Great dialogue: No Country for Old Men (2007)

Chigurh stands at the counter across from the elderly proprietor. He
holds up a bag of cashews.

Chigurh
How much?

Proprietor
Sixty-nine cent.

Chigurh
This. And the gas.

Proprietor
Y'all getting any rain up your way?

Chigurh
What way would that be?

Proprietor
I seen you was from Dallas.

Chigurh tears open the bag of cashews and pours a few into his hand.

Chigurh
What business is it of yours where I'm
from, friendo?

Proprietor
I didn't mean nothin by it.

Chigurh
Didn't mean nothin.

Proprietor
I was just passin the time.

Chigurh
I guess that passes for manners in your
cracker view of things.

A beat.

Proprietor
Well sir I apologize. If you don't wanna
accept that I don't know what else I can
do for you.

Chigurh stands chewing cashews, staring while the old man works the
register and puts change on the counter.

...Will there be somethin else?

Chigurh
I don't know. Will there?

Beat.

The proprietor turns and coughs. Chigurh stares.

Proprietor
Is somethin wrong?

Chigurh
With what?

Proprietor
With anything?

Chigurh
Is that what you're asking me? Is there
something wrong with anything?

The proprietor looks at him, uncomfortable, looks away.

Proprietor
Will there be anything else?

Chigurh
You already asked me that.

Proprietor
Well... I need to see about closin.

Chigurh
See about closing.

Proprietor
Yessir.

Chigurh
What time do you close?

Proprietor
Now. We close now.

Chigurh
Now is not a time. What time do you
close.

Proprietor
Generally around dark. At dark.

Chigurh stares, slowly chewing.

Chigurh
You don't know what you're talking
about, do you?

Proprietor
Sir?

Chigurh
I said you don't know what you're
talking about.

Chigurh chews.

...What time do you go to bed.

Proprietor
Sir?

Chigurh
You're a bit deaf, aren't you? I said
what time do you go to bed.

Proprietor
Well...

A pause.

...I'd say around nine-thirty. Somewhere
around nine-thirty.

Chigurh
I could come back then.

Proprietor
Why would you be comin back? We'll be
closed.

Chigurh
You said that.

He continues to stare, chewing.

Proprietor
Well... I need to close now -

Chigurh
You live in that house behind the store?

Proprietor
Yes I do.

Chigurh
You've lived here all your life?

A beat.

Proprietor
This was my wife's father's place. Originally.

Chigurh
You married into it.

Proprietor
We lived on Temple Texas for many years.
Raised a family there. In Temple. We
come out here about four years ago.

Chigurh
You married into it.

Proprietor
...If that's the way you wanna put it.

Chigurh
I don't have some way to put it. That's
the way it is.

He finishes the cashews and wads the packet and sets in on the counter
where it begins to slowly unkink. The proprietor's eyes have tracked
the packet. Chigurh's eyes stay on the proprietor.

...What's the lost you've ever lost on
a coin toss?

Proprietor
Sir?

Chigurh
The most. You ever lost. On a coin toss.

Proprietor
I don't know. I couldn't say.

Chigurh is digging in his pocket. A quarter: he tosses it. He slaps it
onto his forearm but keeps it covered.

Chigurh
Call it.

Proprietor
Call it?

Chigurh
Yes.

Proprietor
For what?

Chigurh
Just call it.

Proprietor
Well - we need to know what it is we're
callin for here.

Chigurh
You need to call it. I can't call it
for you. It wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't
even be right.

Proprietor
I didn't put nothin up.

Chigurh
Yes you did. You been putting it up your
whole life. You just didn't know it. You
know what date is on this coin?

Proprietor
No.

Chigurh
Nineteen fifty-eight. It's been traveling
twenty-eight years to get here. And
now it's here. And it's either heads or
tails, and you have to say. Call it.

A long beat.

Proprietor
Look... I got to know what I stand to
win.

Chigurh
Everything.

Proprietor
How's that?

Chigurh
You stand to win everything. Call it.

Proprietor
All right. Heads then.

Chigurh takes his hand away from the coin and turns his arm to look at
it.

Chigurh
Well done.

He hands it across.

...Don't put it in your pocket.

Proprietor
Sir?

Chigurh
Don't put it in your pocket. It's your
lucky quarter.

Proprietor
...Where you want me to put it?

Chigurh
Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it'll
get mixed in with the others and become
just a coin. Which it is.

He turns and goes.

The proprietor watches him.

Kubrick admired Bergman

This letter was written by Stanley Kubrick in 1960 to the filmmaker he admired the most at the time, the Swedish Ingmar Bergman. By this time, Kubrick was yet to create his greatest masterpieces, such as 2001: Space Odyssey (came two years later), The Clockwork Orange or Barry Lyndon. Read the transcript down below the photo.



UNIVERSAL-INTERNATIONAL PICTURES
UNIVERSAL CITY, CALIFORNIA

February 9, 1960

Dear Mr. Bergman,

You have most certainly received enough acclaim and success throughout the world to make this note quite unnecessary. But for whatever it’s worth, I should like to add my praise and gratitude as a fellow director for the unearthly and brilliant contribution you have made to the world by your films (I have never been in Sweden and have therefore never had the pleasure of seeing your theater work). Your vision of life has moved me deeply, much more deeply than I have ever been moved by any films. I believe you are the greatest film-maker at work today. Beyond that, allow me to say you are unsurpassed by anyone in the creation of mood and atmosphere, the subtlety of performance, the avoidance of the obvious, the truthfullness and completeness of characterization. To this one must also add everything else that goes into the making of a film. I believe you are blessed with wonderfull actors. Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin live vividly in my memory, and there are many others in your acting company whose names escape me. I wish you and all of them the very best of luck, and I shall look forward with eagerness to each of your films.

Best Regards,

Signature: Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick

Happy Birthday, Paul

26th June 1970

With 23 years old, wrote and directed Cigarettes and Coffee, named after Jarmush's Coffee and Cigarettes, a 30 minute multiplot short film which screened at the Sundance Film Festival (1993), granting him access to the subsequent edition of the festival's Lab. There he developed the critically acclaimed Sydney (the studio would rename it Hard Eight) which premiered at the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes'96, throwing him to the spotlights as one of the most promising American filmmakers of his generation. In 1997 he released Boogie Nights, an adaptation of his own 1988 The Dirk Digler Story short mockumentary, from a script he wrote in 1995, has a therapy for the production and distribution issues Sydney was facing. Got nominated for Best Original Screenplay and started to pull out, as one of his trademarks, major performances from the actors (Moore and Reynold went for Best Suporting Actress/Actor). In 1999 Thomas Anderson wrote and directed the melodramatic epic Magnolia, with Tom Cruise, Philip Seymor Hoffman, Juliane Moore, Philip Baker Hall, William Macy, John C. Reilly and other stars. The film was a mosaic depicting the journeys of redemption and faith among the sincere, unpredictable and circumstantial relationships the world allows us to establish. Lost Best Original Screenplay to Alan Ball's American Beauty and got Tom Cruise for Best Supporting Actor and Aimee Mann for Best Original Song. Three years latter he shows the world a new Adam Sandler in his Punch-Drunk Love, a box-office flop but a success in the reviews. The director says the golden age meets nouvelle vague lens-flared sensitive romance is his most personal work, coming "right from my stomach". It granted him Best Director at Cannes'02. PTA's masterpiece, so far, came after his longest interregnum. In 2007 he wrote and directed another epic, this time a period piece with the beginning of the century oil prospections in Texas as a backdrop - There Will Be Blood. Starring Daniel Day Lewis in one of the greatest performances I've ever seen (also, one of my all-time favorite movies), the film received eight Academy nominations, winning Best Actor for Daniel and Best Cinematography for Elswitt (Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Man took the other major categories). Paul Thomas Anderson is now shooting the religious drama The Master and is already working on the adaptation of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, a psychedelic dope neo-noir story in the 1960 L.A.

At the young age of 41, PTA has his films scattered all over lists for best films of the decade and of all time and is considered one of the most crafted and talented screenwriters and directors of the seventh art.

Happy Birthday, Paul. Thank you very much.

Tarantino's Django gets 2012's Christmas

The Weinstein Company has set the date for the 8th Quentin Tarantino film, Django Unchained: December 25, 2012. If this year we're having a self-proclaimed "Christmas feel bad movie" (Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), next year we'll have a "Christmas whip-ass" movie.

One day: Tarantino, Depp and Lewis

"I've wanted to work with Johnny Depp forever, and Johnny Depp has wanted to work with me forever, but it has to be special. The same thing with Daniel Day-Lewis."

Quentin Tarantino, in an interview for Entertainment Weekly, about six years ago. One of my favorite filmmakers, one of my favorite actors, another one of my favorite actors. Well: one day. Someday.

Guião e notas de Monteiro, em Recordações da Casa Amarela

Um grande achado de Paulo Soares. O guião de Recordações da Casa Amarela de João César Monteiro teria sido, por si só, uma descoberta surpreendente, mas esta vai mais longe e deixa-nos as notas e os rabiscos que fez o a meu ver melhor argumentista que o cinema português alguma vez teve. Deixo o link.

A huge discovery by Paulo Soares. João César Monteiro's Recollections of the Yellow House screenplay alone would've been a surprising dig, but this one goes further and unveils us the notes and sketches drawn by who I consider to be the greatest screenwriter the portuguese cinema has ever had. Have the link.