Don't Make a Scene: True Grit (2010)

The Story: Last week, we took a look at a scene that John Wayne considered one of his "best": "Rooster" Cogburn's monologue about his past from the 1969 version of True Grit.

This week, we take a look at how the Coen Brothers handled it in their 2010 version, also titled True Grit. It's the same story, with much the same dialogue, but they stage it quite differently and with elements that didn't appear in Charles Portis' original novel.

Still, in tone and texture it feels closer to the Portis book than the earlier version as lauded as that film is...and should be.

That monologue has two sections: "Rooster" talking about his personal past, and then the foreshadowing of what will be the movie's big showdown at the end, with "Rooster", alone, taking on four armed bandits, jousting style. The latter discussion will be in its same place as the marshal and young Mattie Ross await the arrival of "Lucky" Ned Pepper and his gang at the cabin of "The Original" Greaser Bob later in the proceedings.

But, the Coens move the section of Cogburn's past marriages earlier than the first film, partly because, here, in this version, the character of LaBouef doesn't accompany them from the very beginning—in the 1969 film, the traveling scenes are filled with bickering between the marshal and the Texas Ranger. But, here, Cogburn is allowed to prattle on, with Ethan Coen adding in some details not included in the book. 

 

But, you do get the story of "Nola" and you get "Horace" his clumsy child without too much prompting from Mattie.

 

Plus, you get an inconveniently-placed anonymous corpse and two frontier "entrepreneurs" in the bargain.

 

The Set-Up: Yell County, Arkansas mourns the loss of Frank Ross, killed in an altercation with his farm-hand, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). But, while others mourn, his teenage daughter Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) wants to do more. She travels to Fort Smith to find a man of "grit" and finds one in the disreputable form of Rueben J. Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), "the meanest and most fearless" U.S. Marshal in those parts, to find Cheney and bring him to justice. She also learns that a Texas Ranger named LaBouef (Matt Damon) is also tracking Chaney for the murder of a Senator. She pesters Cogburn to take the job before LaBoeuf can make any advancement in his efforts and, against Cogburn's wishes, tags along to make sure her money is well-spent. 

 

But, that doesn't mean there aren't distractions along the way...

 

Action.

 

RIDING 

Rooster and Mattie ride abreast along a barely defined road. 

Rooster Potter and I served with him at Elkhorn Tavern. Even latterly our activities was by and large martial. We did though, one time, run across a Yankee paymaster and relieve him of four thousand dollars in gold coin. Squealed like it was his own money. Well, since hostilities was officially ended it was technically criminal so Potter rode down to Arkansas and I went to Cairo Illinois with my share, started calling myself Burroughs and opened  I bought an eating place called The Green Frog. 

Rooster Started calling myself Burroughs. I married a grass widow 

Rooster but my drinking picked up and my wife did not like care for the company of my river friends. She decided to go back to her first husband, a clerk in a hardware store. 

Rooster She said, "Goodbye, Reuben, a love for decency does not abide in you." 

Rooster (That's a divorced woman for ya--talkin' about decency). I told her, 

Rooster "Goodbye, Nola, I hope that little nail-selling bastard will make you happy this time." She took my boy with her too. 

Rooster He never did like me anyhow. I guess I did speak awful rough to him but...

Rooster I did not mean nothing by it. You would not want to see a clumsier child than Horace. 

Rooster I bet he broke forty cups. . . 

He frowns and draws up, looking at something. 

Mattie follows his look.

A man is hanging in a tree--very high, perhaps thirty feet off the ground. The body slowly twists. The head seems unnaturally large.

Rooster Hey! 

At Rooster's shout something separates from the head: we have been looking at not just the corpse's silhouette but that of a large carrion-eating bird as well, perched on the corpse's shoulder and feeding at the corpse's face. 

The bird flaps clumsily off. 

Rooster gazes at the strung-up body. 

Rooster Is it Chaney? 

Mattie I would not recognize the soles of his feet. 

Rooster gets off his horse, pulls a knife from his gear, and ambles to the tree. 

Mattie follows. 

When she arrives Rooster has started sawing at the rope that ties the body off, wrapped around a chest-high branch stump. 

Mattie looks up. 

She is looking mostly at soles of feet as the foreshortened body twists slowly, high above. 

Rooster Step back now. 

She does. 

Rooster steps back as well as the almost-cut-through rope starts to unravel by itself, crazily twisting under the pressure and gently spinning the body above. 

The rope snaps. It yanks violently upward, slapping branches. 

The body drops--perhaps four feet--

and jerks to a stop, jacknifing and dancing. 

Rooster God damn it. 

They both gaze up at the body. 

Rooster Snagged. 

Rooster Well you are going to have to clamber on up with this knife. I am too old and too fat.

UP IN THE TREE 

Mattie is well up. 

We hear Rooster's voice from below: 

Rooster It (The Green Frog) had one billiard table, ...served ladies and men both...

Rooster but mostly men. I tried to run it myself a while...

Rooster but I couldn't keep good help and...

Rooster I never did learn how to buy meat. 

I was like a man fighting bees. Finally I give up and solt it and went out to see the country. 

Mattie pauses, looking down. 

We are over her. Rooster is foreshortened, a long way down, looking up, smoking a cigarette. 

He reacts to her look down: 

Rooster You are doing well. 

She looks up, down again, and then proceeds. 

Rooster continues as well: . . . 

Rooster That was when I went out to the staked plains of Texas and shot buffalo with Vernon Shaftoe and a Flathead Indian called Olly. 

Mattie stretches onto tiptoes, reaches, just gets fingers around a branch. 

She secures it enough with the one hand to dare to reach with the other. 

She hauls herself up. . . . 

Rooster The Mormons had run Shaftoe out of Great Salt Lake City but don't ask me what it was for. Call it a misunder-standing and let it go at that. There is no use in you asking me questions about it, for I will not answer them. 

Mattie looks out, at waist-height to the corpse, 

which twists maybe eight feet away over the void. 

Rooster notes her look: . . . 

Rooster Is it our man him? 

The face is half-eaten and eyeless. 

Mattie I believe not. 

She moves to start back down, but Rooster calls: 

Rooster No! Well. Cut him down! 

Mattie Why? 

Rooster I might know him. 

She climbs one more branch to arrive at the hanging branch.

Rooster That was when I went out to 

Rooster the staked plains of 

Rooster Texas and shot buffalo with Vernon Shaftoe and a Flathead Indian called Olly.

She shimmies out onto it and pulls the knife from Rooster's belt now around her waist. . . .

Rooster The Mormons had run Shaftoe out of Great Salt Lake City but don't ask me what it was for. 

Rooster Call it a misunder-standing and let it go at that. There is no use in you asking me questions about it, for I will not answer them.

Rooster You see, Olly and me both taken a solemn oath to keep silent.

Rooster Well sir, the big shaggies is about all gone. It is a damned shame. 

Mattie looks down, over the shoulder of the close-by foreshortened corpse to the far foreshortened Rooster. . . . 

Rooster I would give three dollars right now for a pickled buffalo tongue.

She shimmies out onto it and pulls the knife from Rooster's belt now around her waist. . . .

She calls out as she starts sawing: 

Mattie Why did they hang him so high? 

Rooster I don't know. 

Rooster Possibly in the belief it would make him more dead. 

The sawing continues. 

Rooster takes one step back. 

The rope snaps. 

At once: The body drops. 

The branch, unburdened, bucks with Mattie atop it.

She gasps, hugging at the branch, getting swung halfway around it but then righting herself. 

The body hits the ground with a smack. 

Mattie looks. 

The body is spread out on the ground below, many bones now broken, its posture absurd. 

Rooster steps forward. 

He toes the upper body to get a view of the face. 

Barely audible: 

Rooster I do not know this man. 

He reacts to something, 

looking up the road in the direction of their heading. 

Mattie looks out. 

Partly obscured by intervening foliage, an oncoming rider. 

His pace is unhurried. 

Down on the ground Rooster turns to face the rider--

an Indian with a long-bore rifle balanced sideways across the pommel of his saddle. He wears a tattered Union Army jacket, crossed bandoliers of rifle shells and a black homburg hat with a feather in its brim. 

Rooster drops his hand to his gun as the rider approaches. 

Mattie looks down 

at the foreshortened rider pulling up under the tree. 

She hears a greeting and a mostly inaudible exchange. 

After some back-and-forth the Indian dismounts. 

The men stoop at either end of the corpse. 

Rooster grabs wrists, the Indian, ankles. 

They lift. 

Mattie frowns. She starts to move. 

A MINUTE LATER 

Mattie finishes climbing down. 

Rooster is just returning from the road to their two horses by the tree. 

The Indian, with the corpse slung over the rump of his horse, is resuming his trip in the direction from which Rooster and Mattie came. 

Mattie He knew Why's he taking the hanged man?

Mattie Did he know him?

Rooster mounts. 

Rooster He did not. 

Rooster But it is a dead body, 

Rooster possibly probably worth something in trade. 

He looks up at the sky as snowflakes start to sift down. 

RIDING 

It is snowing lightly. Rooster and Mattie are clomping through a stream. 

Rooster (My second wife, she was Edna.) 

Rooster She had taken a notion she wanted me to be a lawyer. Bought a heavy book called Daniels on Negotiable Instruments and set me to reading it. 

Rooster Never could get a grip on it and I was happy enough to set it aside and leave Texas. 

Rooster There ain't but about six trees between there and Canada, and nothing else grows but has stickers on it. 

Rooster I went to-- 

A distant gunshot. 

Rooster stops. 

He twists to look behind. 

A listening beat. 

At length: 

Rooster I knew it. 

Mattie Knew what? 

Rooster We're being followed. 

Rooster I asked the Indian to signal with a shot if there was someone on our trail. 

Mattie Should we be concerned, Marshal? 

Rooster No. It's Mr...

Rooster LeBoeuf, using us as bird dogs in hopes of cutting in once we've flushed the prey. 

Rooster Our Texas friend has got just enough sense to recognize he can't outtrack me. 

Mattie thinks. 

Mattie Perhaps we could double back over our tracks, and confuse the trail in a clever way. 

Rooster No, we will wait...

Rooster ...right here and offer our friend a warm hello, and ask him where he is going. 

MINUTES LATER 

Rooster waits, sitting casually astride his horse in the middle of the road. Snow continues to fall. 

A jingling noise up the road. 

Movement: 

an advancing rider seen through the foliage that masks a bend in the road. 

Rooster straightens. 

The oncoming rider rounds the bend. 

He approaches: a white man with big whiskers, his horse leading a packhorse loaded with clinking and jangling sundries. 

Draped on his own horse's rump is the hanged man's body. 

The stranger wears a fierce bear head as hat. 

The rest of the bearskin trails down his body as robe. 

He advances unhurriedly towards Rooster. 

At a few yards' distance he draws up, 

content to sit his horse and solemnly return Rooster's stare. 

At length: 

Rooster You are not LeBoeuf. 

Bear Man My name is Forster. 

Bear Man I practice dentistry 

Bear Man ...in the Nation. 

Bear Man Also, veterinary arts. And medicine,

Bear Man ...on those humans that will sit still for it.

Rooster (indicating corpse) You have your work cut out for you there. 

Bear Man Traded for him with an Indian, who said he came by him honestly. I gave up two dental mirrors and a bottle of expectorant.
(beat) 

Bear Man Do either of you need... 

Bear Man ...medical attention? 

Rooster No. 

Rooster straightens as if to rein his horse around 

but stops with a thought: . . . 

Rooster It is fixing to get cold. 

Rooster Do you know of any place to take shelter? 

Bear Man I have my bearskin. 

Bear Man You might want to head to...

Bear Man ...the Original Greaser Bob's. 

Bear Man He notched a dugout...

Bear Man ...into a hollow along the Carrillon River. If you ride the river...

Bear Man ...you won't fail to see it. Greaser Bob...

Bear Man --Original Greaser Bob--is hunting north of the picket wire

Bear Man ...and would not begrudge its use.

Rooster Much obliged.

A pause. 

The Bear Man tilts his head to indicate the corpse behind him. 

Bear Man I have taken his teeth. 

Bear Man I will entertain an offer for the rest of him.

 

True Grit (2010)

 

Words by Joel and Ethan Coen (and Charles Portis)

 

Pictures by Roger Deakins and Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

 

True Grit is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from Paramount Home Video.