Joel and Ethan Coen‘s "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs" is no longer a six-part Netflix anthology series? At least that's what Variety's Kris Tapley is saying, implying that it is actually a feature film using an anthology structure.
Did the Coen's con Netflix? Did they just tell Netflix, as Jeff Wells is saying over at HE, “Sorry, guys, but that western anthology series we sold you on, that six-segment concept that might’ve run somewhere between three and six hours…sorry but we prefer the idea of a feature film with a six-chapter structure.”
Up until today, we did not know the six seperate segments that make up "Buster Scruggs" were half hour each. The Venice Film Festival annoucned its lineup today and, lo and behold, "Buster Scruggs" is listed as being 132 minutes. Tapley is hinting at a possible new Best Picture contender.
Joel Coen: “We’ve always loved anthology movies, especially those films made in Italy in the ’60s” — i.e., RoGoPaG — “which set side-by-side the work of different directors on a common theme. Having written an anthology of Western stories we attempted to do the same, hoping to enlist the best directors working today. It was our great fortune that they both agreed to participate.”
I wrote earlier this week: "It is quite thrilling to see all these great directors make the switch to TV. The last few years, legendary directors such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, David Fincher, Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, Todd Haynes, and Ridley Scott have made the switch to television."
"Last we heard from Joel and Ethan Coen was in 2016 when they released "Hail, Caesar" a film which I desperately need to re-watch considering I didn't think much of it upon release. As far as those kind of off-beat, "light" comedies the Coens are known to release in between their darker dramas, 'Caesar' felt a little flat, in other words, it didn't reach the levels of "The Big Lebowski," and "Burn After Reading," it was more in line with their lower-tier stuff such as "The Ladykillers," "Intolerable Cruelty," and, as much as I thought it was a 'watchable' affair, 1994's "The Hudsucker Proxy."
The six segments are describe on Wikipedia as follows:
(1) “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” — The story of a singing cowboy named Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson);
(2) “Near Algodones” — A high-plains drifter whose own fecklessness dogs his attempts at bank robbery and cattle driving, costarring James Franco, Ralph Ineson and Stephen Root;
(3) “Meal Ticket” — The story of an actor and impresario of a traveling show;
(4) “All Gold Canyon”– A prospector (possibly Tom Waits) happily finds a gold seam but then unhappily finds an evil encroacher;
(5) “The Gal Who Got Rattld” — The story of two trail bosses on the Oregon Trail and a woman on the wagon train who needs the help of one of them and who might be a marriage prospect for the other, w/ Zoe Kazan and Jackamoe Buzzell; and
(6) “The Mortal Remains” — Five very different passengers find themselves on a stagecoach to a mysterious destination w/ Tyne Daly, Saul Rubinek.