Commenter Brian Kinsley at In Contention reads a spoiler-ish LATimes piece about The Road so we won’t have to. (There’s a tip-off to a change from the novel that I don’t want to know about.) Here’s something we can read that inspires anticipation instead of ruining it:
Using money from public relations executives and nascent producers Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, Wechsler won “The Road’s” movie rights in a bidding war before the book was published. He then approached Hillcoat, unaware that the British filmmaker had directed 2005’s little-seen but highly regarded western “The Proposition” as a homage to McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian.” (Like “Blood Meridian,” Hillcoat’s “The Proposition” is a bloody meditation on frontier justice where the rule of law is both a principle and a casualty.)
“No Country’s” Academy Award-winning producer Scott Rudin and “Little Children” filmmaker Todd Field have been developing a “Blood Meridian” movie, and Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik wants to film “Cities on the Plain,” the last book in McCarthy’s border trilogy. Said Field in explaining McCarthy’s appeal: “His work examines our core, the two faces of violence that co-exist in every savage act — brutal strength of purpose holding hands with a desperate and cowering weakness.”
Two reasons to keep on living, regardless of what happens in November.
