20 facts you might not know about 'No Country for Old Men'

The Coen Brothers, Joel, and Ethan are two of the most successful filmmakers of the last 30 years. Their most beloved film is probably “The Big Lebowski.” They first got Oscar love for “Fargo.” In terms of blending critical and commercial success, though, their biggest movie may be “No Country for Old Men.” That’s a bit surprising, given how grim and bleak the film is. Here are 20 facts you might not have known about “No Country for Old Men.” Or maybe you do know them. It’s a bit of a coin toss.

The Coen Brothers were working on trying to adapt the book “To the White Sea” by James Dickey but then producer Scott Rudin told them that he had bought the film rights to Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men.” McCarthy is known for his dark novels, including “The Road.” He also wrote the screenplay for the immensely-bleak film “The Counselor.”

Joel and Ethan like to pay homage to storytelling styles from the past, including a lot of hard-boiled detective riffs. Additionally “O Brother Where Art Thou?” is a retelling of “The Odyssey” in some ways. However, this was the first time the Coens sat down and adapted a book, and they were fairly faithful to the novel. Not long after making “No Country for Old Men”, they would adapt “True Grit,” another novel.

It’s hard to say that “No Country for Old Men,” the film, has a true main character. This is not the case in the novel. McCarthy tells the story through the perspective of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, including going into his backstory in a way the film does not.

While McCarthy’s book has the same title as the movie, the title had to come from somewhere. It’s taken from the poem “Sailing to Byzantium” by the famed Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The first line of the poem is “That is no country for old men.”

Brolin is excellent as Llewelyn Moss, something of an audience surrogate in the film. He was not the first choice, though. The Coens wanted Heath Ledger, but he had just had a daughter and wanted to spend time with her. In fact, Brolin had to work hard to get the role, putting together an audition reel and using that to even get in the door for a meeting with the Coens, who did eventually give him the role.

Garret Dillahunt plays Wendell, who works under Sheriff Bell. He got that role after being seen plenty of times by the Coens in their hunt to find an actor to play Llewelyn. In fact, Dillahunt auditioned a whopping five times to play Moss but was instead offered the role of Wendell the deputy.

It’s hard to imagine anybody else but Bardem playing Anton Chigurh, the face of evil in “No Country for Old Men.” Bardem is synonymous with Chigurh, and vice versa. However, scheduling issues almost kept Bardem from taking the role. Mark Strong was actually on standby to take the role, but then Bardem resolved his scheduling issues and got to take on the indelible role.

The Coens riff on genres and are indebted to filmmakers who came before them, as all filmmakers are, but in the case of this movie, many dropped the name Sam Peckinpah. Peckinpah is the director of films such as “The Wild Bunch” and is known for his bleak, violent Westerns. That being said, in an interview with “The Guardian,” Ethan would only go so far as to say, “Hard men in the south-west shooting each other – that's definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing. We were aware of those similarities, certainly.”

“No Country for Old Men” takes place in the vast expanses of West Texas, and a lot of the movie was shot there. However, the bulk of the movie was not actually shot in Texas. Much like the beloved TV show “Breaking Bad,” “No Country for Old Men” was shot extensively in New Mexico. Even the U.S.-Mexico border crossing was shot in New Mexico.

The Coens had won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for “Fargo,” and Frances McDormand won Best Actress for that film as well, but that had been it in terms of Academy Awards for Joel and Ethan. Finally, “No Country for Old Men” got their hands on the “big” awards. In addition to another screenplay win, the Coens won both Best Director and Best Picture.

“No Country for Old Men” made $171.6 million worldwide, which at the end of 2010 made it the third-lowest-grossing Best Picture winner not adjusted for inflation (a few films have since “surpassed” it). For the Coens, though, it was a huge hit. “No Country for Old Men” was the highest-grossing Coens film at the time, and it’s still second-highest to “True Grit.”

In addition to the Coens winning three Oscars, Bardem took home Best Supporting Actor. In doing so, he became the first Spanish actor to win an Oscar. The second Spanish winner, by the way? That would be Bardem’s wife Penelope Cruz. Talk about a power couple.

Since “No Country for Old Men” is a violent film, naturally a lot of fake blood was needed. Now, typically fake blood isn’t that expensive, but it also contains sugar. That wouldn’t fly for all the outdoor scenes, since the actors would have been swarmed with bugs and animals. The sugar-free fake blood the film had to use cost a whopping $800 per barrel.

The Coens decided to give Chigurh a very distinct hairdo. They got the photo, of all places, from a picture of a man at a brothel in 1979. The movie takes place in 1980, so that may have influenced them. Bardem was not thrilled at first, since he actually got the haircut. It has been quoted repeatedly that Bardem exclaimed he wouldn’t “get laiđ for the next two months,” which amused the Coens to no end.

Marfa, Texas had a big year in 2007. Not only did “No Country for Old Men” shoot there, but so did Paul Thomas Anderson’s iconic film “There Will Be Blood.” Both movies were up for Best Picture in the same year, and both won Oscars. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. The films were shot at the same time and one day Anderson was testing pyrotechnics for the scene in his movie where an oil derrick lights on fire. That created a giant cloud of black smoke in the sky, and the Coens had to wait for it to go away before they could shoot again.

The Coens wanted a film that was largely silent, which is not common. Usually, a film at least has a score in the background. “No Country for Old Men” does have a score from Carter Burwell, but it’s all of 16 minutes of music.

Chigurh infamously makes use of a captive bolt pistol in the movie, but he also uses a shotgun with a sound suppressor on it. Now, silencers in movies are often exaggerated in terms of how effective they are. This silencer on the shotgun goes further than that, though,  as such a thing does not exist in real life. The Coens made it up for the film.

Jones plays the determined Sheriff Bell, and his determination continued after the movie. In 2008, Jones sued Paramount for bonuses he had not received. The deal was settled in 2010 when Paramount acknowledged studio attorneys had misdrafted his deal. Jones was awarded $17.5 million. Also, Paramount sued those attorneys and got $2.6 million themselves.

The pharmacy that Chigurh goes into (with help of a distraction he causes with an exploding car) is called Mike Zoss Pharmacy. Joel and Ethan were paying homage to Mike Zoss Drugs, a pharmacy from their Minneapolis childhoods. In fact, they even named their production company Mike Zoss Productions.

It’s notable in “No Country for Old Men” that the characters in the movie have a hard time finding one another. There’s not a ton of interaction between Llewelyn and Sheriff Bell, for example. This would be true in another movie they made together in 2012, “Men in Black 3.” Of course, that time it only made sense they wouldn’t share the screen. In “Men in Black 3,” Brolin plays a younger version of K, Jones’ character.