, if not 100% necessarily the technical skills involved in western epic making, to pull it off. Little Children for me was a movie that pulled no punches, and along with In the Bedroom, Field has proven he's able to pull together fantastic casts and lead them to great performances. What do you guys think?

 

[Octoberist]

Wasn't Ridley Scott working on this?

 

[redhawk23]

yeah he dropped on it though. He's been quote saying that he no longer believes that it should even be turned into a film at all.

 

[Max J Power]

I haven't read the book or seen any of Field's work, but I read an interview with McCarthy in which he said that Blood Meridian would be hard to adapt, but the movie could be great. Since he liked No Country For Old Men and The Road adaptations so much, I'd say Blood Meridian is worth a shot.

 

[The Englishman]

What happens in the book that makes it unfilmable

 

[Brother Jack]

What happens in the book that makes it unfilmable

It mostly comes down to length, imagery, and content. The film adaptation would likely be four hours long if everything in the novel was included.

 

[childeroland]

No, this film will never be made. It's a very great book, one of the best American novels ever, almost up there with Melville and Mark Twain's best, but it's too relentlessly dark for a mainstream movie. Look how The Road did. Though I'd love to see Andrew Dominik give this a try.

 

[redhawk23]

So apparently this film is change hands from Todd Field to the likes of.... James Franco?

Or at least he's supposedly attached.

Supposedly he went out and financed a screen test with Luke Perry and the guy that played Jacob on Lost, and convinced the producer, Rudin, to give him the job.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/01/how_luke_perry_and_jacob_from.html


I like Franco and all, but I was really looking forward to Todd Field directing this. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this turns out.

 

[Dark Victory]

Cormac McCarthy's probably my favorite writer. Great book and probably the last thing I'd want to see adapted by James Franco, especially hearing how a lot of his personal work (art show, shorts, etc.) is iffy at best. I loved No Country for Old Men, but The Road made McCarthy's poetic ouerve look like namby-pamby artsiness. It's way too early to tell, but I bet we'll get something in that vein.