50 Fun Facts About No Country for Old Men

Which earlier Coen brothers film had already won them a screenwriting Oscar before No Country for Old Men?

Fargo won Joel and Ethan Coen the original screenplay Oscar in 1997, though the film itself lost Best Picture that night to The English Patient.

Whose 2005 novel is No Country for Old Men based on?

Cormac McCarthy first wrote No Country for Old Men as a screenplay, then reworked it into the 2005 novel that the Coens adapted.

Who plays the hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men?

Javier Bardem wore a greasy pageboy haircut as the killer and went as far as crediting it in his Oscar acceptance speech.

Which war did Llewelyn Moss fight in?

Vietnam War: the film is set in 1980, and bounty hunter Carson Wells, another veteran, asks Moss at his hospital bedside whether he was in Nam.

How much cash is in the case Llewelyn Moss finds in No Country for Old Men?

$2 million, in bank-wrapped hundreds beside a dead man who had fled the desert shootout; taking it puts both a drug cartel and a hired killer on Moss's trail.

What animal is Llewelyn Moss hunting when he finds the drug money in No Country for Old Men?

Pronghorn, which the script calls antelope: Moss wounds one, sets off after it across the desert and comes upon the shot-up trucks of a drug deal gone wrong instead.

In No Country for Old Men, what weapon does Anton Chigurh use to kill a driver and steal his car?

A captive bolt pistol is a slaughterhouse stunner that fires a bolt and snaps it back, so Chigurh hauls a tank of compressed air around with it.

What does Chigurh warn the gas station owner against doing with the coin that spared him?

Pocketing it: the owner had called heads on a 1958 quarter, and Chigurh tells him to keep his lucky coin anywhere but his pocket, where it would mix with the others and become just a coin.

How does Anton Chigurh track Llewelyn Moss to a motel in Del Rio?

A transponder hidden in the money case leads Chigurh to the motel, where Moss has stashed the case in an air duct and rented the room next door to reach it.

In which Texas border town does the gunfight between Moss and Chigurh spill into the streets?

Eagle Pass: the night-time shootout leaves both men badly wounded and a truck driver dead, and Moss then slips across the border into Mexico.

Where does the wounded Llewelyn Moss hide the case of money after his street gunfight with Chigurh?

Along the Rio Grande: Moss heaves the case off the border bridge into the cane on the riverbank, where Carson Wells later spots it and leaves it lying.

Who plays the bounty hunter Carson Wells in No Country for Old Men?

Woody Harrelson plays Wells, whom Chigurh shoots in his hotel room just as the phone rings; Chigurh then picks up and threatens Moss down the line.

Who unwittingly gives away Moss's El Paso motel to the Mexicans trailing him in No Country for Old Men?

Carla Jean's mother tells a well-dressed stranger who offers to carry her bags that they are bound for El Paso, and Sheriff Bell reaches the motel to find Moss already dead.

How does Carla Jean answer Chigurh's offer of a coin toss?

She refuses to call it, telling Chigurh the coin has no say and the choice is his alone; in the novel she gives in, picks heads and loses.

What happens to Anton Chigurh as he drives away from Carla Jean's house?

A car crashes into his at a junction and breaks his arm; he buys the shirt off a boy's back for a sling and limps away before the ambulance arrives.

In Sheriff Bell's second dream, what is his father doing?

Riding past him carrying fire in a horn, going on ahead to make a fire in the dark and cold where Bell knew he would be waiting; then Bell woke up, and the film ends.

Which poet's line gives No Country for Old Men its title?

W. B. Yeats opens Sailing to Byzantium with the words 'That is no country for old men', and his ageing speaker leaves the land of the young and sails for the holy city.

What does Chigurh check as he leaves Carla Jean's house?

His boot soles: he stops and looks at each in turn, a care the film set up earlier, when he lifted his boots onto a bed as Carson Wells's blood spread across the hotel floor.

Which two directors shot Josh Brolin's audition tape for No Country for Old Men?

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez filmed it on their Grindhouse set with a $1 million camera, and by Brolin's account the Coens' response was to ask who lit it.

Which producer bought the rights to No Country for Old Men and brought the novel to the Coens?

Scott Rudin, known for buying novels before the reviews arrive, took it to the Coens just as their long-planned film of James Dickey's To the White Sea had fallen apart.

How did Ethan Coen say the brothers adapted No Country for Old Men?

One types, one holds the book open: that was Ethan's account, and much of the dialogue is lifted from the novel almost word for word. Joel added that otherwise his brother would have to type one-handed.

What does Chigurh drink on the sofa in Moss's empty trailer?

Milk: Chigurh drinks it facing the dead television, and when Sheriff Bell arrives it is still sweating, which tells him they have only just missed their man.

Which film shooting nearby in Marfa cost the Coens a day of filming with its smoke?

There Will Be Blood was testing the fire for its burning oil derrick, and the cloud of black smoke shut the Coens' set down for the day; months later the two films were rivals for Best Picture.

Which cinematographer shot No Country for Old Men and was Oscar-nominated twice over that year?

Roger Deakins was up for both this film and The Assassination of Jesse James, lost with each, and had to wait another decade and a 14th nomination before Blade Runner 2049 finally won him the Oscar.

Roughly how many minutes of music are heard in the two-hour thriller No Country for Old Men?

16 minutes is all the music there is, and several of those play over the end credits; the brothers let gunshots, engine noise and prairie wind carry the tension instead.

What did the sound team record for the two-part thump of Anton Chigurh's signature weapon?

A pneumatic nail gun gave the weapon its ch-chung; sound designer Craig Berkey said he wasn't after authenticity and never even researched the real thing.

Which film beat No Country for Old Men to three Oscars?

The Bourne Ultimatum won all three of its nominations, film editing and both sound awards, so a thriller with barely any music lost the sound Oscars to an all-action blockbuster.

The actor behind Anton Chigurh switched languages mid-speech to dedicate his Oscar to which country?

Spain: switching to Spanish, he told his actress mother the Oscar was for her and for the country's performers, who had brought dignity and pride to their profession.

Which Clint Eastwood film was the last Western to win Best Picture before No Country for Old Men?

Unforgiven sat in Clint Eastwood's drawer for years: having made a bunch of Westerns, he said, he thought he should do some other things first, while its writer was told more than once that it would be shot next year.

At which festival did No Country for Old Men premiere in May 2007?

Cannes put it in competition, the Coens' seventh film there, sixteen years after Barton Fink won them the Palme d'Or; Joel said they keep coming back because they keep being invited.

Which Coen brothers film outgrossed No Country for Old Men?

True Grit took about $252 million worldwide, far ahead of No Country for Old Men, yet left the Oscars with ten nominations and no wins.

A 400-film study ranked Chigurh first for what?

Most realistic psychopath: lead author Samuel Leistedt said the cold, guiltless hitman reminded him of two real contract killers he had interviewed for his work.

What are Anton Chigurh's two main firearms?

A silenced pistol and a silenced shotgun: the screenplay gives the twelve-gauge a silencer big around as a beer can, and he carries it into Moss's Del Rio motel room, where three men are waiting.

Which Scottish actress plays the Texan Carla Jean Moss?

Kelly Macdonald, a Glaswegian, met the casting director while in New York for a friend's wedding; by her account the Coens had held out for a real Texan, and then they ended up with her.

What errand sends Llewelyn Moss back to the desert shootout at night, where gunmen spot him?

Taking water to a dying man who had begged him for agua is, Moss admits, dumber than hell: the man is already dead, and armed men on the ridge chase Moss into the river.

In No Country for Old Men, old Ellis tells Sheriff Bell that thinking he can stop what's coming is what?

Vanity: Ellis, an old lawman in a wheelchair, tells Bell that none of it is waiting on him, and Bell, feeling overmatched, retires anyway.

Whose National Film Registry added No Country for Old Men?

Library of Congress picks run to 25 films a year, each at least ten years old, and the public has a say: anyone may nominate up to 50 titles a year.

Which film beat No Country for Old Men to the Golden Globe for Best Drama, weeks before its Best Picture Oscar?

Atonement was named Best Drama at a press conference, not a ceremony, because the writers' strike had cancelled that year's Globes show; the Coens' film took only screenplay and supporting actor.

The novelist behind this Texas story was born in which New England state?

Rhode Island: he was born in Providence, grew up in Knoxville after his father joined the Tennessee Valley Authority, and reached the border country he wrote about only when he moved to El Paso mid-career.

Which novel by No Country for Old Men's author won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the year the film came out?

The Road, which he said began one night at an El Paso hotel window while his young son slept, won the 2007 Pulitzer; All the Pretty Horses had taken the National Book Award in 1992.

Under which invented name were the Coen brothers Oscar-nominated for editing No Country for Old Men?

Roderick Jaynes, by the brothers' account a cantankerous Briton of around ninety, is credited with cutting most Coen films and has two Oscar nominations, which is good going for a man who does not exist.

In which Minneapolis suburb did the Coen brothers grow up?

St. Louis Park's Mike Zoss Drugs was their boyhood hangout: they named their production company after it, and phoned the owner's son for permission to put the name on the pharmacy in No Country for Old Men.

Which English actor spent a few days believing Anton Chigurh was his, after the first choice's dates clashed?

Mark Strong says he was phoned one weekend and told the first choice's dates didn't work; the clash was sorted out within days, and he later had to deny a rumour that he had turned the part down.

Which studio released No Country for Old Men in the US, with Paramount Vantage handling it abroad?

Miramax took the film at home and Paramount Vantage overseas; on the pair's other 2007 co-production the roles were swapped, and the two films ended up rivals for Best Picture.

Which New Mexico city stood in for the Texas border towns of No Country for Old Men?

Las Vegas, New Mexico, supplied the streets, hotel and motel, and its freeway overpass above Interstate 25 became the international bridge once a border checkpoint set was built on it.

No Country for Old Men faked most of its Texas in New Mexico, but which Mexican border city played itself?

Piedras Negras: Ethan Coen said they spent a single day there, shooting the town square where the wounded Moss wakes to a band playing, the very square the novel describes.

Which instrument did Carter Burwell lean on for No Country for Old Men's barely-there score?

Singing bowls, the metal bells rubbed in Buddhist meditation, gave him tones that creep in under wind and engine noise; for one tense interior scene he tuned the hum to a refrigerator's 60 hertz.

The Coens were only the second duo to share the Best Director Oscar; which musical's co-directors were the first?

West Side Story's Jerome Robbins was let go mid-shoot with the film over budget, yet he and Robert Wise still shared the directing Oscar; the Coens were the next pair to win it.

Which No Country for Old Men star sued Paramount in 2008 and collected a $17.5 million box-office bonus?

Tommy Lee Jones sued for bonuses his contract promised; an arbitrator found the studio's own lawyers had misdrafted the deal, and they later paid Paramount $2.6 million over the error.

In No Country for Old Men, how does Anton Chigurh kill the deputy who arrests him?

Strangles him with his handcuffs: while the deputy is on the phone to the sheriff, Chigurh slips his manacled hands under his legs to the front, then drops the chain over the man's throat from behind.