The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
File:Busterscruggsposter.jpg Film poster
Directed by	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
Written by	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
Produced by	Joel Coen Ethan Coen Megan Ellison Sue Naegle Robert Graf
Starring	James Franco Brendan Gleeson Zoe Kazan Liam Neeson Tim Blake Nelson Tom Waits
Cinematography	Bruno Delbonnel
Edited by	Roderick Jaynes
Music by	Carter Burwell
Distributed by	Netflix
Release dates	August 31, 2018 (2018-08-31) (Venice) November 16, 2018 (2018-11-16) (United States)
Running time	133 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is an American western anthology film written, directed, and produced by the Coen brothers. It stars Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, and Tom Waits. It premiered at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2018, where it won the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay and was released on November 16 on Netflix after a limited theatrical run.

Plot

Introduction

The collection of six stories is presented as an old book with the title The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier. A hand turns the pages before and after each story, each one preceded by a color plate illustration of a scene within the story.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Buster Scruggs is a cheerful singing cowboy clad in white who travels atop his trusty white horse Dan. As he rides across the iconic Monument Valley, he explains to the audience that he is known as an outlaw and misanthrope, though he actually harbors no dislike of his fellow man. He arrives at an isolated bar and asks for a whiskey, but the owner refuses him due to it being a dry county such that he'll only serve drinks to presumable outlaws like the rough men sitting across the bar. The lead outlaw and Buster exchange insults before drawing their guns, Buster swiftly shooting him as well as the other outlaws and bar owner as they reach for their guns. He then heads into town and enters a saloon wherein he must surrender his guns. He sits to join a game of poker that a player has suddenly left, but discovers this was because the man was dealt the infamous dead man's hand, which the other players insist he still play. When Buster refuses, a large menacing player named Joe stands and draws a concealed revolver, the scene depicted in the color plate. Unable to dissuade Joe, Buster kicks down a plank in the table that seesaws up to instantaneously flip Joe's gun towards his own face and shoot him repeatedly. Buster then breaks into song about having to kill "Surly Joe" much to all the patrons' delight, until Joe's brother arrives in dismay and challenges Buster to a duel in the street. Buster gladly obliges and proceeds to shoot off each of the man's fingers before he can even draw, then finishes him off with his sixth bullet. However, a polite young man clad in black rides into town and recognizes Buster, having heard that he "is the one to beat" at both gunfighting and singing. Buster again happily obliges a request to duel, but much to his surprise, the young man is an even faster draw and shoots him straight through the middle of his forehead. Buster examines the wound in disbelief before collapsing, admitting via voiceover that he should have foreseen that "you can't be top dog forever." The young man and Buster then sing a bittersweet duet as Buster's spirit rises from his body and floats towards heaven complete with angel wings and a lyre.

Near Algodones

A young cowboy enters a bank that stands isolated upon the prairie, and after a brief chat with the jabbering bank teller, draws his pistol to rob him. However, when he allows the teller to stoop to reach the "large denominations," the teller instead fires a row of shotguns mounted below the counter, which the cowboy leaps to avoid whilst the teller escapes into the back. After filling his bag with cash from the drawer, the cowboy flees out the front, but the teller fires after him, causing him to hide for cover behind a well. As depicted in the story's color plate, the teller then charges the cowboy wearing a washboard and several pots and pans that deflect all the cowboy's shots as the teller repeatedly cackles "Panshot!" The teller knocks the cowboy out with his rifle butt, and when the cowboy regains consciousness, he is sitting upon a horse under a tree with a noose around his neck and being asked for his final words by a lawman and his posse who have already convicted and sentenced him to death. But the execution is interrupted by ambushing Comanche warriors who quickly slaughter the lawman and posse but leave the cowboy in place upon the horse. After a time, a drover happens by and frees the cowboy, who then joins him on his drive. However, the drover is actually a rustler, and they are promptly chased down by another lawman's posse, who capture and march the cowboy into town where the sherrif summarily orders him to hang. As the cowboy stands upon the gallows with three other men to be executed, he spots a young woman in the crowd and mutters "There's a pretty girl" before the hangman abruptly hoods him and pulls the lever to cheers and applause.

Meal Ticket

An aging impresario and his artist, a young man with no arms or legs named Harrison, travel from town to town in a wagon that converts into a small stage where Harrison theatrically recites classics such as Shelley's poem "Ozymandias", the biblical story of Cain and Abel, works by Shakespeare, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The impresario collects money from the audience at the end of each performance, receiving less and less as they visit increasingly remote mountain towns with smaller and more indifferent audiences, and he grows weary and callous from performing all the physical labor in the endeavor as well as having to feed, dress, and assist Harrison in relieving himself. Their financial situation is never desperate, as the impresario can afford to visit a prostitute (keeping Harrison present but facing away), and later draws from a large roll of dollar bills in his coat to buy a chicken of unusual talent in hopes of supplanting Harrison's performances. The impresario observes a man drawing a crowd with the chicken, which can ostensibly perform basic math, pecking at the correct numeric answers to addition and subtraction equations that the audience calls out. After buying the chicken, as the impresario drives their wagon through a mountain pass, he stops by a bridge over a rushing river. He walks to the center of the bridge and drops a large stone into the river (as though gauging its depth and deadliness of such a fall) before returning to the wagon wearing a faint smile. The film then cuts to the story's final scene in which he has resumed driving the wagon, the chicken his only passenger and Harrison presumably dropped into the river, as foreshadowed by the quote from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice that captioned the color plate illustration of Harrison: "The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven."

All Gold Canyon

A grizzled prospector arrives in a pristine mountain valley. In the grassy meadow beside a stream that snakes through the valley, the prospector begins digging soil samples and panning through them in the stream to count the gold flecks and thereby slowly determine the area with the highest concentration and possibly a major gold deposit, which he calls "Mr. Pocket". He eventually identifies the most promising spot and digs a grave-sized hole wherein he finds several sizable gold nuggets and a large gold vein running through the quartz rock. No sooner does he make his discovery than a young man sneaks up to the edge of the hole and shoots him in the back. However, the bullet passes through the prospector without striking any vital organs, and when the young man jumps into the hole to steal the gold, the prospector springs to into action and kills him. The prospector then assesses and cleans his wound in the stream, finishes digging the gold from the hole, pushes the young man's body back into the hole to serve as his grave, and departs the valley with his bounty.

The Gal Who Got Rattled

A young woman named Alice Longabaugh and her older brother Gilbert, an inept businessman, are journeying in a wagon train across the prairie towards Oregon, where Gilbert claims a new business partner will marry his sister. Gilbert dies of cholera shortly after they embark, and the wagon train's leaders, Mr. Billy Knapp and Mr. Arthur, help Alice bury her brother. Though she has no certain prospects, Alice decides to continue to Oregon rather than return east. However, the young man Gilbert hired to lead their wagon, Matt, is demanding half the $400 he claims Gilbert promised him, and Alice cannot find Gilbert's money, fearing he was buried with it. Alice conveys her predicament to Billy, who offers his support in contemplating how to proceed, and also does her the favor of driving off Gilbert's small dog, President Pierce, whose incessant barking has drawn widespread complaint. Through the course of their conversations, Billy grows fond of Alice, and he ultimately proposes to solve her dilemma by marrying her in Fort Laramie, assuming Gilbert's debt and paying Matt, and retiring from leading wagon trains to build a home and family with her upon 640 acres in Oregon per the Homestead Act. Alice is surprised by Billy's proposal, but she has likewise grown fond of him, so she accepts the next morning, and Billy informs Mr. Arthur that this will be their last ride together. The following morning, Mr. Arthur notices Alice missing, and he rides over the hills to eventually find her laughing at some prairie dogs with President Pierce. Mr. Arthur then spots an indian sentinel and advancing war party, and he gives Alice a pistol to shoot herself in the event he is killed so that she can avoid capture. Mr. Arthur twice drives back the charging warriors with his rifle, but when a remaining warrior momentarily appears to kill Mr. Arthur, Alice shoots herself as instructed. As depicted in the color plate, Mr. Arthur sadly walks back to the wagon train with "no idea what he would say to Billy Knapp."

The Mortal Remains

Five people, an Englishman (Thigpen); an Irishman (Clarence); a Frenchman (René); a Lady (Mrs. Betjamen) and a Trapper, ride in a stagecoach together at sunset to Fort Morgan. Thigpen says that he and Clarence often travel this route "ferrying cargo," referring to a corpse on the roof, but he does not yet specify the nature of their business handling corpses. The Trapper rambles about his past relationship with a Native woman in which neither knew the other's language, but his observing her basic emotions led him to conclude that "people are like ferrets or beaver, all pretty much alike" in their primitive needs and desires. Mrs. Betjamen, a devout Christian, indignantly rebuts that there are two kinds of people, upright and sinning, and explains that her husband, from whom she's been separated for three years, is a retired lecturer on "moral and spiritual hygiene." René challenges her with reflections on the innately unique and individual subjectivity of human experience, and then questions whether her husband conceives of love the same way she does and has remained faithful to her. Mrs. Betjamen becomes apoplectic, and René calls out the window for the coachman to stop, but as foretold in the color plate, "Whether or not he heard, the coachman did not slow." Thigpen clarifies that never stopping is policy. Clarence sings a melancholy folk song to calm the group, and he and Thigpen then reveal themselves to be "reapers," i.e., bounty hunters. Thigpen explains how he distracts their prey with stories while Clarence "thumps" them, how he distracted Mr. Thorpe, the corpse on the roof, with the story of The Midnight Caller, and how he enjoys watching their prey die, the expression in their eyes as they "negotiate the passage" and "try to make sense of it." The other three are visibly unsettled by this as they arrive at the foreboding hotel in Fort Morgan where they will all be staying, and they remain in the stagecoach as Thigpen and Clarence cheerfully carry the corpse into the hotel. As they then warily make their way inside, René lingers in the doorway to watch the stagecoach ride off into the eerily foggy night. He then turns to face whatever fate awaits within, dons his hat, and closes the heavy double doors behind him.

Cast

• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  • Tim Blake Nelson as Buster Scruggs
  • Willie Watson as The Kid
  • David Krumholtz as Frenchman in Saloon
  • E.E. Bell as Saloon Piano Player
  • Clancy Brown as Çurly Joe
• Near Algodones
  • James Franco as Cowboy
  • Stephen Root as Teller
  • Ralph Ineson as The Man in Black
  • Jesse Luken as Drover
• Meal Ticket
  • Liam Neeson as Impresario
  • Harry Melling as Artist (Harrison)
• All Gold Canyon
  • Tom Waits as Prospector
  • Sam Dillon as Young Man
• The Gal Who Got Rattled
  • Zoe Kazan as Alice Longabaugh
  • Bill Heck as Billy Knapp
  • Grainger Hines as Mr. Arthur
  • Jackamoe Buzzell as Another Man
  • Jefferson Mays as Gilbert
  • Ethan Dubin as Matt
• The Mortal Remains
  • Tyne Daly as Lady (Mrs. Betjamin)
  • Brendan Gleeson as Irishman (Clarence)
  • Jonjo O’Neill as Englishman (Thigpen)
  • Saul Rubinek as Frenchman (René)
  • Chelcie Ross as Trapper

Production

Joel and Ethan Coen announced The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in January 2017 as a collaboration with Annapurna Television. In August, Netflix announced it would stream the work worldwide. While some initial reports claimed the work would be a six-part television series, the Coens intended the stories to be seen together, structured them that way in the script they submitted to Annapurna, and shot the script as written.

The work is based on Western-themed short stories written by the Coens over a twenty-five-year period that differ in mood and subject. "All Gold Canyon" was based on a Jack London story.

Throughout 2017 and into the start of 2018, James Franco, Zoe Kazan, Tyne Daly, Willie Watson, Ralph Ineson, Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Root, Liam Neeson and Brendan Gleeson joined the cast.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was filmed partly in the Nebraska Panhandle, and casting calls went out for "ordinary" Nebraskans to appear as extras. Some filming also took place in New Mexico, location for the Coen films No Country for Old Men and True Grit. Joel Coen said the shoot was physically demanding: exterior shots with uncovered sets, "really brutal weather" and much travel over wide-ranging locations. "It wouldn’t have hurt if we were younger."

Funding and distribution

From the outset, the Coens ruled out traditional film studio funding, seeing an industry shift in how smaller projects are financed. Joel Coen said that Netflix was investing in movies that aren’t based on Marvel comics or other established action franchises, "which is pretty much the business of the studios now."

The filmmakers had mixed feelings regarding distribution as The Ballad of Buster Scruggs had only a limited theatrical run before its Netflix streaming debut. The Coens credited home videos with helping establish their own careers and admitted that they themselves succumbed to the temptation to watch movie screeners at home rather than going out to a theater. But the "hours and days and years you spend struggling over details" of a film "is appreciated in a different way on a big screen," Joel Coen said.

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 91% based on reviews from 134 critics, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus states, "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs avoids anthology pitfalls with a consistent collection tied together by the Coen brothers' signature blend of dark drama and black humor." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100 based on reviews from 38 critics.

External links

• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs at IMDb
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs at The-Numbers.com