How much did you depart from the Charles Portis book?
Ethan: The hanged man, the whole thing from the hanging through the bear man, is not [in the book].
There's a big scene in the original where they let Mattie cry about her dead father when she's alone.
Joel: There's a moment in our movie where she's looking at her dead father's stuff in the boardinghouse, but she doesn't cry. It's more her holding it together.
Ethan: It's the unflinching four-square Protestant thing that defines the character.
And I loved that you show her at the end as an older woman without an arm.
Ethan: It's irresistible, you know.
There's the finger-chopping scene. I don't remember if that's in the novel.
Joel: Well, you got to cut some limbs off.
Ethan: Basically, it's 127 Hours.
Joel: Except we don't actually show her cutting her arm off.
Hailee Steinfeld, who plays the girl, is terrific.
Joel: Rachel Tenner, who is one of the people who cast the movie, traveled all over the South interviewing lots of rodeo girls, barrel riders. And after seeing dozens and dozens, if not hundreds, of the girls we ended up casting a girl from Thousand Oaks, Calif., basically from L.A., which is a little weird.
photo: tvtropes.org
(...)
Would you consider making a 3-D movie?
Joel: There's some kind of movies that are just hard for us to get our heads around, like outer-space movies. I mean, I enjoy watching them, but I can't see making them. And 3-D is kind of in that neighborhood for us.
Ethan: I mean, we still wish we could make movies in black and white. So we're going the other way.
(fragment din interviul acordat Newsweek, ultimul număr din 2010, ediţia tipărită, fireşte)