The Screenwriter’s Art: “True Grit”
On Sunday, January 2nd, the NYT had a special section called The Oscars. It’s got some excellent articles and I highly recommend it.
One of the features they ran was excerpts from four screenplays, each likely to be nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Today: True Grit, screenplay by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, based on the novel by Charles Portis.
Ext. mountain campsite — night
Crackling campfire. It is raining. The campfire is roughly canopied by a hide draped at a cant over a pair of tree branches. Mattie pours hot water from a kettle into a large tin cup holding a corn dodger. She takes a fork and starts mashing the dodger into mush. LaBoeuf sits before the fire, coat over his head, one hand on his jaw, which is swollen.
LABOEUF: Cogburn does not want me eating out of his store.
MATTIE: That is silly. You have not eaten the whole day, and it is my store, not his.
ROOSTER: Let him starve!
Rooster, bellicose, stumbles to the fire with a few thin branches. As he leans in toward the fire the water draining off the low edge of the canopy drums onto his neck. He waves a hand back at it like a man swatting flies.
He does not track! He does not shoot — except at foodstuffs! —
LABOEUF: That wazh your idea.
ROOSTER: — He does not contribute! Millstone, with opinions! He is a man who walks in front of bullets!
Rooster sits heavily, a stretching leg kicking away an empty bottle. Rain patters on his hat….
He is a drag-brake for horses!
MATTIE: Mr. LeBoeuf drew single-handed upon the Lucky Ned Pepper Gang while we fired safely from cover, like a band of sly Injuns!
ROOSTER: We?
MATTIE: It is unfair to indict a man when his jaw is swollen and tongue mangled and who is therefore unable to rise to his own defense!
LABOEUF: I can thpeak for mythelf. I am hardly obliged to anther the ravingth of a drunkard. It ith beneath me.
He rises and starts gathering his things.
… I shall make my own camp elthwhere. It ith you who have nothing to offer, Khoghburn. A shad picture indeed. Thish izh no longer a manhunt, it izh a debauch. The Texath ranger preththeth on alone.
ROOSTER: Take the girl! I bow out!
LABOEUF: A fine thing to deshide once you have brought her into the middle of the Choctaw Nation.
ROOSTER: I bow out! I wash my hands!
MATTIE: Gentlemen, we cannot fall out in this fashion, so close to our goal, with Tom Chaney nearly in hand!
Rooster erupts:
ROOSTER: In hand?! If he is not in a shallow grave, somewhere between here and Fort Smith, he is gone! Long gone! Thanks to Mr. LaBoeuf, we missed our shot! We have barked, and the birds have flown! Gone, gone, gone! Lucky Ned and his cohort, gone! Your $50, gone! Gone, the whiskey seized in evidence! The trail is cold, if ever there was one! I am a foolish old man who has been drawn into a wild goose chase by a harpy in trousers — and a nincompoop! Well, Mr. LaBoeuf can wander the Choctaw Nation for as long as he likes; perhaps the local Indians will take him in and honor his gibberings by making him chief! You, sister, may go where you like! I return home! Our engagement is terminated! I bow out!
The beginning scene of Act Two’s All Is Lost turn.
I will have much more in the way of analysis about True Grit in a 4-part series next week breaking down structure, character, dialogue, and theme.
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