There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don’t believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God – who knows all that can be known – seems powerless to change.
-from All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
This discussion currently has 9 responses.
February 16, 2009
SCORE!
By the way, I’m happy to be the official commenter for the weekly literary quotes here at More Pop!
February 16, 2009
Christian, keep the comments coming! I feed off them.
And very cool, your book! It’s now on my Amazon wish list. I’ll be picking up a copy of it as soon as I have some extra cash. I have not picked up a good short story collection in a while.
February 17, 2009
the movie of this was all kinds of awful.
February 17, 2009
Ralph, I had a few paragraphs dedicated to Billy Bob’s All the Pretty Horses righthere, a film that suffered greatly from terrible studio interference.
February 19, 2009
i wonder if we will ever see Thorton’s true vision. this is a prefect example of why studios are idiotic and out of touch.
while i haven’t read this book, i have heard great things and read about all of the awards that it won. it is a shame when a studio refuses to respect the original material in hopes of making bigger bucks.
February 19, 2009
having both read the book and watched the movie, i will agree. the movie is a travesty. a butchering of the book. you can blame it on the studio cut only so much, but like you said in that article above, the casting was all wrong. a 30+ year old playing someone almost half that age? stupid.
the book is a modern masterpiece and i would like to see it remade completely. maybe the whole trilogy?
February 19, 2009
Ralph – don’t expect to see Thornton’s version anytime soon. As I wrote, he will only do it if the original score is in place and that is an obstacle in and of itself.
I’m with you, Murph. I’d like to see All the Pretty Horses remade and then make this sucker as a consistent trilogy – either with one director, such as Andrew Dominik tackling them all, or having a different capable director on each picture.
The Crossing
Year: 1940
Billy Parham is 16 years old.
All the Pretty Hoses
Year: 1948
John Grady Cole is 16 years old
Cities of the Plain
Year: 1952
John Grady is 20 years old.
Billy Parham is 28 years old.
The Crossing, while written second, would be filmed first with a young actor. After a few years, All the Pretty Horses would be filmed with a young actor. A few years later, Cities of the Plain. It would work out wonderfully. I would pee my pants. Get Dominik, John Hillcoat, and Aaron J. Wiederspahn on this ASAP!
February 20, 2009
has there ever been a “loose” trilogy like that? meaning they aren’t meant to go together but two of the movies don’t share the shame characters at all?
it would be an interesting fresh idea, i think. i like this idea.
February 24, 2009
A few “thematic” trilogies that come to mind that don’t share characters are 21 Grams, Amores perros, and Babel. Then Krystof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy. And Park Chan-Wook’s Vengeance Trilogy.
None have character crossovers like this would though.