OT..?: Blood Meridian adaptation in the works

They kinda have to...

Maybe not the moment where the Judge (I think) swings two babies by their feet smashing their heads against a rock spilling blood and brain matter everwhere... fucking vile, brutal stuff.

But these kinds of things are pretty essential to the nature of the book.

He's definitely known as a humorist, that's for sure.

If he was only like 5 feet taller it could work.

An odd choice.

I don't really see it. I don't get the imposing presence from him, and he would have had to gain about 100 pounds.

Roger Ebert suggested Tom Noonan, who's tall enough and got the odd, ethereal, threatening intelligence but who also would have always had to gain about 100 pounds.

Everyone first thought, I think, was always Brando in Apocalypse Now.

Currently, I like John Carroll Lynch. But maybe there's someone with a more commanding voice that I'm not thinking of.

RiP Cormac McCarthy. He died today at 89 years of age.

Sad that he won't see this film.

It depends on what you're looking for.

His most famous book is probably The Road because Oprah liked it, and it also won him the Pulitzer prize. And it may have had something to do with it coming out right around the time the No Country for Old Men adaptation was coming out. That was one of his least celebrated novels, but obviously the movie was a huge deal and put him in the spotlight.

I imagine you're familiar with No Country for Old Men, which is a good book but a spectacular adaptation, but The Road is a post apocalyptic story. It veers on horror and sci-fi a bit, but it's a very spare and simple story just about a father trying to help his son survive in the worst imaginable circumstance.

There was also a movie adaptation that it perfectly decent and a fair representation of the novel, but it's not nearly as powerful an experience to watch as it is to read.


But since this is the horror board I could suggest Child of God which is probably the closest thing to a horror novel as it deals with sort of a monster of a protagonist who is a loner living in the woods of Appalachia who descends into necrophelia and murder. Pretty alarming stuff, but also an easy read. It's his shortest novel by a long way. You could probably knock it out in an afternoon.

That one also has a movie adaptation, directed by James Franco oddly enough, that is OK. It's not inept and it's not impressive. It's just kind of fine, which is not good enough considering the subject matter... but it's generally competent and mostly faithful.


I don't think he ever wrote anything else as grandiose and epic in scale as Blood Meridian, but All the Pretty Horses is an epic of sorts. It's notable for being his first attempt at romanticism and somewhat less bleakness and darkness. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's the first in a series dubbed The Border Trilogy which includes the subsequent books The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. I think the first is the finest of the three, but his prose is beautiful throughout.

All the Pretty Horses was his first novel after Blood Meridian and it won him a National Book Award. It was his first hit that actually sold and made him some money, and again, there was a movie adaptation. It's sort of famous for being destroyed and cut to pieces by Harvey Weinstein. Billy Bob Thornton directed it as his follow up to Sling Blade and it starred Matt Damon when he was still a rising star. It's actually not bad as is, but they both say that the uncut version is the best work they've ever done.

Suttree is also kind of an epic, in a way. It's probably his funniest novel, but it's also pretty grim in a sort of existential way, but it's quite entertaining. Its semi autobiographical, evidently, ans it's also his longest book. It's about a young man who leaves his life of relative privilege to go off and live on the Tennessee River.

I've never read it, but his play The Sunset Limited was adapted by director and star Tommy Lee Jones as a movie for HBO in 2011. I think it's quite good for play-on-film kinda thing. It's just Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L Jackson sitting down and talking about their conflicting philosophies for about 90 mins. And yet it's rather entertaining and enlightening.

On the contrary, I don't really recommend The Counselor which Ridley Scott directed from an original screenplay by McCarthy. It's his weakest work that I've read... and seen.


I've droned on long enough, but obviously I've been reflecting on the guy's work. In short, you can't really go wrong with The Road or All the Pretty Horses, and if you wanna dig into some more stuff those titles I mentioned are mostly pretty accessible. Some of the earlier novels are bit tougher, but nothing I've read if his felt like a waste of time.