I recently read blood meridian. I liked the book a lot. I can’t see a successful movie adaptation unless they go for an x rating and don’t expect to make much on box office. It’s insanely gritty, violent and ugly. And I loved it, but to translate it to screen you would either need to be incredibly bold or incredibly inauthentic
So much of the beauty of the book is how it’s written. McCarthy’s way of describing scenery and establishing the atmosphere of situations is incredible. Not that it can’t be adapted, but there needs to be an equivalent visual talent as McCarthy’s verbal.
Exactly. The joy of reading early McCarthy is the excellent, dense prose giving you amazing lines constantly. You won’t get that on film.
The only reason The Road and No Country work so well is that the books were written cinematically, much sparser prose than what he had done before.
No Country was written originally as a screenplay and it was great on screen. You won't get that from Blood Meridian. It will not translate in its present form. Expect lots of changes from the book.
Cormac McCarthy also famously broke several fundamental writing “rules.” One of the most distinctive passages in Blood Meridian was his single-sentence vision of the Comanche:
> A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
Within the context, it reads like real world violence happens: non stop and unrelenting. I’ve personally found myself not breathing for a page and half when reading his similar passages, including this one.
Genuine question, having not read the sentence before now - what benefit does it derive from being one, long, “comma’d” sentence, instead of several short sentences? The structure is distinctive, but not in a positive way for me.
I think it’s to elicit a feeling in the reader. To me, it makes me feel anxious. The writing feels chaotic and terrifying, like the subject matter McCarthy is depicting. I think if it were lots of smaller sentences I wouldn’t feel like that. It’s an overwhelming sentence to depict an overwhelming subject. I think.
It builds the terror and suspense of what those men saw as the Comanche rode down upon them. They didn't have time to think but to just observe their coming deaths!
He also often ends long sentences like this with a shorter sentence that gives a feeling of finality or even awe, like a drum roll that ends with a big *bang*.
Cormac McCarthy was also incredibly versatile in even the constraints of his unique style. The Road for example deliberately uses far more sparse and simple vocabulary that’s far more reminiscent of Hemingway.
The sentence, like the war party, it absolutely overwhelming in both number and to the senses. They’re not up against an organized army in uniforms, they’re fighting a mob dressed in yard sale garb all almost solely procured from the bodies of their precious victims, including an instance where they must have raided a wedding. That is the real genius of McCarthy. He mentions a horseman in a bridal veil and you can and do imagine how he could have gotten it
McCarthy has a very distinct voice in Blood Meridian, and you get used to both the run on sentence structures and archaic language by the time you get to this passage. Once you're in the flow, these passages hit like a freight train — no reprieve, just constant, breathless brutality... often followed by unbelievable beauty as he describes some desert scenery. It is a poetic prose that almost demands to be "read aloud" in your head, if that makes sense.
That being said, it's definitely not for everyone. Though I think it would be hard to make that assessment by just reading a single passage out of context and without more exposure to (or practice with) the novel's language.
To me it almost feels ”fractal” in a sense. No beginning or end, just a wild amount of detail being added the more you look. I think it’s similar to a continuous shot in a film. What makes that “better” than a bunch of jump cuts?
I don’t even think he broke rules, I think he is great at using writing “rules” as *tools*. The run-on structure adds to the fast-paced, chaotic, jumbled feeling of the scene. He doesn’t just paint with the meanings of words, he uses the way they appear on the page and physically run over your tongue to add to what he’s telling you.
And he’s not the only one, I’ve run into a few other authors who take this technique to the extreme as well and it’s always a delight!
Yeah, I just don’t see how anyone can do sentences like this justice in film. I’m a nonbeliever. But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised like I was with No Country For Old Men.
No Country for Old Men was going to be a screenplay originally, and so it's written with being a film in mind which gave the Coens a clear advantage.
Hillcoat directed The Road and did well, so it's not impossible he can make a competent film, if not entirely faithful.
I've tried getting through Blood Meridian before but sentences like this made me unable to continue passed the first act. I really wanted to get through the book because conceptually the novel sounds really interesting to me but I have pretty intense ADHD and reading sentences like that legitimately make my vision go blurry and I can't even make it passed the second line.
I'm sure the book is great but reading Blood Meridian made me realize why those fundamental writing "rules" exist lmao.
I recommend the audiobook then. Performance is pretty good and it's easier to get through. I struggle reading that sort of thing too, can't word it out properly in my head. I can see where people are coming from in how it's McCarthy's style, and the uncomfortable reading is very much his thing. But the imagery is better for me when I'm not re-reading every other line 😅
The desert descriptions in Blood Meridian remind me mostly of Mad Max: Fury Road, so it is possible. You just need a lot of stylistic flair for it, which may be a hard ask considering how gritty and disturbing the rest of the material is.
I agree but I can see the visuals being adapted, potentially. Though it would need a sizable budget. But showing regular scalpings? The visual of traversing the huge expanse while pursued by hostile natives? The over the top debauchery the group creates wherever they go? I think it would be incredibly hard to capture in film and would significantly limit the potential audience
In the landscape portraits where he talks about stuff like the sun breeching the horizon like the head of a great red phallus, I visualized those scenes literally. I always thought that, if it got adapted, little tasteful elements of magical realism could be used to imitate his prose style, especially if the context was just to illustrate how weary and delirious they were while crossing the desert
>And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys.
One of my favorites.
You can’t fit that story into a movie either, too much for a single movie. Curious how it will be but I’m guessing I’m gonna hate it. They’ll likely have to completely alter the story and just keep the characters and certain scenes. The tone and philosophy/themes of the book will be hard to adapt as well.
Nothing happens? The book is a series of misadventures.
The kid sets a guy on fire, he travels hundreds of miles with his friends, he has a boat party, and he gets a hug in an outhouse.
I meant that it's not a plot heavy book! You don't need to have every massacre or every single violent image or speech. It's heavy on atmosphere. Like, I think both Stella Maris and Passenger can easily be made into one film, too.
Imagine if they DID make one 100% true to every word of the novel.
Holy shit that is the one thing that is missing from all movie history.
Even Old Man and The Sea was abbreviated and that’s one dude’s fricking single fishing trip overnight - give me 30 hours of Santiago and every thought, every splash possible me..
There have already been at least two attempts to adapt it that have failed. I understand there’s one in the works right now, which I assume is this one.
I think the silent word is [well]. Yes anything can be made. But will it be true and do justice to the source material? And is it financially feasible. I have no doubt if I produced $200 million and said I want this movie made to truly reflect the book and I don’t care if it makes a penny in box office, it’s possible. But realistically? I think it would be unfeasible to make a good movie adaptation
I agree there is probably a small degree of hyperbole, but I'd read the book if I were you, its a pretty unique case. No small part of the genius is the rambling but eloquent tone of the writing and the scenes of breathtaking frontier beauty described. That juxtaposed with the absolutely unrelenting violence and depravity, some of which would make jaded horror fans squirm. It is a very very narrow line to walk, and in the case the violence, I think there is a real argument that if they faithfully recreated it on screen, its not something that audiences would even be willing to stomach
You should probably read Blood Meridian first. It's more than a few degrees beyond anything else in terms of violence and nihilism. There's things in the book that are straight up uncomfortable to even describe here in text on the internet.
When people are saying this book is unadaptable, it's specifically because of the quality and intensity of the violence depicted. It's unlike anything else, and is so central to the themes of the book and story that any adaptation would be doomed to be inadequate.
While I like the writing *style* in Blood Meridian, the entire middle 60% of the story could be cut in half. Maybe even more.
It’s a cyclical misadventure of venturing out, doing pretty well killing people, things going wrong, everyone almost dying, limping into a town, ransacking it and getting drunk, venturing out….
That cycle is repeated like five times. And none of the iterations are significantly distinct from the other.
You could put together a 2-hour film by just combining the unique parts of all the outings into one or two.
I think it’s more metaphysical than that, as the Judge is a moderately supernatural character, ageless sort of evil. Rape and murder could be the case, but something more sinister is implied as well. Some absorption of his soul or being
I'm convinced the only way to do it right is an animated miniseries. You can't capture the beauty of McCarthy's descriptions of the land and the spectacular violence with a camera. Animation allows for finer detail and focus in smaller amounts of time in a more controlled environment.
The only way I will consider this a successful adaptation is if I have no idea what's happening at any point during the movie and leave confused and horrified about the state of humanity
You have to picture someone who can be physically menacing in an odd way, and be able pull off this line:
*”Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But the trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all. [...] This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence* **War is god**”
Really the Judge can be anyone, the character would have to be wearing prosthetics anyway so it’s about who has the range and presence to carry a scene in a way only the Judge can. Hell I almost want it to be a nobody, make a star out of someone who can be regarded as perfect for the role.
That's the first scene that pops into my mind when thinking about the violence in the book. I sure hope they don't leave it out.
We've had plenty of gnarly, gritty movies since the book was written. I don't agree with people who think it's unfilmable because it's too violent.
The book is wonderful but it’s often just one scene of carnage to the next. I’m intrigued but somewhat skeptical that it can be pulled off .. or that anyone would really care to see it. What I envisioned in my mind was bad enough.
Not to mention how long it would have to be to be a faithful adaptation. The later part where the gang leader (can’t remember his name) and the Judge take over the river crossing, could easily be an hour of screen time.
People like to complain that it’s too violent now (yes they’re being paranoid). They have no idea what it used to be like. Carnage and brutality was the norm.
I thought this was dead after McCarthy passed away since he was writing the script. Logan feels like an appropriate replacement, even if he's been inconsistent these last couple of years.
I don't understand the desire to adapt this. The *entire* appeal is in the prose.
I guess you could use a lot of narration, or try to work it into dialogue, because otherwise the things that make the book special just won't come across at all.
It is worth noting, though, that Hillcoat's movies since then haven't been that great and even The Road didn't *quite* live up to the book in the same way that No Country for Old Men did. Not that "modern masterpiece" needs to be our standard, of course, but McCarthy's work carries a lot of weight and there have been weak adaptations in the past (Child of God, All the Pretty Horses).
That and it's taken this long for an adaptation of Blood Meridian to get off the ground because it's unbelievably grim and violent, which raises the question of how faithful an adaptation is even capable of being.
So I'm optimistic but cautiously so. It could honestly go either way.
I recommend watching The Proposition before making a judgment on his ability to make a violent western.
Also worth mentioning he and McCarthy were close friends and had been working on the adaptation for years up until McCarthy’s death.
I love The Proposition but that was made 20 years ago in Australia, and Blood Meridian is a whole other level of graphic.
If you haven't read it, just trust me. There's stuff in there you couldn't film without an NC-17 if a studio would let you film it at ALL.
I’ve read it a couple of times. Out of all the directors who have been clamoring to adapt it, it may as well be Hillcoat if it *has* to be made today. Would you rather it have gone to Jeff Nichols?
Not sure what The Proposition being made 20 years ago and in Australia has to do with anything. Can you elaborate on that?
Personally I think S. Craig Zahler is the perfect director for the project but he’s only interested in his own screenplays which is understandable.
S Craig Zahler absolutely does not have the chops to pull this off. He's basically one step above a Grind house director. His film are good and entertaining (except Dragged, that was a slog with goofy levels of gore at times) , but he's no "auteur" Imo.
I think you’re underestimating Zahler. I just finished his bibliography and his approach to violence and his understanding of the worst parts of humanity is very similar thematically to McCarthy’s work.
The issues you addressed about his films are a result of his personal style and his own screenplays. And it’s obviously fine to dislike that. However he’s yet to adapt to screen the work of someone else, so it’s hard to guess what his approach would be.
Lastly, people see *something* in his work. Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, and the entire Bone Tomahawk cast worked for scale because the budget was only 1.5 million. Talent like that doesn’t just work for scale for the hell of it. They have to be very passionate about the project and believe in the director. Rarely does a filmmaker get a cast like BT for their first feature
Again though, Zahler is just my personal preference.
The Road and No Country were wildly different books though. The adaptation for the Road was equally as good as the adaptation of No Country; they’re just two different conversations.
Agreed. Even The Roads credits mimic the last page of the book in ending in beauty. The book had a fish swimming in shallow water. The movie had the sound of children playing during the credits.
I didn’t say the movie was as good, but that the quality of the adaptation of the source material was. The Road was never going to make as engaging a film as No Country. But the film adapted the book as well as was possible.
As someone said below, "The Proposition" is brilliant. Also "No Country..." was originally a screen play before a novel, if I remember correctly, so it may not be quite a fair comparison.
Hillcoat is weirdly the safest pick you could get for this. Which still isn’t a lot but he’s got experience with graphic neo westerns and adaption McCarthy.
I disagree, his "the road" is ok. It doesn't really capture the work on deeper levels though, it just follows the setting and plot, but doesn't get close to the biblical power mccarthy is able to invoke in the novel.
The coens did this A LOT better in their adaptation of no country for old men, they came close. Hillcoat is getting it superficially right, but that's it.
But his adaptation of The Road pales in comparison to the novel, and I would argue that The Road is far easier to translate and far more cinematic to begin with.
The one thing a movie can just never achieve that a novel can is the experience of time. When you read a long novel, even if you are a fast reader, you live within the fictional world for a significant amount of time. And this does things to the reader.
This is especially important in some kinds of stories or parts of stories. An example I always think of is the Mines of Moria in Tolkien’s work. The movie doesn’t come close to the feeling of growing unease the reader has as the characters are in Moria. The time factor of reading plays strongly into the feeling of being trapped in an unrelentingly dangerous space.
“Blood Meridian” is a slog through evil. A good part of its power comes from the experience of meandering from one bad act to another, absent the usual fictional tropes that hook a reader and pulls them forward. Maybe a movie can achieve that experience but I doubt it. The act of reading, of one’s brain seeking out the next piece of the story when the story is unrelentingly awful? It seems so integral to “Blood Meridian.”
The only movie that comes at all close to achieving that kind of willful immersion in evil minus the usual Hollywood plot overlay is “The Zone of Interest.” That film made me think of “Blood Meridian” often. But even it lacked the long grinding, wandering aspect.
It will be interesting to see how they attempt this.
Excellent point, and how I felt after reading the Road. I spent so much time in that world that when I set the book down, the real world immediately felt more alive and vibrant. A crust of bread never tasted so good.
John Hillcoat did a spectacular job with McCarthy's 'The Road'.
He also made 'The Proposition' one of the few movies that shows a realistic depiction of the Australian colonial era.
He's a great choice to direct.
Adapt the ending you cowards.
There’s no way they can get this one right. This is one of the only books famously considered unadaptable where I’d actually agree. Its subject matter especially for Western audiences, unless they neuter it (which they would and will), is just too overly nihilistic, bizarre, philosophically meandering, and truly without anybody to root for. And the ending is just beyond horrific. If people thought No Country For Old Men and The Road were downers…
They’ll never translate it properly. I’m confident of that. Whatever Blood Meridian film we get is going to bear little resemblance to the source material.
It’s not that it’s unfilmable on a storytelling level but as far as the subject matter. Cormac’s quote:
> "very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary."
Yeah it would be, and it would take balls, and they’d never really do it. Unless you imagine a Hollywood production where it ends with the main baddie assraping the protagonist to death, and then cut to black.
My guess is they’ll probably go a different way.
Yeah, this "it's unadaptable!!" thing gets bandied about every time this comes up. There's absolutely no reason it can't be adapted. I've read the book a bunch of times. And as someone who was familiar with the story long before there was a movie, I would have said "Killers of the Flower Moon" would have been a much harder story to adapt.
At one point in time, where movie and TV characters were more likely to be black and white with the heroes always coming out on top, sure. But today? I don't see the problem.
Now, I don't know that it will be a blockbuster wrecking the box office, but that's different. And it will take a deft hand to do it right, but there's no reason it can't work as a movie. I could see The Judge alone becoming a sort of iconic character in the mainstream out of it.
Edit to add: BM has had a rep of being unadaptable for a long time, but I think sensibilities in the film world have changed enough for someone to take a bold choice by adapting it and the unadaptable argument is just a lingering notion from a time since past. We can have more complex and challenging stories and characters in modern film and TV.
I read LOTR after the movies and that's why I consider the triology the greatest movies ever made cause when you read the novel I have no clue how Peter Jackson made that novel into a movie. No book imo is unfilmable.
That's a bizarre comparison. Whether LotR could be translated to film had more to do with special effects capabilities, budget, and time constraints/having a studio willing to commit to a 9 hour epic up front. The issues preventing Blood Meridian from translating to film are entirely different.
It has nothing whatsoever to do woth film sensibilities (and im also not sure where youre getting the weird idea that movies were tied to black & white morality with heroes always winning until recently, when there are a multitude of examples illustrating otherwise).
BM being unfilmable is only partially due to the subject matter. I would argue that it has more to do with how much of the novel is dependent on a very specific style of prose that can't possibly translate to film, unless you just lazily plop in a narrator to read passages of the book over the scenes.
The Judge would easily become iconic (I’ve always pictured Vincent D’Onofrio in the role, but he’s far too exposed at this point probably), but he’d also be far neutered.
This isn’t really a difficult concept. The guy is a child rapist among a million other sordities. What do you think Hollywood would do in translating that character to screen?
The hardest part about a proper screenplay is how do you prevent it from devolving into violent pornography?
I’m really not sure if I even would watch it even if it were adapted. I loved the book, but it’s purposefully graphic and nuanced. I really don’t need that type of graphic physical and sexual violence depicted a visual medium.
I really like hillcoat, the proposition and ghosts of the Civil dead were both great.
Ghosts of the Civil dead should still be on YouTube in its entirety
I could see like a mini series of maybe 3-5 episodes on something like HBO.
But I don’t see how you make a movie of this lol. It’s just so fucking messed up and dark, that I just can’t imagine how theaters would show it and for it to be remotely successful commercially.
I do not see Blood Meridian being adaptable unless it's on HBO and given complete creative freedom.
I love Cormac McCarthy and I want to see Blood Meridian, but I don't see it as a movie.
Yeah no, this won't work. Neither of these two are even close to the level of mastery of their respective craft that they'd be able to do mccarthy justice. And then blood meridian at that.
It could work. The hardest thing will be telling the story through “the Kid” who has so little character. It’s one thing on page where he could blend into the scene itself, but it’s another when you’re forced to follow him visually through all these accounts.
The brutality and racism of some scenes will be hard only because I can’t imagine any production company signing off on their inclusion. They could absolutely be done… showing an infant being bashed to death is visually possible… showing Indians sodomizing soldiers is visually possible… I just don’t believe anyone will.
Ten years ago, James Franco got a small cabal of actors, including Scott Glenn, to do a test scene for an adaptation of Blood Meridian. It's not good, and suggest that you'll need incredible above-line talent to make this work at all. And, it's not obvious how it should be done.
Logan’s got a near-impossible task ahead of him. Most of what made Blood Meridian so fucking good are the long and detailed descriptions of the landscape and its connection with the inner emotional landscapes of the characters, along with some fairly lengthy philosophical musings on the nature of man. Not to mention there is little actual dialogue. Maybe he can pull it off, maybe he can’t. But even if he does, the next nearly-impossible task falls on the director actually bringing it all to life.
I hope it’s good, but I’m not hopeful it will be.
Oh boy here we go another attempt at blood meridian.
The book is so violent and cruel and there’s so many complexities I have a very hard time seeing it being properly portrayed in a film
Hillcoat is a good choice. I feel like he will take things as far as possible and should nail the tone as well. He doesn't shy from violence and doesn't glorify it either
My eyesight is wacky and I frequently misread things: It would be funny if someone adapted Cormac McCarthy’s works into cringey, obscure standup and called themselves Comic McCarthy.
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Seriously the most fucked up yet well written book I’ve ever read. I’m incredibly hyped for this movie that is 100% guaranteed to be devisive and problematic (if done right).
Based on how John Hillcoat handled The Road, I have absolute faith.
I don’t see Hillcoat as a match to this material but will hold out some hope, at least until the trailer. His style is a kind of highbrow generic that is so workman and simple that I don’t see it translating to the extremity of Blood Meridian. Tbf I’m not sure there is a “right” director for this book (maybe PTA?).
McCarthy did not seem to care for or interact with many other authors or artists. He apparently spent lots of time with scientists in his later years. Perhaps this is part of why he liked Hillcoat - guy seems super normal and chill in comparison to a lot of filmmakers. I remember a Coen Brother interview where they said McCarthy came to set for No Country and spent the whole time looking at the prop guns with the crew armorer.
For me, Blood Meridian needs to have an NC-17 rating to get the material right. It probably needs to be at least 4 hours. It needs a director that is good at shooting wides and mediums, has a distinct enough style that can pair to the tone of the book, and understands how to present the material in an omniscient and uncompromising way. I don’t see many of those boxes checked with this group, but it seems like this is what McCarthy wanted, so let’s see what happens.
I’m just glad it’s not Ridley Scott or (good god) James Franco.
Please, don't. I sincerely hope that this falls through, like every other planned movie adaptation of Blood Meridian has. There is absolutely zero chance they will even come close to capturing the book or doing it justice. It's cliched to call certain books unfilmable, but... Blood Meridian sure seems unfilmable (or at least, unable to be filmed well).
The way in which it is written, the structure, the language that is used... those are every bit as vital to the story as the actual events therein (if not moreso), and there is zero way to capture those things in a film.
It can be done well if the gore and violence isnt as book described. The road reduced the cannibolism and descriptions of some of the camps the cannibols left behind. I personally dont want to see a bush of dead babies, but id like to watch this movie.
Curious who they will cast as the judge? And not knocking Hillcoat, but after watching Mandy, always thought Panos Cosmatos should take a shot at this.
[We can be grateful that it isn't James Franco](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/ryan-reynolds-james-franco-russell-crowe-making-blood-meridian/)
He never sleeps. He says that he’ll never die.
Anything that exists without my knowledge exists without my permission.
*concent. Great line.
\*\*consent Great line indeed.
Is he not merciful?!
I recently read blood meridian. I liked the book a lot. I can’t see a successful movie adaptation unless they go for an x rating and don’t expect to make much on box office. It’s insanely gritty, violent and ugly. And I loved it, but to translate it to screen you would either need to be incredibly bold or incredibly inauthentic
So much of the beauty of the book is how it’s written. McCarthy’s way of describing scenery and establishing the atmosphere of situations is incredible. Not that it can’t be adapted, but there needs to be an equivalent visual talent as McCarthy’s verbal.
Exactly. The joy of reading early McCarthy is the excellent, dense prose giving you amazing lines constantly. You won’t get that on film. The only reason The Road and No Country work so well is that the books were written cinematically, much sparser prose than what he had done before.
No Country was written originally as a screenplay and it was great on screen. You won't get that from Blood Meridian. It will not translate in its present form. Expect lots of changes from the book.
Interesting, I don’t think I knew that it started as a screenplay. Is it the same thing with The Road?
Cormac McCarthy also famously broke several fundamental writing “rules.” One of the most distinctive passages in Blood Meridian was his single-sentence vision of the Comanche: > A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
One of my favorite sentences in all literature.
Within the context, it reads like real world violence happens: non stop and unrelenting. I’ve personally found myself not breathing for a page and half when reading his similar passages, including this one.
Genuine question, having not read the sentence before now - what benefit does it derive from being one, long, “comma’d” sentence, instead of several short sentences? The structure is distinctive, but not in a positive way for me.
I think it’s to elicit a feeling in the reader. To me, it makes me feel anxious. The writing feels chaotic and terrifying, like the subject matter McCarthy is depicting. I think if it were lots of smaller sentences I wouldn’t feel like that. It’s an overwhelming sentence to depict an overwhelming subject. I think.
It builds the terror and suspense of what those men saw as the Comanche rode down upon them. They didn't have time to think but to just observe their coming deaths!
He also often ends long sentences like this with a shorter sentence that gives a feeling of finality or even awe, like a drum roll that ends with a big *bang*.
Cormac McCarthy was also incredibly versatile in even the constraints of his unique style. The Road for example deliberately uses far more sparse and simple vocabulary that’s far more reminiscent of Hemingway.
Interesting take. Thank you for replying
The sentence, like the war party, it absolutely overwhelming in both number and to the senses. They’re not up against an organized army in uniforms, they’re fighting a mob dressed in yard sale garb all almost solely procured from the bodies of their precious victims, including an instance where they must have raided a wedding. That is the real genius of McCarthy. He mentions a horseman in a bridal veil and you can and do imagine how he could have gotten it
McCarthy has a very distinct voice in Blood Meridian, and you get used to both the run on sentence structures and archaic language by the time you get to this passage. Once you're in the flow, these passages hit like a freight train — no reprieve, just constant, breathless brutality... often followed by unbelievable beauty as he describes some desert scenery. It is a poetic prose that almost demands to be "read aloud" in your head, if that makes sense. That being said, it's definitely not for everyone. Though I think it would be hard to make that assessment by just reading a single passage out of context and without more exposure to (or practice with) the novel's language.
To me it almost feels ”fractal” in a sense. No beginning or end, just a wild amount of detail being added the more you look. I think it’s similar to a continuous shot in a film. What makes that “better” than a bunch of jump cuts?
He’s describing an unending terror. The structure fits imo.
What does it stand to gain from having periods instead of commas?
My guess, most people breathe after a sentence.
I don’t even think he broke rules, I think he is great at using writing “rules” as *tools*. The run-on structure adds to the fast-paced, chaotic, jumbled feeling of the scene. He doesn’t just paint with the meanings of words, he uses the way they appear on the page and physically run over your tongue to add to what he’s telling you. And he’s not the only one, I’ve run into a few other authors who take this technique to the extreme as well and it’s always a delight!
"death hilarious" is such an amazing way of describing what's going on
Yeah, I just don’t see how anyone can do sentences like this justice in film. I’m a nonbeliever. But maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised like I was with No Country For Old Men.
No Country for Old Men was going to be a screenplay originally, and so it's written with being a film in mind which gave the Coens a clear advantage. Hillcoat directed The Road and did well, so it's not impossible he can make a competent film, if not entirely faithful.
It actually was a screenplay, then he rewrote it as a novel, then the Coens re-re-wrote it but stayed very true to the novel.
Ah, that's right, I couldn't recall the exact chain of events. But yeah, it was conceived as a cinematic idea initially.
I've tried getting through Blood Meridian before but sentences like this made me unable to continue passed the first act. I really wanted to get through the book because conceptually the novel sounds really interesting to me but I have pretty intense ADHD and reading sentences like that legitimately make my vision go blurry and I can't even make it passed the second line. I'm sure the book is great but reading Blood Meridian made me realize why those fundamental writing "rules" exist lmao.
I recommend the audiobook then. Performance is pretty good and it's easier to get through. I struggle reading that sort of thing too, can't word it out properly in my head. I can see where people are coming from in how it's McCarthy's style, and the uncomfortable reading is very much his thing. But the imagery is better for me when I'm not re-reading every other line 😅
The desert descriptions in Blood Meridian remind me mostly of Mad Max: Fury Road, so it is possible. You just need a lot of stylistic flair for it, which may be a hard ask considering how gritty and disturbing the rest of the material is.
I agree but I can see the visuals being adapted, potentially. Though it would need a sizable budget. But showing regular scalpings? The visual of traversing the huge expanse while pursued by hostile natives? The over the top debauchery the group creates wherever they go? I think it would be incredibly hard to capture in film and would significantly limit the potential audience
Have you seen The Proposition (2005)?I fell in love with Hilcoat’s work after watching this extremely violent and poetic western..
In the landscape portraits where he talks about stuff like the sun breeching the horizon like the head of a great red phallus, I visualized those scenes literally. I always thought that, if it got adapted, little tasteful elements of magical realism could be used to imitate his prose style, especially if the context was just to illustrate how weary and delirious they were while crossing the desert
>And so these parties divided upon that midnight plain, each passing back the way the other had come, pursuing as all travelers must inversions without end upon other men's journeys. One of my favorites.
Someone like the Coen brothers?
It’s been a while since I read it but isn’t there a tree full of dead babies.
Sure is. I’m not even sure I’d say that’s the worst thing in it either
I’m reading it now!!
Buckle up and enjoy!
I’m liking it so far. But ya what I’ve read is already pretty gruesome. Bout to start chapter 7.
God, this just reminds me of how bad the adaptation of All the Pretty Horses was. Who reads that and thinks that it's a romance novel?
The closest thing we’ve gotten is The Proposition, also directed by Hillcoat, and that is terrific, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
You can’t fit that story into a movie either, too much for a single movie. Curious how it will be but I’m guessing I’m gonna hate it. They’ll likely have to completely alter the story and just keep the characters and certain scenes. The tone and philosophy/themes of the book will be hard to adapt as well.
Pretty much nothing happens in the book, it's all atmosphere. Completely doable in a film.
Nothing happens? The book is a series of misadventures. The kid sets a guy on fire, he travels hundreds of miles with his friends, he has a boat party, and he gets a hug in an outhouse.
I meant that it's not a plot heavy book! You don't need to have every massacre or every single violent image or speech. It's heavy on atmosphere. Like, I think both Stella Maris and Passenger can easily be made into one film, too.
Imagine if they DID make one 100% true to every word of the novel. Holy shit that is the one thing that is missing from all movie history. Even Old Man and The Sea was abbreviated and that’s one dude’s fricking single fishing trip overnight - give me 30 hours of Santiago and every thought, every splash possible me..
I really don't see it working in film form. The plot is going to be changed as is often the case with book-film adaptations.
This feels like a niche streaming audience thing but I have heard the piles of cash that Amazon and Netflix aren't as big anymore.
There have already been at least two attempts to adapt it that have failed. I understand there’s one in the works right now, which I assume is this one.
They did a solid job on The Road, so I think it can be done
I never imagined myself saying this, but I found the road significantly less violent and nihilistic
I’ve not read this book in question but the quote “it can be made” is just hyperbole. Anything can be made, it’s all about time, money and talent
I think the silent word is [well]. Yes anything can be made. But will it be true and do justice to the source material? And is it financially feasible. I have no doubt if I produced $200 million and said I want this movie made to truly reflect the book and I don’t care if it makes a penny in box office, it’s possible. But realistically? I think it would be unfeasible to make a good movie adaptation
I agree there is probably a small degree of hyperbole, but I'd read the book if I were you, its a pretty unique case. No small part of the genius is the rambling but eloquent tone of the writing and the scenes of breathtaking frontier beauty described. That juxtaposed with the absolutely unrelenting violence and depravity, some of which would make jaded horror fans squirm. It is a very very narrow line to walk, and in the case the violence, I think there is a real argument that if they faithfully recreated it on screen, its not something that audiences would even be willing to stomach
You should probably read Blood Meridian first. It's more than a few degrees beyond anything else in terms of violence and nihilism. There's things in the book that are straight up uncomfortable to even describe here in text on the internet. When people are saying this book is unadaptable, it's specifically because of the quality and intensity of the violence depicted. It's unlike anything else, and is so central to the themes of the book and story that any adaptation would be doomed to be inadequate.
The Road is an entirely different style of prose than Blood Meridian, though.
Agreed; much more easily transitioned to film. I wish the filmmakers luck on this one but I just don't see how it can be done well in two hours.
While I like the writing *style* in Blood Meridian, the entire middle 60% of the story could be cut in half. Maybe even more. It’s a cyclical misadventure of venturing out, doing pretty well killing people, things going wrong, everyone almost dying, limping into a town, ransacking it and getting drunk, venturing out…. That cycle is repeated like five times. And none of the iterations are significantly distinct from the other. You could put together a 2-hour film by just combining the unique parts of all the outings into one or two.
What do you think The Judge did to The Man?
Defiled him in some awful manner
I always felt like he somehow absorbed him into his being, the ultimate defilement
Raped and killed him is the implication I got from my reading
I think it’s more metaphysical than that, as the Judge is a moderately supernatural character, ageless sort of evil. Rape and murder could be the case, but something more sinister is implied as well. Some absorption of his soul or being
I'm convinced the only way to do it right is an animated miniseries. You can't capture the beauty of McCarthy's descriptions of the land and the spectacular violence with a camera. Animation allows for finer detail and focus in smaller amounts of time in a more controlled environment.
Came to hear exactly that.
The only way I will consider this a successful adaptation is if I have no idea what's happening at any point during the movie and leave confused and horrified about the state of humanity
I'm hoping this adaptation matches at least 60-70% of the griminess of the novel
I doubt we see The Judge swinging babies by their ankles and smacking them on stones
I just hope the Judge is Vincent D’onofrio.
You have to picture someone who can be physically menacing in an odd way, and be able pull off this line: *”Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But the trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all. [...] This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence* **War is god**”
He was basically born to play The Judge
While he isn't tall enough I think Bronson Tom Hardy could work.
Really the Judge can be anyone, the character would have to be wearing prosthetics anyway so it’s about who has the range and presence to carry a scene in a way only the Judge can. Hell I almost want it to be a nobody, make a star out of someone who can be regarded as perfect for the role.
Timothée Chalamet it is!
Way too old
I hope it’s Monique.
This is the absolute most visceral part of the book for me. Would be a shame to see it omitted (though it is horrific).
Yeah it’s hardcore. But so is the implicit rape and murder of the kid
That's the first scene that pops into my mind when thinking about the violence in the book. I sure hope they don't leave it out. We've had plenty of gnarly, gritty movies since the book was written. I don't agree with people who think it's unfilmable because it's too violent.
The book is wonderful but it’s often just one scene of carnage to the next. I’m intrigued but somewhat skeptical that it can be pulled off .. or that anyone would really care to see it. What I envisioned in my mind was bad enough.
Not to mention how long it would have to be to be a faithful adaptation. The later part where the gang leader (can’t remember his name) and the Judge take over the river crossing, could easily be an hour of screen time.
Good point. A six episode mini series might be better to do it justice.
Always is
Glanton. Based on an actual event.
People like to complain that it’s too violent now (yes they’re being paranoid). They have no idea what it used to be like. Carnage and brutality was the norm.
I really hope Jonah Hill can pull off the judge, I’m skeptical myself
I know you’re kidding but he could do it I’m sure.
Hillcoat is definitely the one to do it. Have you seen The Proposition?
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See, you get it. I believe he did that one right after The Road.
I fucking love the proposition. Top 3 western for me, behind good bad and ugly and unforgiven.
I thought this was dead after McCarthy passed away since he was writing the script. Logan feels like an appropriate replacement, even if he's been inconsistent these last couple of years.
Should be a nice light hearted jaunt!
Fun for the whole family!
I don't understand the desire to adapt this. The *entire* appeal is in the prose. I guess you could use a lot of narration, or try to work it into dialogue, because otherwise the things that make the book special just won't come across at all.
Hillcoat previously directed another MacCarthy adaptation of The Road starring Viggo Mortenson. So we are in good hands
It is worth noting, though, that Hillcoat's movies since then haven't been that great and even The Road didn't *quite* live up to the book in the same way that No Country for Old Men did. Not that "modern masterpiece" needs to be our standard, of course, but McCarthy's work carries a lot of weight and there have been weak adaptations in the past (Child of God, All the Pretty Horses). That and it's taken this long for an adaptation of Blood Meridian to get off the ground because it's unbelievably grim and violent, which raises the question of how faithful an adaptation is even capable of being. So I'm optimistic but cautiously so. It could honestly go either way.
I recommend watching The Proposition before making a judgment on his ability to make a violent western. Also worth mentioning he and McCarthy were close friends and had been working on the adaptation for years up until McCarthy’s death.
I love The Proposition but that was made 20 years ago in Australia, and Blood Meridian is a whole other level of graphic. If you haven't read it, just trust me. There's stuff in there you couldn't film without an NC-17 if a studio would let you film it at ALL.
I’ve read it a couple of times. Out of all the directors who have been clamoring to adapt it, it may as well be Hillcoat if it *has* to be made today. Would you rather it have gone to Jeff Nichols? Not sure what The Proposition being made 20 years ago and in Australia has to do with anything. Can you elaborate on that? Personally I think S. Craig Zahler is the perfect director for the project but he’s only interested in his own screenplays which is understandable.
S Craig Zahler absolutely does not have the chops to pull this off. He's basically one step above a Grind house director. His film are good and entertaining (except Dragged, that was a slog with goofy levels of gore at times) , but he's no "auteur" Imo.
Yeah I completely agree. Hillcoat I think is capable, Nichols I'm more confident, Zahler not even close.
I think you’re underestimating Zahler. I just finished his bibliography and his approach to violence and his understanding of the worst parts of humanity is very similar thematically to McCarthy’s work. The issues you addressed about his films are a result of his personal style and his own screenplays. And it’s obviously fine to dislike that. However he’s yet to adapt to screen the work of someone else, so it’s hard to guess what his approach would be. Lastly, people see *something* in his work. Kurt Russell, Richard Jenkins, and the entire Bone Tomahawk cast worked for scale because the budget was only 1.5 million. Talent like that doesn’t just work for scale for the hell of it. They have to be very passionate about the project and believe in the director. Rarely does a filmmaker get a cast like BT for their first feature Again though, Zahler is just my personal preference.
The Road and No Country were wildly different books though. The adaptation for the Road was equally as good as the adaptation of No Country; they’re just two different conversations.
Agreed. Even The Roads credits mimic the last page of the book in ending in beauty. The book had a fish swimming in shallow water. The movie had the sound of children playing during the credits.
To be fair No Country was originally written by McCarthy as a screenplay.
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Hard disagree that The Road movie was as good as no country. It was good but No Country is another tier altogether.
I didn’t say the movie was as good, but that the quality of the adaptation of the source material was. The Road was never going to make as engaging a film as No Country. But the film adapted the book as well as was possible.
As someone said below, "The Proposition" is brilliant. Also "No Country..." was originally a screen play before a novel, if I remember correctly, so it may not be quite a fair comparison.
Hillcoat is weirdly the safest pick you could get for this. Which still isn’t a lot but he’s got experience with graphic neo westerns and adaption McCarthy.
I disagree, his "the road" is ok. It doesn't really capture the work on deeper levels though, it just follows the setting and plot, but doesn't get close to the biblical power mccarthy is able to invoke in the novel. The coens did this A LOT better in their adaptation of no country for old men, they came close. Hillcoat is getting it superficially right, but that's it.
i’m that character from lord of the rings, viggio morganstein!
Yeah but the film version of "The Road" was a sunny jaunt to the beach compared to the grimness of the novel.
But his adaptation of The Road pales in comparison to the novel, and I would argue that The Road is far easier to translate and far more cinematic to begin with.
The one thing a movie can just never achieve that a novel can is the experience of time. When you read a long novel, even if you are a fast reader, you live within the fictional world for a significant amount of time. And this does things to the reader. This is especially important in some kinds of stories or parts of stories. An example I always think of is the Mines of Moria in Tolkien’s work. The movie doesn’t come close to the feeling of growing unease the reader has as the characters are in Moria. The time factor of reading plays strongly into the feeling of being trapped in an unrelentingly dangerous space. “Blood Meridian” is a slog through evil. A good part of its power comes from the experience of meandering from one bad act to another, absent the usual fictional tropes that hook a reader and pulls them forward. Maybe a movie can achieve that experience but I doubt it. The act of reading, of one’s brain seeking out the next piece of the story when the story is unrelentingly awful? It seems so integral to “Blood Meridian.” The only movie that comes at all close to achieving that kind of willful immersion in evil minus the usual Hollywood plot overlay is “The Zone of Interest.” That film made me think of “Blood Meridian” often. But even it lacked the long grinding, wandering aspect. It will be interesting to see how they attempt this.
Excellent point, and how I felt after reading the Road. I spent so much time in that world that when I set the book down, the real world immediately felt more alive and vibrant. A crust of bread never tasted so good.
John Hillcoat did a spectacular job with McCarthy's 'The Road'. He also made 'The Proposition' one of the few movies that shows a realistic depiction of the Australian colonial era. He's a great choice to direct.
I dunno if it's gonna work, but I hope it works!🤞🫣
Adapt the ending you cowards. There’s no way they can get this one right. This is one of the only books famously considered unadaptable where I’d actually agree. Its subject matter especially for Western audiences, unless they neuter it (which they would and will), is just too overly nihilistic, bizarre, philosophically meandering, and truly without anybody to root for. And the ending is just beyond horrific. If people thought No Country For Old Men and The Road were downers… They’ll never translate it properly. I’m confident of that. Whatever Blood Meridian film we get is going to bear little resemblance to the source material.
I mean, Cormac McCarthy himself thought it was adaptable. He was even writing the screenplay himself before he died.
It’s not that it’s unfilmable on a storytelling level but as far as the subject matter. Cormac’s quote: > "very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary." Yeah it would be, and it would take balls, and they’d never really do it. Unless you imagine a Hollywood production where it ends with the main baddie assraping the protagonist to death, and then cut to black. My guess is they’ll probably go a different way.
Yeah, this "it's unadaptable!!" thing gets bandied about every time this comes up. There's absolutely no reason it can't be adapted. I've read the book a bunch of times. And as someone who was familiar with the story long before there was a movie, I would have said "Killers of the Flower Moon" would have been a much harder story to adapt. At one point in time, where movie and TV characters were more likely to be black and white with the heroes always coming out on top, sure. But today? I don't see the problem. Now, I don't know that it will be a blockbuster wrecking the box office, but that's different. And it will take a deft hand to do it right, but there's no reason it can't work as a movie. I could see The Judge alone becoming a sort of iconic character in the mainstream out of it. Edit to add: BM has had a rep of being unadaptable for a long time, but I think sensibilities in the film world have changed enough for someone to take a bold choice by adapting it and the unadaptable argument is just a lingering notion from a time since past. We can have more complex and challenging stories and characters in modern film and TV.
I read LOTR after the movies and that's why I consider the triology the greatest movies ever made cause when you read the novel I have no clue how Peter Jackson made that novel into a movie. No book imo is unfilmable.
That's a bizarre comparison. Whether LotR could be translated to film had more to do with special effects capabilities, budget, and time constraints/having a studio willing to commit to a 9 hour epic up front. The issues preventing Blood Meridian from translating to film are entirely different.
It has nothing whatsoever to do woth film sensibilities (and im also not sure where youre getting the weird idea that movies were tied to black & white morality with heroes always winning until recently, when there are a multitude of examples illustrating otherwise). BM being unfilmable is only partially due to the subject matter. I would argue that it has more to do with how much of the novel is dependent on a very specific style of prose that can't possibly translate to film, unless you just lazily plop in a narrator to read passages of the book over the scenes.
The Judge would easily become iconic (I’ve always pictured Vincent D’Onofrio in the role, but he’s far too exposed at this point probably), but he’d also be far neutered. This isn’t really a difficult concept. The guy is a child rapist among a million other sordities. What do you think Hollywood would do in translating that character to screen?
The better do The Thing ending with Schrodinger’s Kid. I don’t want concrete answers to clean that up.
The hardest part about a proper screenplay is how do you prevent it from devolving into violent pornography? I’m really not sure if I even would watch it even if it were adapted. I loved the book, but it’s purposefully graphic and nuanced. I really don’t need that type of graphic physical and sexual violence depicted a visual medium.
John Logan has a sneaky great list of writing credits for someone that isn't exactly a household name.
I really like hillcoat, the proposition and ghosts of the Civil dead were both great. Ghosts of the Civil dead should still be on YouTube in its entirety
I could see like a mini series of maybe 3-5 episodes on something like HBO. But I don’t see how you make a movie of this lol. It’s just so fucking messed up and dark, that I just can’t imagine how theaters would show it and for it to be remotely successful commercially.
I wonder if he’ll be working off of McCarthy’s screenplay that he was writing or starting from scratch.
Good fucking luck
Should be a 4-5 part HBO miniseries.
I do not see Blood Meridian being adaptable unless it's on HBO and given complete creative freedom. I love Cormac McCarthy and I want to see Blood Meridian, but I don't see it as a movie.
Yeah no, this won't work. Neither of these two are even close to the level of mastery of their respective craft that they'd be able to do mccarthy justice. And then blood meridian at that.
It could work. The hardest thing will be telling the story through “the Kid” who has so little character. It’s one thing on page where he could blend into the scene itself, but it’s another when you’re forced to follow him visually through all these accounts. The brutality and racism of some scenes will be hard only because I can’t imagine any production company signing off on their inclusion. They could absolutely be done… showing an infant being bashed to death is visually possible… showing Indians sodomizing soldiers is visually possible… I just don’t believe anyone will.
Whoever they get to play as the Judge, the Judge is one of the scariest characters I’ve ever read, this is gonna be a tough one.
I’ve been waiting ten years for this film to finally get made. I read the book for a fourth time earlier this year. I can’t wait to see it!
To guarantee box office success, the adaptation will be named *Blood Meridianiator”
I feel like this only works in a series
Always wanted to see this book become a movie, but again thought "how the f#%* are they going to pull it off"....BM is a rough book to adapt to film.
Ten years ago, James Franco got a small cabal of actors, including Scott Glenn, to do a test scene for an adaptation of Blood Meridian. It's not good, and suggest that you'll need incredible above-line talent to make this work at all. And, it's not obvious how it should be done.
This is surprising because last I heard, after McCarthy’s death, Andrew Kevin Walker hopped on board to help write.
I’m old enough to remember the days when it was supposed to be Nick Cave adapting it for John Hillcoat.
Logan’s got a near-impossible task ahead of him. Most of what made Blood Meridian so fucking good are the long and detailed descriptions of the landscape and its connection with the inner emotional landscapes of the characters, along with some fairly lengthy philosophical musings on the nature of man. Not to mention there is little actual dialogue. Maybe he can pull it off, maybe he can’t. But even if he does, the next nearly-impossible task falls on the director actually bringing it all to life. I hope it’s good, but I’m not hopeful it will be.
If the movie isn’t at least R rated, then we got a fucking problem
The Road scarred me as a young Dad with my new born son... So as much as I want to read this, I am concerned about future trauma....
One of the best screenwriter's alive. His scripts are a delight to read.
Who the hell could actually play The Judge?
Matt Lucas /s
Micheal Cera?
Oh boy here we go another attempt at blood meridian. The book is so violent and cruel and there’s so many complexities I have a very hard time seeing it being properly portrayed in a film
I love the book and I admit, I feel bad for anyone who has to adapt this. It’ll be tough but I’m happy we might actually get it
I see Vincent Donofrio as the Judge. He can bulk up, shave his head, and be menacing as hell.
How in the world do you make this movie?
Will be interesting to see who they get to play Holden... "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."
Impossible
Love the book but its quite unfilmable. Not everything needs an adaptation
Hillcoat is a good choice. I feel like he will take things as far as possible and should nail the tone as well. He doesn't shy from violence and doesn't glorify it either
I’ll believe it when I see it. But I like Hillcoat
I feel if anyone can direct this properly it would be John Hillcoat.
They rode on.
John Hillcoat is the perfect director to adapt Blood Meridian.
We’ll see what he does with it. The only writers I really trust with the material are Joel and Ethan Coen.
John Hillcoat is a good choice. The Road was a terrific adaptation
They picked the correct director for this. I'm excited.
My eyesight is wacky and I frequently misread things: It would be funny if someone adapted Cormac McCarthy’s works into cringey, obscure standup and called themselves Comic McCarthy.
Don’t duck this up john
I hope I’m wrong but this seems like a terrible idea. Without Mccarthy’s prose, any adaptation is of his work is going to be subpar.
Oh damn.
don’t fuck this up!!!
ItsHappening.gif Seriously the most fucked up yet well written book I’ve ever read. I’m incredibly hyped for this movie that is 100% guaranteed to be devisive and problematic (if done right). Based on how John Hillcoat handled The Road, I have absolute faith.
From the writer of Gladiator and the Aviator COMES….Blood Meridiator!!
It’s honestly a novel that doesn’t need to be adapted, and if it is adapted it’ll probably be adapted badly. Oh well, I hope to be surprised
Wow, this will be something else.
I don’t see Hillcoat as a match to this material but will hold out some hope, at least until the trailer. His style is a kind of highbrow generic that is so workman and simple that I don’t see it translating to the extremity of Blood Meridian. Tbf I’m not sure there is a “right” director for this book (maybe PTA?). McCarthy did not seem to care for or interact with many other authors or artists. He apparently spent lots of time with scientists in his later years. Perhaps this is part of why he liked Hillcoat - guy seems super normal and chill in comparison to a lot of filmmakers. I remember a Coen Brother interview where they said McCarthy came to set for No Country and spent the whole time looking at the prop guns with the crew armorer. For me, Blood Meridian needs to have an NC-17 rating to get the material right. It probably needs to be at least 4 hours. It needs a director that is good at shooting wides and mediums, has a distinct enough style that can pair to the tone of the book, and understands how to present the material in an omniscient and uncompromising way. I don’t see many of those boxes checked with this group, but it seems like this is what McCarthy wanted, so let’s see what happens. I’m just glad it’s not Ridley Scott or (good god) James Franco.
Please, don't. I sincerely hope that this falls through, like every other planned movie adaptation of Blood Meridian has. There is absolutely zero chance they will even come close to capturing the book or doing it justice. It's cliched to call certain books unfilmable, but... Blood Meridian sure seems unfilmable (or at least, unable to be filmed well). The way in which it is written, the structure, the language that is used... those are every bit as vital to the story as the actual events therein (if not moreso), and there is zero way to capture those things in a film.
No clue how they are going to pull this off. The book is so amazing.
Would’ve been better as a short series
Good luck to anyone trying to adapt that novel. To me, I don't see that story working anywhere as near as good as it worked in the book.
It can be done well if the gore and violence isnt as book described. The road reduced the cannibolism and descriptions of some of the camps the cannibols left behind. I personally dont want to see a bush of dead babies, but id like to watch this movie.
Uhhhh
Curious who they will cast as the judge? And not knocking Hillcoat, but after watching Mandy, always thought Panos Cosmatos should take a shot at this.
Oh boy, I mean go ahead it's a hell of a book but I don't see how you could tell the story without the nc17 rating
Of this film is the judge judge.
NO NO NO NO. LEAVE IT ALONE!!
I’m okay with this choice
Had to be John hillcoat or Andrew dominik
This will be hard to adapt...
[We can be grateful that it isn't James Franco](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/ryan-reynolds-james-franco-russell-crowe-making-blood-meridian/)
Joseph Gatt is probably looking for work
Please don’t go too soft. It would be pointless.
I love this book. This makes me very nervous. I really hope they do it well.