80th Academy Awards Oscar Nominations 2008 - Best Picture
Best motion picture of the year, "Atonement" (Focus Features)
A Working Title Production
Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner and Paul Webster, Producers
This is the second nomination for both Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who received Best Picture nominations in 1998 for Elizabeth.
This is the first nomination for Paul Webster.
Wright, the BAFTA Award-winning director of Pride & Prejudice, has reunited with his filmmaking team and his Academy
Award-nominated actress, Keira Knightley, for another classic British romance, starring James McAvoy (BAFTA Award nominee
for The Last King of Scotland) opposite Ms. Knightley. Christopher Hampton (Academy Award winner for Dangerous Liaisons)
has written the screenplay adaptation of Ian McEwans best-selling 2002 novel Atonement.
Filmed on location in the United Kingdowm, the films story spans several decades. In 1935, 13-year-old fledgling
writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous mansion.
On the warmest day of the year, the country estate takes on an unsettling hothouse atmosphere, stoking Brionys
vivid imagination. Robbie Turner (Mr. McAvoy), the educated son of the familys housekeeper, carries a torch for
Brionys headstrong older sister Cecilia (Ms. Knightley). Cecilia, he hopes, has comparable feelings;
all it will take is one spark for this relationship to combust.
When it does, Briony who has a crush on Robbie is compelled to interfere, going so far as accusing Robbie of a crime
he did not commit. Cecilia and Robbie declare their love for each other, but he is arrested and with Briony bearing
false witness, the course of three lives is changed forever.
Briony continues to seek forgiveness for her childhood misdeed. Through a terrible and courageous act of imagination,
she finds the path to her uncertain atonement, and to an understanding of the power of enduring love.
Best motion picture of the year, "Juno" (Fox Searchlight)
A Mandate Pictures/Mr. Mudd Production
Lianne Halfon, Mason Novick and Russell Smith, Producers
This is the first nomination for all three.
"Can’t we just kick it old school? I could just put the baby in a basket and send it your way.
You know, like Moses in the reeds."
Meet Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) – a confidently frank teenage girl who calls the shots with a
nonchalant cool and an effortless attitude as she journeys through an emotional nine-month
adventure into adulthood. Quick witted and distinctively unique, Juno walks Dancing Elk High's
halls to her own tune - preferably anything by The Stooges - but underneath her tough no
nonsense exterior is just a teenage girl trying to figure it all out.
While most girls at Dancing Elk are updating their MySpace page or shopping at the mall, Juno
is a whip-smart Minnesota teen living by her own rules. A typically boring afternoon becomes
anything but when Juno decides to have sex with the charmingly unassuming Bleeker (Michael
Cera). Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, she and best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) hatch a
plan to find Juno’s unborn baby the perfect set of parents courtesy of the local Penny Saver.
They set their sights on Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), an
affluent suburban couple who are longing to adopt their first child. Luckily, Juno has the support
of her dad and stepmother (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney). After the initial shock that their
daughter has been sexually active with the unlikely "virile" Bleeker, the family bands together to
help Juno. Dad Mac accompanies Juno to size up the prospective adoptive parents to make sure
they are not a couple of "wing nuts" while stepmother Bren provides emotional support as Juno
fights the prejudices of underage pregnancy. While fall becomes winter and winter turns to
spring, Juno moves closer and closer to her due date. Juno’s physical changes mirror her
personal growth while the veneer of Mark and Vanessa’s idyllic life starts to show signs of
cracking. With a fearless intellect far removed from the usual teen angst, Juno conquers her
problems head-on, displaying a youthful exuberance both smart and unexpected.
A Fox Searchlight Pictures presentation, JUNO is directed by Jason Reitman (THANK YOU
FOR SMOKING) from a script by Diablo Cody (Candy Girl) and is a Mandate Pictures/ Mr.
Mudd production. Producers are Mason Novick and Mr. Mudd partners Lianne Halfon, John
Malkovich and Russell Smith. Mandate’s Joe Drake and Nathan Kahane executive produced
with Daniel Dubiecki, Reitman’s partner at Hard C. Jim Miller, who brought the project into
Mandate, serves as co-producer along with the company’s Kelli Konop and Brad Van Arragon.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When I was twelve, my parents decided to adopt a child. I grew up in a very Loring-like residence
with incense sticks, plexiglass enclosed tchotchkes, and framed portraits of my family posing all
dressed in white (yup, that was us). One morning, we assembled in the living room where my
sister and I were informed that we would be visited by a social worker that would deem whether
or not we were an appropriate home for an adopted child. It was an audition of how good a family
we were.
Of course, now I look back and realize we were a shoe-in… a happy loving affluent family who
were adopting for all the right reasons. But at the time, I remember the pressure. Spending hours
in front of this social worker, acting like I was in the British novelization of my own life. Hello
sister, would you like to share my orange juice?
The story of Juno comes from Diablo’s childhood when one of her closest friends in high school
became pregnant and decided to take the baby to term. Often, she is asked what gave her the idea
to make this into a movie. The first scene she ever thought of – the kernel of Juno – is that
meeting at the Loring house, where Juno meets the potential parents of her child.
There is something incredibly complex about the character dynamics of that scene.
• -A middle class father who would normally only enter one of these homes to
service the heater is now being treated like royalty.
• -A thirty-year-old man, terrified by entering the chapter of parenthood, is
balancing between the placation of his wife and his fascination with this unique
teenager.
• -A thirty-year-old woman, incapable of having a child of her own, has turned to
the teenager she would normally ignore at the mall. She walks on eggshells,
hoping to earn the trust of a girl that thinks of pregnancy as an inconvenience.
• -A tiny sixteen-year-old girl who would normally be egging the community gates
is now auditioning the adults.
At the end of the day, Juno is not a movie about teenage pregnancy as much as it is about the
delicate balance of these relationships. Somehow, Diablo’s script is able to approach each and all
of the characters with sophisticated realism and respect.
There are so many things that make a film work. The mechanics of filmmaking are too
complicated to single out any one thing. However, when I think of that scene and the approach to
these characters, I can’t help feel that Diablo and I, in one way or another, have sat on either side
of the living room in that scene. It is that combination of experiences. That collaboration of
perspectives that made the film resonate not only with humor, but with warmth.
Jason Reitman
WRITER’S STATEMENT
My name is Diablo Cody-- well, not really. But who cares? Artifice is typically encouraged in
Hollywood, even rewarded. This is a town where our "all-natural" golden girls are (literally)
peroxided to the teeth and tanned into non-putrescible leather. A place where sworn enemies
swallow their bile and swap "power hugs" on Highland. Even the sky looks like a matte painting
on blue-hot afternoons, when the clouds are as firmly set as Jayne Mansfield's hair and the sun
blazes immodestly. It's all pretty cool, but it sure as hell ain't real.
That's just one reason why I'm still slack-jawed with shock that JUNO-- a funky little movie that
wears its heart on both sleeves-- ever came into being. I wrote the script back in Minnesota, a
circumstance which should have logically counted as a strike against me. Sometimes I wrote at
my kitchen table, sometimes I wrote at the local Target, sometimes I'd sneak a few blocks of
dialogue during my precious 15-minute breaks at work. JUNO became my secret passion, and I
anticipated our time together like a horny schoolgirl. I don't know if anyone believed that I could
actually write a movie, and neither did I. Unlike the moist-browed screenwriters pimping their
wares in cruel Burbank, I wrote in a comfortable vacuum.
Ironically, the person who brought this wholly Midwestern script to life was a quintessential
Hollywood boy: Jason Reitman. I mean, he's the scion of a friggin' filmmaking dynasty! This is a
guy who grew up knowing the Ghostbusters personally (and if you were a kid in the '80s, you
know that's totally rad.) And yet, when we first met above a gun shop on Sunset, he radiated a
warmth and authenticity that's in short supply out here. He just seemed way too cool-- too real--
to be an A-list director's son. Put it this way: I spent my college years watching MTV and
leeching off my poor middle-class parents. Meanwhile, Reitman, the so-called "child of
privilege," sold ad space in calendars at USC to fund his first short films. His work ethic belies
his pedigree.
Reitman and I connected instantly, even though he jokes that he was scared of my tattoos.
Frankly, I was scared of his talent. I'd mustered up some confidence in the script by then, but I
couldn't have anticipated that someone like Jason-- an incredible writer in his own right-- would
put his own stuff on hold to direct JUNO. But he did, and within months, we were rolling in
Vancouver. It was fully ridiculous.
There are no words to describe what it's like to watch actors like Ellen Page and Allison Janney
breathing life into the inert "blue baby" that is an unproduced screenplay. I'd hang by the
monitors for hours, mentally freaking out. It's hard to say what was more joyful...actually writing
JUNO, or surrendering the script to these talented people.
I've written other screenplays since JUNO and I hope, God willing, that I get to write more. But
as Jason has frequently reminded me, you only get one first film. And like Juno MacGuff, who
(improbably) finds true love at 16, I was fortunate enough to have been "deflowered"
cinematically in the nicest possible way. The entire process-- from writing, to production, to
release--was so warm, so exhilarating, and most of all, so real.
Diablo Cody
Best motion picture of the year, "Michael Clayton" (Warner Bros.)
A Clayton Productions, LLC Production
Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Fox and Kerry Orent, Producers
This is Sydney Pollack’s sixth nomination and the third in this category. He won Best Picture and Directing Oscars®
for Out of Africa (1985), and was nominated in the same categories for Tootsie (1982). His first nomination was for
directing They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). This is the first nomination for both Jennifer Fox and Kerry Orent.
George Clooney stars in the title role of Michael Clayton, a "fixer" at Kenner, Bach & Ledeen, a
top Manhattan law firm. A former criminal prosecutor from a working-class neighborhood,
Clayton is an anomaly at the white-shoe firm; in spite of his 15-year tenure, he has not been
promoted to partner and probably never will be. His boss, Marty Bach, sees Clayton as an
invaluable asset to the firm, but only in his "niche," one that is relegated to cleaning up the firm’s
sticky situations quickly and quietly.
"While Michael is great at solving other people’s problems, the film catches him at the apex of
dissatisfaction with his career," says Clooney, who also serves as an executive producer on the
film. "He started out with ambitions of becoming a trial lawyer, but along the way what he
really becomes is a bag man."
"Michael Clayton is a 45-year-old attorney who feels that he hasn’t done everything that he
could have done with his life; he’s starting to think he should have done something else, or could
have done better," says writer-director Tony Gilroy. "He’s made some bad choices and a lot of
compromises. He has come to the point in life where his next few decisions will determine
everything about him.
"How we make those choices—how fear, comfort, inertia and self-preservation bend us to the
wheel—that’s the fuel for the story," offers Gilroy.
In the midst of his discontentment, Michael Clayton is sent to defuse Arthur Edens, Kenner,
Bach & Ledeen’s chief litigator. The defense architect for the U/North case, Arthur suddenly
suffers a crisis of conscience after finding a "smoking gun" memo that exposes the client’s moral
turpitude. The character is played by Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson, who notes, "It is very
much a ‘road to Damascus’ moment. Arthur’s an expert lawyer who has been at the top of his
game for years, but comes to a realization that he’s been defending a cancer."
"Given the infinity of destructive moral choices that are made every day by people who know
what they're doing is wrong, it's always amazed me that there aren't more whistleblowers. When
you consider how much is wrong, how deep that wrong is, and how much of it’s done by people
who go home and pay their taxes and love their children, isn’t it astonishing how few actually go
off the deep end?" says Gilroy. "Tom’s character is one of those magnificently intelligent
madmen who can convince any judge, jury or plaintiff to drop or settle a case. It’s why he’s so
good at what he does and makes the kind of money he makes. But at the end of the day, what’s
the real cost?"
GENESIS OF THE SCRIPT
The original inspiration for "Michael Clayton" came to Gilroy during visits to New York law
firms when he was doing research to write the screenplay of "The Devil’s Advocate." Gilroy
recalls, "Wandering through these giant New York law offices, I was struck by how much goes
on behind the scenes. Every firm had vast, back-of-the-house departments running twenty-four
hours a day to keep them afloat."
In developing the script, Gilroy spent time talking to a gamut of law office personnel, including
attorneys, paralegals and partners. Gilroy notes, "I heard a story about a firm involved in a huge
corporate litigation that had gone on for almost a decade. The case had been essentially settled,
and the firm had prevailed. The settlement was over a billion dollars. Things were so far down
the line that the firm had begun clearing out the document rooms that had housed all the filings
and paperwork. Two days before the final signing, at four o’clock in the morning, a third-year
associate found a document that had never been placed in discovery. It was a very bad
document, which would’ve meant a complete reversal of the case. The document never saw the
light of day, and that associate had the fastest partner promotion in the history of the firm."
"I wanted to know what kind of person is up at four o’clock in the morning protecting the firm,"
continues Gilroy. "Who fills those gaps and makes those calls? What else do they have to do?
How far could that go? What would it do to you to have that job? The answer to those
questions turned into ‘Michael Clayton.’"
"Tony’s script was interesting to me right off the bat," says producer Sydney Pollack, who was
one of the early producers attracted to the project and also stars in the film as Marty Bach. "It is
relevant and gets to the heart of the matter without lecturing, and it tells a story which has
genuine suspense independent of moral issues."
Gilroy emphasizes, "‘Michael Clayton’ isn’t an issue film. There’s no ideological debate.
There’s no dark overlord arguing for some greater good. You’ve got a choir of fear and selfpreservation
on one side and the lone voice of a manic, un-medicated virtuoso on the other.
Michael Clayton represents the rest of us in the middle. What will he do?"
Producer Steven Samuels remarks, "I enjoyed Tony’s realistic approach to telling the story. It’s
a reflection of our world today. The main characters in ‘Michael Clayton’ have chosen career
paths that come with certain rewards and compromises. It takes tremendous courage for
someone to risk losing everything in order to do the right thing."
Best motion picture of the year, "No Country for Old Men" (Miramax and Paramount Vantage)
A Scott Rudin/Mike Zoss Production
Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Producers
This is the second nomination in this category for Scott Rudin. He was also nominated for The Hours (2002).
This is the sixth nomination for both Ethan Coen and Joel Coen. It is the first nomination in this category for Joel Coen and the second
for Ethan Coen, who was nominated for Fargo (1996). Joel Coen received a directing nomination for Fargo. The Coens won Oscars
for writing Fargo, and were nominated for their screenplay for O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). They are also nominated this
year for directing and writing No Country for Old Men. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen have also been nominated twice for Film Editing
under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes, for Fargo and again this year.
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a mesmerizing new thriller from Academy Award®-
winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the acclaimed novel by Pulitzer Prizewinning
American master, Cormac McCarthy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given
way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. Featuring a cast that includes
Academy Award®-winner Tommy Lee Jones ("The Fugitive," "Men in Black"), Josh Brolin
("Grindhouse"), Academy Award®-nominee Javier Bardem ("The Sea Inside"), Academy
Award®-nominee Woody Harrelson ("The People Vs. Larry Flynt") and Kelly Macdonald
("Trainspotting"), NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is written for the screen and directed by Joel
and Ethan Coen, produced by Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, and executive produced
by Robert Graf and Mark Roybal.
The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (BROLIN) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of
dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss
takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law – in
the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (JONES) – can contain. As Moss tries to evade his
pursuers – in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (BARDEM) –
the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to
encompass themes as ancient as the Bible, and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s
headlines.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
At once a modern legend and a literary maverick, Cormac McCarthy was already renowned for
his extraordinary stories set against the changing American West when he published No Country
For Old Men in 2005. The book, featuring one of his most visceral, multilayered and
contemporary stories, was an instant success. A sinewy, suspenseful, humor-spiked thriller,
McCarthy’s page-turning tale of an honest man who happens upon $2.4 million in cash on the
Texas borderlands is a story of headlong pursuit. It’s also a provocative meditation on good and
evil in a modern West that has grown into a land more violent and lawless than the mythic
frontier of yore.
At the heart of the story lie some of McCarthy’s most evocative themes, which he has explored
in ten novels that have become classics: the fast-approaching end of an entire way of Western
life; the last stand of honor and justice against a broken world; the ongoing human struggle
against the sinister; the dark comedy and violence of modern times; the interplay of temptation,
survival and sacrifice; and, added into the mix, a touch of sustaining love and a sliver of hope in
the darkness.
McCarthy’s complex characters and symbolic themes were writ so large in No Country For Old
Men it was clear that it would take filmmakers with their own equally distinctive skills for rich,
wry and resonant storytelling to transform the power of what was on the page into striking
images and crisp dialogue. It’s hard to imagine a better match for the dusky wit and stark
humanity of McCarthy’s characters than Joel and Ethan Coen – who burst onto the American
cinema scene with the influential comic noir classic BLOOD SIMPLE and have gone on to forge
some of the most inventive motion picture tales of our times including RAISING ARIZONA,
MILLER’S CROSSING, BARTON FINK, the Oscar®-winning FARGO, THE MAN WHO
WASN’T THERE and O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? With this film, the Coens marry
McCarthy’s voice – complex, nuanced, layered and often humorous – with their own unique
vision; the result is incredibly compelling and action-packed cinema.
The Coens first became aware of McCarthy’s novel through producer Scott Rudin. "He brought
it to us thinking we might have an affinity for it," remembers Ethan, "and we did like the book.
We also thought we could do something with it."
"It’s as close as we’ll ever come to doing an action movie," adds Joel. "It’s a chase story – with
Chigurh chasing Moss and the Sheriff bringing up the tail. It’s a lot of physical activity to
achieve a purpose. It’s interesting in a genre way; but it was also interesting to us because it
subverts the genre expectations."
The Coens now set about adapting the story into a taut cinematic structure, emphasizing the
darkly humorous and humanly revealing interplay between Llewelyn Moss, who discovers
millions of dollars in the wreckage of a drug deal gone wrong, and the two antithetical men who
are tracking him: the chilling psychopath Chigurh, on the one extreme, and the town’s
profoundly decent Sheriff Bell, on the other. The result was a film that would take the Coens
forward into new territory. "There is a good deal of humor in the book, although you wouldn’t
call it a humorous novel, exactly," says Joel. "It’s certainly very dark – and that was our defining
characteristic. The book is also quite violent, quite bloody. So the movie is probably the most
violent we’ve ever made. In that respect it reflects the novel, I hope, fairly accurately."
The screenplay’s fresh view of McCarthy’s distinctly American themes, its rapid-fire pace and
its inky black comic tone rapidly drew a cast of some of the finest actors working in films today.
Tommy Lee Jones, who was ultimately cast in the role of Sheriff Bell, initially read McCarthy’s
book shortly after it was published and was intrigued even then – and only more so when he
learned the Coen Brothers would adapt the story. "Cormac McCarthy is arguably the best living
prose stylist that we have in America," comments Jones. "His work raises intriguing questions
for people who make films."
Josh Brolin is another big McCarthy fan who read the novel long before the screenplay.
"This book is one of the most amazing, violent and perfectly vernaculared stories that I've read in
a long time," Brolin says. "Even though it's a linear story, just the structure of it was incredible. I
just love the trio of Moss, Chigurh and Bell, and how it seemed like it was one person split three.
As for the screenplay, Brolin says: "It’s an emotional, primal ride that is also about human
principles of right and wrong, temptation and honor."
Brolin’s third of the trio is Llewelyn Moss, the army vet who quickly gets himself in a jam when
he decides to take a potentially life-changing stash of drug money, but more for love than greed,
according to Brolin. "I think from Moss’ point of view," he explains, "the whole thing stems
from his relationship with his wife, Carla Jean. He has such an incredible love for her. He wants
to be able to create a better life for them and to make her happy – that’s his drivin goal."
Acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem, who landed the plum role of Chigurh, the killer who
embodies the sinister heart of the borderlands drug world, was not familiar with the book until he
had read the script, which instantly grabbed him. "I thought it was a very powerful story about
violence and about how to control and stop the huge wave of violence that the world is living
through right now," he says of the adaptation.
Kelly Macdonald, who plays Moss’s young wife Carla Jean, had a similarly strong reaction to
the screenplay – not only to its human drama but its humor. "I saw just how funny it was," she
says. "The characters came so alive off the page and they’re all quite dry-witted and that’s the
thing that really stuck with me."
THE CHASE: CAST AND CHARACTERS
At the heart of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN are its characters – men and women who
inhabit a rapidly changing West – a place where lawlessness has led to a brave new world of
international drug running and where the old rules no longer seem to apply. Against this
backdrop, Sheriff Bell becomes a main lynchpin of the story – a stoic, philosophical law man
with a dry-as-bone sense of humor and a rock-solid moral foundation who is bedeviled by the
advent of the drug trade’s new breed of criminal and the violence it has brought to the land that
he loves. Astonished by his new reality, Sheriff Bell represents an acute, heartbroken yearning
for the more honorable way things used to be. "The movie is, no surprise given the title of the
book, in part about Sheriff Bell’s perspective on time going by, on aging and on things
changing," says Joel Coen.
"I assume that’s part of why the book is set in 1980, and not strictly speaking present day," adds
Ethan. "It takes place just when the cross-border drug trade was getting very brutal, and that
provides an opportunity for reflection by the Sheriff."
In considering who might play this riveting, yet reflective, character, the Coens found that
Tommy Lee Jones quickly came to mind. "There are just very, very few people who can carry a
role like this one," muses Joel. "Sheriff Bell is the soul of the movie and also, in a fundamental
way, the region is so much a part of Sheriff Bell, so we needed someone who understood it." He
continues: "It’s a role that also requires a kind of subtlety that only a really, really great actor can
bring to it. Again, the list of these is pretty short, so when you put those two criteria together,
you come up with Tommy Lee Jones. Being a Texan, the region is a part of his core." For Jones,
the role proved irresistible, despite one initial hesitation. "I suppose I have played several Texas
law enforcement officers," reflects Jones, modestly, "so I thought about that several times before
accepting the job. But the attraction of working with Cormac McCarthy’s material was
overwhelming."
Indeed, Sheriff Bell would be a complete departure from other lawmen Jones has played. Jones
was especially moved by the character’s attempt to come to grips with the absurd reality that the
world around him keeps getting worse despite everything he’s tried to do to make it better. He
says: "In the course of the story, Sheriff Bell finds himself outmatched by this new monstrous
form of criminality that he has to deal with. But he starts to learn that to react with
disillusionment and disappointment is essentially all in vain."
The Coens found casting the Llewelyn Moss character somewhat more challenging than casting
Sheriff Bell. Moss, a Vietnam veteran, is a decent-hearted Texas good ol’ boy who would likely
never have crossed the law – until he comes across a great deal of drug money that appears to
belong to a group of dead men.
"Moss is sort of a regular person who's caught up in extraordinary circumstances and has one
unreflective moment where he decides to appropriate a bunch of money that isn't his," explains
Ethan Coen. "He then spends the rest of the movie trying to avoid the consequences. So he's very
much the action center of the movie."
Adds Joel, "In this story, you have a good guy and a bad guy, and Moss is the in-between guy."
But that in-between quality proved harder to nail than anyone expected. "We thought it'd be
really easy to find Moss," laughs Ethan, "because, in our minds, we thought, well, we just need a
good clean kid. And it turns out it's not easy to embody that without either being dull, or being,
again, not of the region."
At last, the Coens found an actor who was able to bring a dynamic presence, rife with a distinctly
Western touch, to the role: Josh Brolin, who has emerged as a breakthrough screen actor. "Josh
grew up on a ranch so he had a feeling for where Moss comes from," explains Ethan. "He was
just a natural in the role." Brolin, who was raised in rural Central California, felt an immediate
affinity with the character. He says: "Moss is really a compilation of a lot of guys that I grew up
with. These are guys who have principles, yet I think they would probably do the same thing as
Moss under the circumstances."
Providing the third side of the film’s taut moral triangle is Anton Chigurh, the chilling, offbeat
villain who leaves no witnesses behind. The uniquely dark character would call for an actor
capable of going to extremes of intensity.
"Chigurh’s actually described in the book as someone without a sense of humor," says Joel.
"But beyond that, his background’s quite sketchy. He’s relentless but there’s alsosomething
mysterious about him. You don’t quite know where he’s come from."
He continues: "We needed an actor who would be able to flesh out Chigurh in a substantial way,
but also without giving away too much, and keeping that sense of mystery – hence, Javier
Bardem."
Bardem has quickly risen as one of international cinema’s greatest talents, garnering an
Academy Award® nomination for his role as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in BEFORE NIGHT
FALLS, and winning the Best Actor Award at the Venice Film Festival as the remarkable
bedridden hero of THE SEA INSIDE. With Chigurh, Bardem faced one of his most exciting
challenges yet – embodying a mythic villain whose soul appears to let in no light. Says Bardem:
"One of the themes of the movie is this huge wave of violence that the world has been taken by,
and Chigurh symbolizes that violence in that he has no roots, he always takes things one step
further and he’s unstoppable." In developing the character, Bardem collaborated closely with the
Coens. "Talking with Joel and Ethan changed my whole perspective, and the character morphed
into something more interesting, more complex, and also funnier," he says.
Alongside this trio of men are two equally compelling women. In the role of Moss’s wife Carla
Jean is Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald, who garnered an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe
nomination for her powerful performance in HBO’s THE GIRL IN THE CAFÉ and surprised the
filmmakers with her audition. "Just as we were saying you can't really act the region, we cast
Kelly Macdonald, who happens to be a Scottish actress from Glasgow," laughs Joel. "I just didn't
believe she could play a gal from West Texas – but she convinced us otherwise in the audition."
Macdonald was especially impressed with how Carla Jean had been written on the page as a
strong-minded young woman who seems to be on equal footing with her husband. "It's a really
sweet relationship," observes Macdonald. "You get the sense that they're very well matched, and
she can give as much as he can take. That's the thing that really came across when I read it.
There's kind of a nice banter between them, but there's also this real genuine kind of love."
Tommy Lee Jones was also pleased with the casting. "Kelly has the West Texan accent down
perfectly," comments Jones, which is high praise coming from a real West Texan. "Between
takes she was this sweet little girl from Scotland but when the camera turned on she became this
pretty, tough West Texas gal. I was very impressed."
The other central relationship in the story is that of Sheriff Bell and his wife Loretta, a character
who is instrumental in helping to define Bell. Playing Loretta is Academy Award® and Golden
Globe nominee Tess Harper, who herself hails from Arkansas. The Coens had been fans of her
work since TENDER MERCIES, and note her ability to "convey a lot in a very short space of
time."
Says Harper of her character: "Loretta is the rock that holds the Sheriff to where he needs to be.
She’s his one port in the storm."
UNDER THE BIG SKY: THE SETTING
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN unfolds against one of America’s most visceral and
mythologized landscapes: the hardscrabble, desolate Texas-Mexico borderlands, where the two
countries are divided only by the banks of the Rio Grande. To authentically capture this
sunravaged, blood-soaked locale that straddles two countries, the production journeyed to the dry
plains of West Texas and the deserts of New Mexico, where the Coens collaborated once again
with five-time Academy Award® nominee Roger Deakins as cinematographer. "The setting is
actually part of the reason that we wanted to do this film," Ethan Coen notes. "We'd done our
first movie (BLOOD SIMPLE) in Texas, although that was in Austin, but we'd also traveled
through West Texas, and were attracted to it even before we read the book." He continues: "The
setting is so integral to the book, to the story – it’s about where it takes place as much as
anything else. It is a very beautiful landscape, but in a bleak rather than picturesque way. It's not
an easy place to live in, and that's important to what the story is about – the human confrontation
with this harsh environment." Joel concurs, "It’s a place with a history of violence and of being
inhospitable in a way. As with all of Cormac McCarthy’s novels, the location is a character itself
– and it can't be separated from the story." Deakins contributed stunningly austere visuals that
allowed the locations to come to electrifying life. He recalls that in earlier conversations with the
Coens, "we talked about the heat and the light and the mix of colors for the motel and the streets
at night." Deakins also had his own influences in mind. "For me, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD
MEN was like a Sam Peckinpah movie," he explains. "It has the feel of a period piece – but then
the contemporary world intrudes. I especially thought of Peckinpah’s BRING ME THE HEAD
OF ALFREDO GARCIA, where the characters still live by the rules of the past and are out of
touch with the modern world."
To heighten this tension, Deakins used light as a storytelling device throughout NO COUNTRY
FOR OLD MEN. "I loved contrasting the brightness of exteriors with the darkness of interiors
and the bleached feel of the landscape with the garish colors of the nighttime world," he says.
"One of the biggest challenges was making a smooth transition from dawn to nighttime at the
‘drug deal’ location and into the river. We dealt with it as best we could by shooting in the dawn
light, shooting at dusk and recreating a ‘fake dawn’ with lighting rigs." At the same time,
Deakins believes that the landscapes are merely echoes of what really counts in the frame –
characters. He says, "Every film that I’ve worked on has been primarily about character. To me,
the locations are only a backdrop and I always feel that I am primarily photographing characters.
If a shot is pretty, but doesn’t set a mood or help develop the story, then it is pointless. I love
photographing faces and we had some of the best actors working today."
Deakins’ work with the Coens has won widespread acclaim and awards, including Academy
Award® nominations for FARGO, BARTON FINK and THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE.
He notes that their simpatico creative relationship lies at the core of their successful
collaborations. "We know each other well and have a similar approach to visuals," the
cinematographer summarizes. "I really just hope the photography works for the story and
appears seamless."
That sense of seamlessness in storytelling was also aimed for in the editing room, where the
Coens’ long-lived collaborator and seeming third-wheel, the enigmatic and elderly British editor
Roderick Jaynes, who has been with them since BLOOD SIMPLE, once again cut their picture.
The shoot itself began in Marfa, Texas, a notoriously rugged area about three and a half hours
from El Paso. Best known as the spot where the 1950s epic GIANT was filmed, Marfa –
population 2030 – boasts as its main attraction the Hotel Paisano where James Dean, Elizabeth
Taylor, Rock Hudson, and Dennis Hopper set up headquarters during filming. Here, rising young
production designer Jess Gonchor whose work to date has included the high-fashion comedy
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and the more intimate period drama CAPOTE, began
collaborating with the Coens, searching for just the right locations for the film’s most dramatic
scenes. For Gonchor, the key was understatement. Says Gonchor: "The Coens did such a
tremendous job with the script, that I didn’t want to upstage anything – I just wanted to add to
the storytelling with the scenery that I designed." One of Gonchor’s biggest challenges was
creating Ellis’s cabin – where Sheriff Bell comes to his Uncle, a former Deputy Sheriff himself,
for advice when he’s at the brink of despair. Recalls Gonchor, "We prefabricated the structure in
Santa Fe where Joel and Ethan could see the progress, painted it, aged it, dressed it and then
trucked the entire cabin out to Texas." Despite the long distances between locations, the
unpredictable weather, poisonous desert creatures and scorching temperatures, the authentic
locations proved invaluable – offering up the haunting, lonely atmosphere that makes the
borderlands of Texas at once so fierce and so poetic.
Following their work in Texas, the company moved on to New Mexico, where they also shot in
Las Vegas, New Mexico, a historic town seventy miles from Santa Fe, where the timeless,
Western-style streets and iconic downtown plaza were able to double for several small Texas
towns. It was also the site of another of Gonchor’s pre-fab marvels, the U.S.-Mexico border
crossing which leads from Eagle Pass, Texas to a small Mexican town.
The simulated border crossing was erected on the University Boulevard freeway overpass in Las
Vegas, and necessitated closing down the bridge and freeway exit for a week while the 50,000-
pound steel structure was hauled in and put into place. Las Vegas residents took it in stride but
tourists and out-of-towners driving through were mystified as to why the U.S.-Mexico border
checkpoint had moved this far north or if New Mexico was really part of Mexico after all!
The landscape of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN also extends to the characters’ heads,
particularly that of Javier Bardem, who sports an evocative haircut in the role of Chigurh,
designed by Academy Award® winning Lead Hair Stylist, Paul Leblanc (AMADEUS). Explains
Leblanc: "I worked very closely with Mary Zophres, the costume designer, and ‘the boys’ as I
call them, in designing this look for Javier’s character. We wanted him to look strange and scary
but not over-the-top. So I designed this original haircut to give the sense that he’s really
mysterious – one that leads you to ask ‘where is this guy from?’ – but without necessarily giving
away the fact he’s a killer. It’s kind of a bi-historical hairstyle, if you will. It could be 17th
Century, it could be 1970s." Leblanc, who also worked on O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU
and THE LADYKILLERS, happily came out of semi-retirement to re-team with the Coens.
"They are my favorite filmmakers to work with," he says. "They’re so collaborative and I think
they really like hair, because they focus on it a lot. Ultimately, like everything else, the hair is
used to create character."
Best motion picture of the year, "There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage and Miramax)
A JoAnne Sellar/Ghoulardi Film Company Production
JoAnne Sellar, Paul Thomas Anderson and Daniel Lupi, Producers
This is the first nomination for both JoAnne Sellar and Daniel Lupi. This is the fifth nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson and the first in this category. He is also nominated this year in the Directing
and Adapted Screenplay categories. He was nominated for his original screenplays for Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999).
A sprawling epic about family, faith, power and oil, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is set on the
radical frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the rise
of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out
silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon.
When Plainview gets a mysterious tip that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is
oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in
dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around
the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W.
make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the
same as conflicts escalate and every human value – love, hope, community, belief, ambition and
even the bond between father and son – is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD is the fifth film from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson
(PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, MAGNOLIA, BOOGIE NIGHTS, HARD EIGHT). Anderson’s
screenplay is loosely based upon the classic, 1920s muck-raking novel Oil!
tycoon, in the mold of such historical oil pioneers as Edward Doheny and John Rockefeller, Plainview
will bring progress and riches to a land that has never known them, at a cost that will blacken his very
soul.
As portrayed by Academy Award®-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Plainview is a man
whose charm, aspirations and uncompromising obsession with remaining self-made will stir up a
maelstrom in the Central California town of Little Boston. As oil gushes up from the ground,
Plainview will bring changes of operatic sweep to this insular world – pitting belief, hope, love and
hard work against cynicism, greed, seduction and monstrous corruption.
Shot in Marfa, Texas where the legendary oil-themed GIANT was filmed decades ago, Anderson and
a devoted cast and crew have crafted a symphonic tapestry of images that appear to come to vivid,
visceral life right out of a sepia-toned photograph -- yet are completely original and intimately specific
to Daniel Plainview’s meteoric rise and bloodcurdling descent.
THE STORY
Paul Thomas Anderson, a two-time Academy Award® nominee, has previously directed four films set
in the West, though each has been its own entirely distinctive exploration of the territory. His first
film, HARD EIGHT, was a crime thriller set amidst the casinos of Las Vegas. This was followed by
BOOGIE NIGHTS, a kaleidoscopic look at the adult film industry; MAGNOLIA an interwoven tale of
one devastating and magical night in the San Fernando Valley; and PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, that rare
fresh take on the romantic comedy. THERE WILL BE BLOOD marks Anderson’s first journey into
the foundational days of California’s lavish wealth and power, before movies, before high-tech, when
oil was the driving force of the land and brought hungry, ambitious men Westward in search of fortune
and a new future.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD began with Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil!
Paul Thomas Anderson was primarily inspired by the 500-page novel’s first 150 pages, wherein
Sinclair delves in exquisite detail into the gritty, precarious lives of oil prospectors and oil workers.
He was also drawn to Sinclair’s pitting of unbridled greed against unchecked spiritual idealism, each
with their own insidious consequences. From that foundation of inspiration, he found his own
characters of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday wending in their own directions, towards their own
intertwined fates.
Anderson began to do further research – prowling through the oil museums that dot California –
letting the era’s plentiful, richly atmospheric photographs further fire up his imagination. “You get
giddy looking at all those amazing photos,” Anderson notes, “getting a real sense of how people lived
their lives. There’s so much history in the oil areas around Bakersfield -- they’re filled with the
grandsons of oil workers and lots of folklore. So we did an incredible amount of research and I got to
be a student again and that was a thrill.”
80th Academy Awards Oscar Nominations 2008
Best Picture
Atonement
Juno
Michael Clayton
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Best Animated Feature
Persepolis, Ratatouille, Surf's Up
Best Actress
Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth: The Golden Age
This is her fifth nomination and the second in this category. She
was also nominated for her leading role in Elizabeth (1998). Her supporting role nominations were for The Aviator (2004), for which
she won the Oscar, and Notes on a Scandal (2006). She is also nominated this year in the supporting category for I’m Not There.
Julie Christie as "Fiona Anderson" in Away from Her
This is her fourth nomination in this category. Her other nominations were for Darling
(1965), for which she won an Oscar, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Afterglow (1997).
Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose
This is her first nomination.
Laura Linney as Wendy Savage in The Savages
This is her third nomination and the second in this category. She was nominated for
her leading role in You Can Count on Me (2000) and her supporting role in Kinsey (2004).
Ellen Page ("Juno MacGuff" in Juno)
This is her first nomination.
|