Y'all are going to prison for paying Kid Rock to take me out for the Illuminati Freemasons Epstein network and you're gonna give back what you stole from me too.
It isn't scary so much as it is sickening And what major film studio would want to (or rather, be allowed to) depict half of the viscera and perversion in it?
@@MISTERORIONFuck a budget. They should make a real RAW movie. It doesn’t need to be cinematically legendary. Just tell a great story that is true to the book and cast the characters properly. It’s all you need.
@@digitalhub492 using “and” instead of commas makes the prose seem more free and straightforward compared to being heavily refined and written in a way that is “easy” or simple to read. Cormac makes the reader earn their understanding, rather than rest it on their face slowly overtime.
No country for old men is 100% the most popular popular Cormac McCarthy adaptation not only is it written by a legendary author. It was also directed by the Cohen brothers two of the most legendary contemporary directors of the current time
I would honestly prefer a Blood Meridian HBO/FX style mini-series with some of the creative team from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul onboard. I think that way, McCarthy's vivid descriptions of the Texan/Mexican landscapes would have a better chance of being done justice. Plus, these days, you can get away with onscreen ultra-violence a lot more easily on prestige television than you can on film
Yeah agreed. HBO do great work and any good/ great book deserves a well made series. Unless it's a short story then the book just gets butchered trying to fit it into a movie length time frame. Even if they make it into a 3 hour movie.
His most famous film, Psycho, is literally based off a book by Robert Bloch. Rear Window is based off “It Had To Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Strangers on a Train is based off the book by Patricia Highsmith. The Birds is based off the novel by Daphne du Maurier. Vertigo? Based off a book. The 39 Steps? Based on a book. Rebecca? Based on a book. Is Hitchcock really the best example for the point you’re trying to make?
@@wesstewart2677 But that's all either pulp or, at best, "good literature" that you mention. By "great literature", of course, he meant the very best of the best - Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner, Hugo, you name it (that particular quote was attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, I think). "Blood Meridian" is great literature too, no doubt.
I think in an age of instant self gratification this and an accurate Lovecraftian movie would be a humbling experience for most audiences. Blood Meridian in general makes its mission to show you that the cowboy escapist fantasy does not exist. That being said, I don't know how confident producers would be willing to fund it. But I can dream.
Ideally HBO could scoop up the rights and produce a mini-series of it. The network has a lot of ultraviolent shows under their belt; (Deadwood, the Sopranos, the Wire, Game of Thrones, Oz, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, etc). They would be a great fit for an adaptation
To reduce Blood Meridian to a mere antiwestern is to misunderstand it utterly. There's so much in the book that to reduce to a mere revision of the frontier myth is ludicrous, especially because by the time the book came out, revisionist westerns had already had a solid place in the culture. Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch in the late 60s' and Pat Garret in the early 70s'!
I've yet to see anyone come close to nailing the off putting nature of lovecrafts literature, aside from John carpenter. Everyone seems to think "tentacles equal scary." Where as for me, what I find appealing about Lovecraft is how he handles the themes of madness. Someone once said, lovecrafts horror is like putting an ant in a humans body for a day, and then putting it back in its ant body retaining all of its human memories. If very few directors or writers can succeed at bringing that to life on the silver screen, I have no faith they would succeed in adapting blood meridian. It's not just violence for violence sake, it's definitely nihilistic, but it's nuanced. I could only think of a few directors that might be able to pull that off, and I don't know any contemporary writers with the balls to do anything that provocative in this day and age.
Adult animation always seemed like it could work for telling this story. It could capture the inhumanity of Judge Holden, it could express the horror and beauty of the West. It would also be more palatable than showing live action guts and gore. And actors would not have to show their faces to the constant atrocities depicted.
I am a huge animation fan but in this instance I'd want live action solely for the cinematic opportunities the setting of the book holds for a talented film maker. Although Holden represents a platonic ideal of Evil, I feel like the true antagonist for much of the book is the landscape.
@@dancom6030 Name an actual adult themed animated movie or tv series that broke records in popularity/numbers that isn’t on Adult Swim, let alone a Japanese anime
I imagine eventually someone will have the vision to make it. For a long time LOTR was considered unmakeable but Peter Jackson came along, and it will need to be someone who really sees the story and has the talent to tell it visually.
The difference between lord of the rings and blood meridian is that lotr's adaptability problems come from its sheer scale. Once tech improved they adapted it, with some difficulty but they did. Not only does blood meridian have am immense scale but its the very way the story is told. Like he said in the video it's a very vague and surreal tale with prose that's difficult to even interpret
I read the leaked Monahan script, and it was SO AWFUL that I genuinely thought for a while that it was a joke until I talked to the guy who leaked it in the first place and he confirmed it for me. There are some truly baffling changes that make you wonder if Monahan fucking despised Blood Meridian. It changes stuff like making Holden explicitly the Devil to an eye-rolling degree, the first third of the book is truncated to the point of nonsense, it has some excruciating original dialogue, and most horrible of all, it completely changes the ending to a happy one where the Kid stabs Holden to death in the bathroom and rides off into the sunset with the child he adopts, I am not joking.
The ending is the scariest part for me. Knowing what the Judge did to kids throughout the entire book and wanted to do the same to the boy and taunting him with the idea of it through the entire thing, the only thing preventing him is the gang who the Judge sells out to Indians and watches them all die gruesome deaths and scalps their heads for quick cash. Can’t even imagine how scary it is to see the Judge during the day, but at night and sleeping next to his towering body just knowing he wants to hurt you but hasn’t yet.
When I watched No Country for Old Men, not only did it become one of my most favourite movies ever made but the goldmine you can make when adapting a novel. I'm now a little over 100 pages into Blood Meridian and in a dark way, I would love to see an adaptation. I don't know how, but I can just see the potential to it becoming one of the greatest movies of all time if done perfectly
You miss the most important physical description of Judge Holden. He's a gigantic infant. Baby-faced and bald like a newborn. This is extremely important as it relates to the overall theme of manifest destiny. Holden knows much beyond what any man should know. Languages, philosophies, chemistries.... he's an extraordinary suckling thinks it knows everything and has every right to devour all of creation in its pursuit to assert it's own dominance. America, when it was young, as it does now, destroys everything it encounters that disagrees with its own certainty about its divine manifestation.
Don't laugh, but I always figured that Glenn "Kane" Jacobs would have made an excellent Holden, because a seven-foot tall baby was pretty much the perfect descriptor of what he looked like.
@@JLF-cn1rr all y'all be trippin- my boy Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the call 😆naw but in all honesty though, they should get Glenn Fleshler aka Errol Childress in True Detective S1 to play The Judge
John hillcoat is directing. He was collaborating with McCarthy on the script before his death. Hillcoat is definitely capable of pulling this off. Watch “the proposition” for reference
I'm so glad you addressed this issue at 3:00 about McCarthy's writing style. I thought my english was just not good enough, but now i know there are others who struggled in the beginning.
I personally think it should be a tv mini series or something. It’s not a long book sure but there’s so much detail and it’s incredibly violent there’s no way they’ll cram it all in to a 2hr movie. It needs to be an indie production because Hollywood doesn’t have the balls to properly adapt it.
I'd love too see Craig Zahler take a swing at Blood Meridian, he has a very deliberate style of filmmaking that i think would suit the book. He made Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in cellblock 99 and Dragged across concrete
I would definitely love to see an adaptation of it. Plenty of books get considered “unadaptable” until they get adapted with great success. For a while people thought Lord of the Rings was impossible to translate to movies or shows. Same with A Song of Ice and Fire, American Psycho, Dune, Fight Club, etc. Just a matter of finding the right people for the job.
I made a lil skit last year about how you need to tab out to google words every other sentence in reading Blood Meridian. I've read the book three times now and I still have to google words. McCarthy's just on a whole 'nother level
As an innocent child, I thought scalping was just cutting someone's hair off all at once with a big pair of scissors and tying it off like a ponytail. Took me awhile to understand what all the fuss was about when I started learning about the pioneer days in US History
The only book of Comac McCarthy that I have read is "the road", while I still don't know how I feel about that book I can see how his writing would be hard to make into a film, that sense of horror that you feel while reading that specific type of writing is hard to replicate in any form. I really liked your video, keep it up, love from NE India. ❤
You could argue that the road is his most popular work along with no country. Both becoming wonderful live action movies. Blood meridian could be argued as being his master piece while being his least read novel. Mostly because of its stubborn style. Blood meridian is the biggest example of McCarthys writing style. As a first reader of his work it's so hard to jump into. No writer before or since has had more people give up before finishing them I doubt.
I was shocked at how damn good a writer he was upon first reading. All the Pretty Horses was my first, which I'd describe as a hypnotic and surreal contextual buildup to a crescendo of shockingly unimaginable brutality. Which is his signature I suppose, being that every other book does this to only slightly varying degrees of intensity. While certainly not impossible, I could see adapting Blood Meridian as a seemingly insurmountable endeavor to the vast majority of screenwriters and directors. Namely maintaining the story's essense, prioritizing the heart of the thing, instead of merely relying on superficiality, such as through cinematic violence, starpower, etc. The thing that gets lost in translation from novels to film is what I believe makes Cormac McCarthy's work so impactful. That thing exists between the words of the author and reader's imagination, being an interplay of two intellects. Particularly in the case of Cormac McCarthy, that thing is how gracefully and elegantly a picture can painted in our minds through the profound nature of the elements provided. It's actually not even fair if you think about it from the perspective of a screenwriter. There are worlds lost in context and feelings that couldn't possibly make it to the cutting room floor, let alone into a script for a 2-3 hour screenplay. The most obvious being an almost entire omission of either a narrator's or character's thoughts, which give profoundly explicit insight into the story for readers; something that images alone can't inherntly convey, especially within such a timeframe. That's why, in my estimation, a superior film adaptation is the exception rather than the rule. You'd need a Stanley Kubrick level director to do it justice.
The writing style of the book is integral to it as a piece of art, so to try and turn it into a different medium would mean losing what makes it unique. A bit like the way Watchmen being a comic is a vital part of its existence and how we experience it, so when Zack Snyder made a film of it he lost something in the translation.
I just listened to the audiobook. Made it 100% easier lol and was a great listen! I literally listened to it over 3 shifts at work and it made the time FLY
Guess I'll watch this video because, fucking hell I couldn't finish Blood Meridian, and not from a lack of trying or discomfort. I got like 200 pages in before realizing I was getting like, nothing out of the experience.
Read up on some of the history that it portrays, then give it another try. Trust me, it's an incredibly fascinating novel about the morality (or lack thereof) in the West at that time
@@ElanMorin I think that can be easily addressed with the appropriate camera angles, much like what was done to Michael Clarke Duncan for John Coffey. David Morse was actually the tallest dude on set.
Once you lean into the style of writing that McCarthy is using, particularly for Blood Meridian, it then becomes a wild ride. All gas no breaks. In the Wild West, you have no time to think, do, or feel. You take it as it is and keep going
I heard "1880's" a few times. Pretty sure Blood Meridian was set along the Texas/Mexico border in the late 1840's, just after Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the annexation of Texas into the U.S. I know it ended in the 1870's, but I don't think the book went past that.
I think so. Would've loved a prime Gandolfini as the judge, only one that I can think of that fits the frame and has the skills to pull the monologues off.
Malickw movies are just abucnh of surreal bs. The tree of life was completely plotless and was just abucnh of nice looking shots. Malick should be a photographer. Not a filmmaker
Iv never read the book. I listened to it on audio book and the narration was unbelievable. His voice tone and cadence captured perfectly the tone of the work. Would recommend. I can still hear the judges lecture on war in his commanding voice
Honestly, some things are best left off the screen. As much as I would love an adaptation of Blood Meridian, whatever you read in the book is 100x more effective then what you would see on screen. It would have to be literal lightening in a bottle moment for it to have to work.
Sometimes when you're ''adapting'' something in the actual sense of the word, its unavoidable that you'd need to change some things to have the story make sense in a new medium. Thats a double edged sword because although it might work in its new medium, its changed so much that whats the dang point? The Last of Us might be the actual best number 1 adaptation, they cut out pretty much 70-80% of every storyline because you cant fit a 100+ hour video game story into 1 season of a tv show, but they did change all of the stories while they were at it, they made Sam a mute and him and Henry are fleeing revenge consumed people, they made Bill's town more of a neighborhood and fleshed out an unseen backstory and made it the focus of an entire episode, and they made the entire horrifying Winter storyline fit pretty well into 1 episode but kept most of the important story beats. By all means, they could just make a literal adaptation, where everything in the movie or tv show is recreated exactly as its described in the book or how its done in a video game, but whats the point there as well? Could just read the book/play the game. I think at the end of the day, someone has the answer to all these problems and has the perfect solution everyone will agree with and be satisfied, their answers might even be super simple and we're all just overthinking everything, The Road movie didnt have a baby being barbequed and people have problems with that for some reason so I personally have no dang clue.
he doesnt want you to think or feel, he wants his stories to be transmitted into your brain and soul at the speed of light in a way that other books do not do. his books arent books, theyre something else entirely that look similar to books but are more like a new kind of media. like, yes books technically have words, and sentences, but so does the internet, and you wouldnt call those the same. he doesnt care if you get it or not, he wasnt asking.
I haven't read any McCarthy (yet) but I like all the screen adaptations of his books. The Road was so bleak I didn't go back to finish it when I got interrupted lol. Everyone thinks highly of No Country; I think almost any book can be adapted with the right film crew. If he wasn't already in the middle of Dune, I'd say Denis Villeneuve might be a good choice for translating descriptions of grand scenes and landscapes to film. I've heard some grotesque things about Blood Meridian, though, so we'd better team him up with Paul Verhoeven lol.
@@TheNotoriousMrDee Reading McCarthy is a trip. I'm frankly surprised whenever someone manages to make a good adaptation of his work. It's so easy to get lost in the details or to misinterpreted his themes.
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk is a traditional western that is basically just John Ford’s “The Searchers” mixed with “The Hills Have Eyes” unlike Blood Meridian, which is postmodern and entirely distanced from the conventional western narrative
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x I am mostly just stating in terms of tone. I am not speaking to thematic content. It's the feeling of an unforgiving landscape with a "horror" type of direction, is what I am saying a Blood Meridian would require. You are reading into my comment a little too much, I am talking cinematic style and tone.
I also found it difficult to read McCarthy’s prose in Blood Meridian at first. However I tried reading along with the first chapter of the audiobook (available for free on UA-cam), and I totally understood once I listened along with the audiobook. I highly recommend doing that if anyone is struggling. I had never read anything like McCarthy in Blood Meridian so I was definitely struggling at first.
Not just The Road for John Hillcoat. He also directed The Proposition which is a beastly dark and violent western, one of my alltime faves. He'd be perfect
I’ve not read Blood Meridian but have read the other books so I know the effort you have to put in to understand the books lol There was a series on TV called The English (Emily Blunt & Chaske Spencer) which really felt like a Cormac book. There was so much prose in the series and it was also set in the American West. The filming and scenery were outstanding, the script was interesting too as it often felt that I had walked in on someone mid-conversation. Anyways, The English was written and directed by Hugo Blick. I reckon he would be good on the team for Blood Meridian
I’m impressed that somebody (anybody!) is even attempting to film Blood Meridian but my feeling is that it might be better served as a six- or eight-part mini series. There is, after all, so much in the book and it needs time and space to develop on the screen. I would hate to see one of my favourite books filmed in a rush! Any thoughts? 😊
The audiobook of Blood Meridian is IMHO a better experience than reading it because the lack of punctuation isn't an issue and the narration is EXCELLENT. I listen to it at least once per year. You might be able to find it on UA-cam.
I loved the No Country novel from beginning to end. I enjoyed BM and thought it was good, but since reading it, I've thought about it more and more. It's aged for me like a fine wine.
Blood Meridian - i think the best approach for each vivid screenplay adaptation of the scenery can be achieved with a filter that mimics the red dawn (red sunset ) effect so natural film of scenery and then altered with a red dawn filter , actors for Judge role - Michael Shannon ! No Country for an Old man is a masterpiece !
I would never want a modern movie adaptation of this book. This book is so grotesque and symbolic and supernatural and unnerving and appalling and surreal and offensive that only the natural limiter of my mind was able to protect me from the true terror of the book. When reading this book you are forced to visualise horrible things that would never materialize in a healthy mind without exposure to said things. A modern adaptation would likely sanitize it beyond recognition and leave us unsatisfied.
I love the book Blood Meridian, maybe I will try to write a screenplay myself, and when that is done I will write a screenplay for Gravity's Rainbow. I like a challenge and have nothing to lose.
I reckon Robert Eggers could make Blood Meridian. His movies all share the same violent, surreal, fever-dream quality the book has. It would have to be like an 'arthouse/western/horror', which I reckon Eggers could pull off.
i’ve been wanting to get a book to keep me entertained for a bit and every since i warned no country for old men, i’ve always wanted to read a cormac mccarthy book… think i found my next read
Finally read it last year. I think there are a lot of good reasons not to film it, but the Judge is the sole reason I think it can't be filmed. He needs to be an impossibly big pile of lard and muscle whose appearance simultaneously evokes comedy and terror. I think he's a primary example of something that can only exist in our individual imaginations.
When I first read Blood Meridian it felt like Peckinpah written by Hemingway - McCarthy's writing is probably more mannered than Hemingway but that is still how I describe the feel of the book to anyone who has not read it. Given that Peckinpah is no longer with us then Ridley Scott would have been a good choice when he was at the height of his powers but those days are gone. If you want someone to adapt a book well and get the visuals and tone 'right', according to the original I think Denis Villeneuve would be the go to director.
I think so much of the point of Blood Meridian is hard subtext that is hard to depict on film. If you just show the events of the film, it's just a few hours of horrific violence and depravity where no one wins in the end. It's really hard to show nihilism in film. But if the director/writer change it enough that it becomes filmable, they run the risk of it not really being Blood Meridian.
The only thing that can be done by putting "Blood Meridian" to film is make a mess of it. It's the third rail of McCarthy novels. The following comparison is not in the same league, but it reminds me of it when I think about it. I saw the film adaptation of "American Psycho" before I read the book, and the film was disturbing enough. They toned it down quite a bit. I couldn't even finish the book because I found some of it so disturbing and vile. The film is a somewhat different story than the book tells, but the book is told from the point of view of a schizophrenic, so who cares? The could just make up different things he was hallucinating about and tell the same story. The book seemed less like a piece of literature and more like Ellis vomiting up a jaded worldview. "Blood Meridian" is like a journey through some otherworldly hell, and I'm never sure sometimes if the characters depicted are demons or the damned or neither.
I think the focus of the narrative is about the "the kids" isolation from society and his station in the world is lead by the judge( it begins and ends with him ). His development is stunted by the world he inhabits. His most endearing associate toadvine was a another bastard child who encountered each other and near beat each other to death lacking any other form of communication other then violence. As endorsed by the novels opening words 'see the child'. His only true endearing experience with a woman was a conversation with a mummified corpse left by doomed caravan. He enters the judges sphere of orbit leaves his sphere of orbit and returns to his sphere of orbit a victim of the monsters abstract and horrible appetites. The focus on violence is a by product of the times and frontier they inhabit. But the focus on the story is ' the kids development from conception to his bastard victims ending his journey in all its unforgettable nihilistic horror..
If John Carpenter were alive, he could pull off a film adaptation of Blood Meridian. Film it like a brutal horror film. Make people walk out to vomit or cry in the lobby. Bill Friedkin could do it as well.
I want a blood meridian movie that can do it justice, even if the violence will exceed the levels of for example the boys, i hope they will do it properly to allow and honor Cormac. Even if the violence and sadism will be unhinged, i hope the portrayal of Judge Holden will be as terrifying and scarry as in the books
I think the coen brothers should probably do something with it because no country for old men is genuinely my favorite movie of all time and they could def cook.
Y'all are going to prison for paying Kid Rock to take me out for the Illuminati Freemasons Epstein network and you're gonna give back what you stole from me too.
???
You tell them!
Wtf are you talking about😊
YEEAAHHHHH THATS RIGHttt They gon pay
Yeah buddy
Blood Meridian will always be scarier in your head than depicted on screen.
Not if your really really good
100%. Couldn’t even see anyone replacing the image I have of the judge in my head.
It isn't scary so much as it is sickening
And what major film studio would want to (or rather, be allowed to) depict half of the viscera and perversion in it?
Blood Meridian isn’t so much un filmable as it is hard to get people or studios to participate with a budget due to its EXTREMELY graphic nature
@@MISTERORIONFuck a budget. They should make a real RAW movie. It doesn’t need to be cinematically legendary. Just tell a great story that is true to the book and cast the characters properly. It’s all you need.
If you take a shot for every time McCarthy writes “and” where a comma should be, you would be dead of alcohol poisoning by the second or third page.
It works way better than a bunch of commasb
His run-on sentence form of writing gives me so much anxiety.
@@AstralBelt How so?
@@digitalhub492 using “and” instead of commas makes the prose seem more free and straightforward compared to being heavily refined and written in a way that is “easy” or simple to read. Cormac makes the reader earn their understanding, rather than rest it on their face slowly overtime.
“Why would I mark up my pages with silly lines and dashes?” - Cormac McCarthy, a fucking lad
No country for old men is 100% the most popular popular Cormac McCarthy adaptation not only is it written by a legendary author. It was also directed by the Cohen brothers two of the most legendary contemporary directors of the current time
That book was originally written as a screenplay so…
Movie sucked.
@NostalgiNorden Your bad taste does not change the quality of a film, it only reveals your inner self.
@@NostalgiNorden sounds like rage bait
Love that flick
I would honestly prefer a Blood Meridian HBO/FX style mini-series with some of the creative team from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul onboard. I think that way, McCarthy's vivid descriptions of the Texan/Mexican landscapes would have a better chance of being done justice. Plus, these days, you can get away with onscreen ultra-violence a lot more easily on prestige television than you can on film
It definitely deserves more time than a feature length movie can provide.
@@jvladcliff4083 Exactly. 23 episode mini-series (each episode is about 50min, covering a full chapter)
Yeah agreed. HBO do great work and any good/ great book deserves a well made series. Unless it's a short story then the book just gets butchered trying to fit it into a movie length time frame. Even if they make it into a 3 hour movie.
Imagine that we’re getting a crossed adaptation coming soon the world is truly ending lmao
The issue isn't just ultraviolence but the depictions of child death, viscera, and abuse
As sir Alfred Hitchcock once said: "Great literature doesn't make great pictures."
His most famous film, Psycho, is literally based off a book by Robert Bloch. Rear Window is based off “It Had To Be Murder” by Cornell Woolrich. Strangers on a Train is based off the book by Patricia Highsmith. The Birds is based off the novel by Daphne du Maurier.
Vertigo? Based off a book. The 39 Steps? Based on a book. Rebecca? Based on a book.
Is Hitchcock really the best example for the point you’re trying to make?
@@wesstewart2677 But that's all either pulp or, at best, "good literature" that you mention. By "great literature", of course, he meant the very best of the best - Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Faulkner, Hugo, you name it (that particular quote was attributed to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, I think). "Blood Meridian" is great literature too, no doubt.
I always go back to the Kubrick quote... 'if it can be thought, it can be filmed'
Blood Meridian does not take place in 1883. It takes place in roughly 1848 or 49, just after the conclusion of the Mexican War.
I believe that near the end of the book it takes place 28 years after the initial date of 1849. still not 1883 but closer to 1883.
I think in an age of instant self gratification this and an accurate Lovecraftian movie would be a humbling experience for most audiences. Blood Meridian in general makes its mission to show you that the cowboy escapist fantasy does not exist. That being said, I don't know how confident producers would be willing to fund it. But I can dream.
Ideally HBO could scoop up the rights and produce a mini-series of it. The network has a lot of ultraviolent shows under their belt; (Deadwood, the Sopranos, the Wire, Game of Thrones, Oz, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, etc). They would be a great fit for an adaptation
Pasion project or it's a no i'd say.
To reduce Blood Meridian to a mere antiwestern is to misunderstand it utterly. There's so much in the book that to reduce to a mere revision of the frontier myth is ludicrous, especially because by the time the book came out, revisionist westerns had already had a solid place in the culture. Peckinpah directed The Wild Bunch in the late 60s' and Pat Garret in the early 70s'!
I've yet to see anyone come close to nailing the off putting nature of lovecrafts literature, aside from John carpenter. Everyone seems to think "tentacles equal scary." Where as for me, what I find appealing about Lovecraft is how he handles the themes of madness. Someone once said, lovecrafts horror is like putting an ant in a humans body for a day, and then putting it back in its ant body retaining all of its human memories. If very few directors or writers can succeed at bringing that to life on the silver screen, I have no faith they would succeed in adapting blood meridian. It's not just violence for violence sake, it's definitely nihilistic, but it's nuanced. I could only think of a few directors that might be able to pull that off, and I don't know any contemporary writers with the balls to do anything that provocative in this day and age.
To make an accurate lovecraftian movie, you would need the ability to force the audience into a state of sleep paralysis at will.
Adult animation always seemed like it could work for telling this story. It could capture the inhumanity of Judge Holden, it could express the horror and beauty of the West. It would also be more palatable than showing live action guts and gore. And actors would not have to show their faces to the constant atrocities depicted.
No, a cartoon would tank
@@smittyjjensin558 animation aimed at adult audiences doesn’t sell, and most auteurs consider it a lowly medium, wont work in either case
I am a huge animation fan but in this instance I'd want live action solely for the cinematic opportunities the setting of the book holds for a talented film maker. Although Holden represents a platonic ideal of Evil, I feel like the true antagonist for much of the book is the landscape.
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x"animation aimed at adult audiences doesn't sell" simply untrue
@@dancom6030 Name an actual adult themed animated movie or tv series that broke records in popularity/numbers that isn’t on Adult Swim, let alone a Japanese anime
I imagine eventually someone will have the vision to make it. For a long time LOTR was considered unmakeable but Peter Jackson came along, and it will need to be someone who really sees the story and has the talent to tell it visually.
Exactly. American Psycho, Fight Club, Lolita (twice), all “unfilmable”.
Cinema has so many tricks nothing is truly unfilmable.
The difference between lord of the rings and blood meridian is that lotr's adaptability problems come from its sheer scale. Once tech improved they adapted it, with some difficulty but they did. Not only does blood meridian have am immense scale but its the very way the story is told. Like he said in the video it's a very vague and surreal tale with prose that's difficult to even interpret
Next The Silmarillion.
@@sauron2000000 Okay Sauron two million
@@geoffhoutman1557Ulysses, Salo, The Naked Lunch and A Clockwork Orange too
I read the leaked Monahan script, and it was SO AWFUL that I genuinely thought for a while that it was a joke until I talked to the guy who leaked it in the first place and he confirmed it for me.
There are some truly baffling changes that make you wonder if Monahan fucking despised Blood Meridian.
It changes stuff like making Holden explicitly the Devil to an eye-rolling degree, the first third of the book is truncated to the point of nonsense, it has some excruciating original dialogue, and most horrible of all, it completely changes the ending to a happy one where the Kid stabs Holden to death in the bathroom and rides off into the sunset with the child he adopts, I am not joking.
@@oneinathousand2156 Tf it’s like Monaghan didn’t even read the book 😭
The ending is the scariest part for me. Knowing what the Judge did to kids throughout the entire book and wanted to do the same to the boy and taunting him with the idea of it through the entire thing, the only thing preventing him is the gang who the Judge sells out to Indians and watches them all die gruesome deaths and scalps their heads for quick cash. Can’t even imagine how scary it is to see the Judge during the day, but at night and sleeping next to his towering body just knowing he wants to hurt you but hasn’t yet.
This is pretty typical for Hollywood, so I’m not surprised.
When I watched No Country for Old Men, not only did it become one of my most favourite movies ever made but the goldmine you can make when adapting a novel. I'm now a little over 100 pages into Blood Meridian and in a dark way, I would love to see an adaptation. I don't know how, but I can just see the potential to it becoming one of the greatest movies of all time if done perfectly
The Coen brothers would absolutely perfect it
"Blood Meridian" could work in a Avant-Garde, Experimental Arthouse, Alexandro Jodorowsky sense.
Yes, or a Bela Tarr, Satantango way.
Jodorowsky would personally be my pick to direct BM. I honestly can't think of many others up to the task.
There was s French movie maker from way back,real avant garde stuff, somebody like that might have the creative vision...and the courage ...to try!
Jodorowsky would probably do the film justice.
I’m not entirely convinced that Chamberlain didn’t just make the Judge up. His account is the only source of the man’s existence.
You miss the most important physical description of Judge Holden.
He's a gigantic infant.
Baby-faced and bald like a newborn. This is extremely important as it relates to the overall theme of manifest destiny. Holden knows much beyond what any man should know. Languages, philosophies, chemistries.... he's an extraordinary suckling thinks it knows everything and has every right to devour all of creation in its pursuit to assert it's own dominance.
America, when it was young, as it does now, destroys everything it encounters that disagrees with its own certainty about its divine manifestation.
Derek mears who played Jason in the Friday the 13th reboot would be a perfect casting choice.
@BrandonOfJapan Vincent d'onifrio would be good choice .Orson welles would have Been great
Are you trying to argue Judge Holden is a personified incarnation of America?
Don't laugh, but I always figured that Glenn "Kane" Jacobs would have made an excellent Holden, because a seven-foot tall baby was pretty much the perfect descriptor of what he looked like.
@@JLF-cn1rr all y'all be trippin- my boy Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is the call 😆naw but in all honesty though, they should get Glenn Fleshler aka Errol Childress in True Detective S1 to play The Judge
8:25 It's 1840s Mexico. It takes place right after the Mexican American War
John hillcoat is directing. He was collaborating with McCarthy on the script before his death. Hillcoat is definitely capable of pulling this off. Watch “the proposition” for reference
9:02 There is no way that The Road is more famous of a McCarthy adaptation than No Country
I opened the comments because of how crazy of a statement that was
I'm so glad you addressed this issue at 3:00 about McCarthy's writing style. I thought my english was just not good enough, but now i know there are others who struggled in the beginning.
I personally think it should be a tv mini series or something. It’s not a long book sure but there’s so much detail and it’s incredibly violent there’s no way they’ll cram it all in to a 2hr movie. It needs to be an indie production because Hollywood doesn’t have the balls to properly adapt it.
The Coen brothers would absolutely do it justice
@@buckyyyb I’m not a fan of them but I get why people are.
"Unfilmable!"
Animation:
imagine a tim burton directed blood meridian animation
@@ty15533 sounds absolutely awful
@@starchillius yeah I’d have to agree
studio eclypse or Gemba could probably do it
@@cymikgaming1266studio eclypse? you mean the scam berserk fan anime or is there another I dont know of?
Robert Eggers to direct I’d say!
Honestly a perfect idea.
Craig Zahler
Coen brothers
Zack Snyder
Not a bad suggestion at all.
I'd love too see Craig Zahler take a swing at Blood Meridian, he has a very deliberate style of filmmaking that i think would suit the book. He made Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in cellblock 99 and Dragged across concrete
So much yes
Zahler would be an exquisite choice for a director of Blood Meridian
I’d be down
3:14 That is a really huge egg in the sky.
The answer to these projects should be found in animation
It may be unfilmable, but not undrawable
I would definitely love to see an adaptation of it. Plenty of books get considered “unadaptable” until they get adapted with great success.
For a while people thought Lord of the Rings was impossible to translate to movies or shows. Same with A Song of Ice and Fire, American Psycho, Dune, Fight Club, etc.
Just a matter of finding the right people for the job.
I hope and pray I can see a Blood Meridian film that does it justice, good video!
Dude…i used to watch ur vids all the time wtf
Snooker? What are you doing here you need to edit yet another reddit video
I made a lil skit last year about how you need to tab out to google words every other sentence in reading Blood Meridian. I've read the book three times now and I still have to google words. McCarthy's just on a whole 'nother level
You seriously need to up your vocab, playa.
@@smelltheglove2038 "up your vocab, playa" 🤣🤣🤣
@@BEDCORN I can see you have a good sense of humor.
@@smelltheglove2038 bro talks like Saints Row.
As an innocent child, I thought scalping was just cutting someone's hair off all at once with a big pair of scissors and tying it off like a ponytail. Took me awhile to understand what all the fuss was about when I started learning about the pioneer days in US History
The only book of Comac McCarthy that I have read is "the road", while I still don't know how I feel about that book I can see how his writing would be hard to make into a film, that sense of horror that you feel while reading that specific type of writing is hard to replicate in any form.
I really liked your video, keep it up, love from NE India. ❤
That book made me cry, man, i loved it
Didn't they make that into a film?
yes
@@MichelangeloVAit’s quite good 👍🏻
@@MichelangeloVA There was also a graphic novel adaptation released this year!!!
You could argue that the road is his most popular work along with no country. Both becoming wonderful live action movies. Blood meridian could be argued as being his master piece while being his least read novel. Mostly because of its stubborn style. Blood meridian is the biggest example of McCarthys writing style. As a first reader of his work it's so hard to jump into. No writer before or since has had more people give up before finishing them I doubt.
I was shocked at how damn good a writer he was upon first reading. All the Pretty Horses was my first, which I'd describe as a hypnotic and surreal contextual buildup to a crescendo of shockingly unimaginable brutality. Which is his signature I suppose, being that every other book does this to only slightly varying degrees of intensity. While certainly not impossible, I could see adapting Blood Meridian as a seemingly insurmountable endeavor to the vast majority of screenwriters and directors. Namely maintaining the story's essense, prioritizing the heart of the thing, instead of merely relying on superficiality, such as through cinematic violence, starpower, etc.
The thing that gets lost in translation from novels to film is what I believe makes Cormac McCarthy's work so impactful. That thing exists between the words of the author and reader's imagination, being an interplay of two intellects. Particularly in the case of Cormac McCarthy, that thing is how gracefully and elegantly a picture can painted in our minds through the profound nature of the elements provided. It's actually not even fair if you think about it from the perspective of a screenwriter. There are worlds lost in context and feelings that couldn't possibly make it to the cutting room floor, let alone into a script for a 2-3 hour screenplay. The most obvious being an almost entire omission of either a narrator's or character's thoughts, which give profoundly explicit insight into the story for readers; something that images alone can't inherntly convey, especially within such a timeframe. That's why, in my estimation, a superior film adaptation is the exception rather than the rule.
You'd need a Stanley Kubrick level director to do it justice.
The writing style of the book is integral to it as a piece of art, so to try and turn it into a different medium would mean losing what makes it unique. A bit like the way Watchmen being a comic is a vital part of its existence and how we experience it, so when Zack Snyder made a film of it he lost something in the translation.
I just listened to the audiobook. Made it 100% easier lol and was a great listen! I literally listened to it over 3 shifts at work and it made the time FLY
3:16 Hey, theres a giant egg in the sky!
- My brain while reading Blood Meridian
About to be filmed by the Aussie director of my favourite film The Proposition 2005
superb film
Guess I'll watch this video because, fucking hell I couldn't finish Blood Meridian, and not from a lack of trying or discomfort. I got like 200 pages in before realizing I was getting like, nothing out of the experience.
Read up on some of the history that it portrays, then give it another try. Trust me, it's an incredibly fascinating novel about the morality (or lack thereof) in the West at that time
Same here. I found it very un engaging and weirdly dull.
@@darkchild130kinda like how western life was, not some fantasy that someone wants to live
There is an amazing audiobook version of it right here on UA-cam. Its super long tho, first part is 10 hours and the second part is 3 hours. I love it
Same. Although I did love the recap of the story form online videos.
If ever it finds a script, I think Vincent d'Onofrio should be Judge Holden.
Nah, Shaq should totally play him
@@thestrongestlivingcreaturepale
gotta be a very tall guy. Holden was like 6'10" (described as near to seven feet tall)
@@ElanMorin I think that can be easily addressed with the appropriate camera angles, much like what was done to Michael Clarke Duncan for John Coffey.
David Morse was actually the tallest dude on set.
@thestrongestlivingcreature yes, we'll just have to CGI him into an albino European and we're set.
Once you lean into the style of writing that McCarthy is using, particularly for Blood Meridian, it then becomes a wild ride. All gas no breaks. In the Wild West, you have no time to think, do, or feel. You take it as it is and keep going
They're actually making a movie right now, said to release in 2026.
Who's making it
@@oyega1010someone who Scott Rudin can’t push around
@@oyega1010 John Hillcoat, great choice if you ask me
Source: just Trust me bro....
@@RomanGuerr1126 try googling next time, it works
I heard "1880's" a few times. Pretty sure Blood Meridian was set along the Texas/Mexico border in the late 1840's, just after Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the annexation of Texas into the U.S. I know it ended in the 1870's, but I don't think the book went past that.
yes the bulk of the book was 1849 and 1850.
it could only be captured in the medium of animation.
1:25 That´s worth a like in my book
Terrence Mallick (sp?) is the only person on earth capable of approximating that book on the screen.
Love this idea
I think so. Would've loved a prime Gandolfini as the judge, only one that I can think of that fits the frame and has the skills to pull the monologues off.
Gandolfini was too fat, Judge was more lithe, plus Gandolfini is all wrong for the part.
Malickw movies are just abucnh of surreal bs. The tree of life was completely plotless and was just abucnh of nice looking shots. Malick should be a photographer. Not a filmmaker
@@someguy42093 Blood Meridian is p surreal and postmodern tho
Remember when people called Dune the Un-Filmable Book for literally half a century then it got adapted into movies and they were phenomenal?
Wow Cormac Mc Carthy can paint a picture with his words. I'm going to have to look into his books
The Samuel Chamberlin book was extremely interesting and provided a real sense of what life was like back then.
Iv never read the book. I listened to it on audio book and the narration was unbelievable. His voice tone and cadence captured perfectly the tone of the work. Would recommend. I can still hear the judges lecture on war in his commanding voice
Honestly, some things are best left off the screen. As much as I would love an adaptation of Blood Meridian, whatever you read in the book is 100x more effective then what you would see on screen. It would have to be literal lightening in a bottle moment for it to have to work.
Only three directors exist who could possibly film this... The Coen Brothers... and Oz Perkins.
The Road is not more famous than No Country
I deadass though the thumbnail was supposed to be a horror mickey mouse
Hey, who knows.. Maybe 75 or 150 years down the line we might see an adaptation.. Hope is hope, anything can happen in this world apparently.
Sometimes when you're ''adapting'' something in the actual sense of the word, its unavoidable that you'd need to change some things to have the story make sense in a new medium. Thats a double edged sword because although it might work in its new medium, its changed so much that whats the dang point? The Last of Us might be the actual best number 1 adaptation, they cut out pretty much 70-80% of every storyline because you cant fit a 100+ hour video game story into 1 season of a tv show, but they did change all of the stories while they were at it, they made Sam a mute and him and Henry are fleeing revenge consumed people, they made Bill's town more of a neighborhood and fleshed out an unseen backstory and made it the focus of an entire episode, and they made the entire horrifying Winter storyline fit pretty well into 1 episode but kept most of the important story beats. By all means, they could just make a literal adaptation, where everything in the movie or tv show is recreated exactly as its described in the book or how its done in a video game, but whats the point there as well? Could just read the book/play the game. I think at the end of the day, someone has the answer to all these problems and has the perfect solution everyone will agree with and be satisfied, their answers might even be super simple and we're all just overthinking everything, The Road movie didnt have a baby being barbequed and people have problems with that for some reason so I personally have no dang clue.
I would like to see a Robert Eggers full-out big-budget effort on a two or three part adaptation
he doesnt want you to think or feel, he wants his stories to be transmitted into your brain and soul at the speed of light in a way that other books do not do. his books arent books, theyre something else entirely that look similar to books but are more like a new kind of media. like, yes books technically have words, and sentences, but so does the internet, and you wouldnt call those the same. he doesnt care if you get it or not, he wasnt asking.
this legitimately reads like a copypasta comment lol
No they're definitely books. It's weird and awkward of you to say they aren't.
@@jaykelley103 🤡
I haven't read any McCarthy (yet) but I like all the screen adaptations of his books. The Road was so bleak I didn't go back to finish it when I got interrupted lol. Everyone thinks highly of No Country; I think almost any book can be adapted with the right film crew. If he wasn't already in the middle of Dune, I'd say Denis Villeneuve might be a good choice for translating descriptions of grand scenes and landscapes to film. I've heard some grotesque things about Blood Meridian, though, so we'd better team him up with Paul Verhoeven lol.
@@TheNotoriousMrDee Reading McCarthy is a trip. I'm frankly surprised whenever someone manages to make a good adaptation of his work. It's so easy to get lost in the details or to misinterpreted his themes.
The thumbnail is terrifying
Jim Jarmusch’s 1995 movie “Dead Man” is the closest adaptation of the novel we’ll ever get for now
Actually, Bone Tomahawk or El Topo is the closest we will get
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk, no
El Topo, yes
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x Really El Topo + Bone Tomahawk = Blood Meridian
@@ctrl_altesc Bone Tomahawk is a traditional western that is basically just John Ford’s “The Searchers” mixed with “The Hills Have Eyes” unlike Blood Meridian, which is postmodern and entirely distanced from the conventional western narrative
@@RohanDasgupta-f7x I am mostly just stating in terms of tone. I am not speaking to thematic content. It's the feeling of an unforgiving landscape with a "horror" type of direction, is what I am saying a Blood Meridian would require. You are reading into my comment a little too much, I am talking cinematic style and tone.
I also found it difficult to read McCarthy’s prose in Blood Meridian at first. However I tried reading along with the first chapter of the audiobook (available for free on UA-cam), and I totally understood once I listened along with the audiobook. I highly recommend doing that if anyone is struggling. I had never read anything like McCarthy in Blood Meridian so I was definitely struggling at first.
David Fincher or Darren Arronofski should direct.
Odd choice. Both are well past their primes
Give it to the coens
@RhettNichols yea that's a good choice but I didn't want to be too on the nose since they've already adapted No Country for Old Men
@@theycallmerisky619 Jim Jarmusch is my pick
Not just The Road for John Hillcoat. He also directed The Proposition which is a beastly dark and violent western, one of my alltime faves. He'd be perfect
people probably hate this idea, but I feel like the best way to adapt this to a movie would be a super stylized animated movie.
I’ve not read Blood Meridian but have read the other books so I know the effort you have to put in to understand the books lol
There was a series on TV called The English (Emily Blunt & Chaske Spencer) which really felt like a Cormac book. There was so much prose in the series and it was also set in the American West. The filming and scenery were outstanding, the script was interesting too as it often felt that I had walked in on someone mid-conversation. Anyways, The English was written and directed by Hugo Blick. I reckon he would be good on the team for Blood Meridian
Im an aspiring filmmaker and mark my words here. I will make a 3hr western horror epic adaptation of blood Meridian
Me too, lemme hop on your project
Y'all got this!
@@Plzseany I’m down to collab bro what’s ur email?
I'm a writer...and I'd love fate to bring us all somewhere to make it happen
I’m really glad to see someone else shares my sentiment on Deadpool and wolverine feeling like a comic book.
Oh what an original video concept
I’m impressed that somebody (anybody!) is even attempting to film Blood Meridian but my feeling is that it might be better served as a six- or eight-part mini series. There is, after all, so much in the book and it needs time and space to develop on the screen. I would hate to see one of my favourite books filmed in a rush! Any thoughts? 😊
Only person who could try this successfully is Dennis Villeneuve. He's adapted one unadaptable book. He's not made a bad film. Let him do it.
The audiobook of Blood Meridian is IMHO a better experience than reading it because the lack of punctuation isn't an issue and the narration is EXCELLENT. I listen to it at least once per year. You might be able to find it on UA-cam.
The Coen brothers are the only people who can pull it off.
The quote you read kinda reminds me of Faulkner's writing, love it
I loved the No Country novel from beginning to end. I enjoyed BM and thought it was good, but since reading it, I've thought about it more and more. It's aged for me like a fine wine.
Blood Meridian - i think the best approach for each vivid screenplay adaptation of the scenery can be achieved with a filter that mimics the red dawn (red sunset ) effect so natural film of scenery and then altered with a red dawn filter , actors for Judge role - Michael Shannon ! No Country for an Old man is a masterpiece !
I’m holding out for Blood Meridian: The Musical.
I just subbed this morning because of another video
And then your drop a banger about my favorite book by cormac
My favorite book of all time is McCarthy's "The Road" and let me tell you, it's been very inspirational for me
I would never want a modern movie adaptation of this book. This book is so grotesque and symbolic and supernatural and unnerving and appalling and surreal and offensive that only the natural limiter of my mind was able to protect me from the true terror of the book. When reading this book you are forced to visualise horrible things that would never materialize in a healthy mind without exposure to said things.
A modern adaptation would likely sanitize it beyond recognition and leave us unsatisfied.
If they can make Salo and American Psycho into movies they can make this book into a movie.
I felt in reading the road his vocabulary prose and syntax fit the bill so lovingly like why does it matter
I love the book Blood Meridian, maybe I will try to write a screenplay myself, and when that is done I will write a screenplay for Gravity's Rainbow. I like a challenge and have nothing to lose.
I reckon Robert Eggers could make Blood Meridian. His movies all share the same violent, surreal, fever-dream quality the book has. It would have to be like an 'arthouse/western/horror', which I reckon Eggers could pull off.
i’ve been wanting to get a book to keep me entertained for a bit and every since i warned no country for old men, i’ve always wanted to read a cormac mccarthy book… think i found my next read
John Hillcoat would be amazing to direct Blood Meridian. I loved The Proposition.
Finally read it last year. I think there are a lot of good reasons not to film it, but the Judge is the sole reason I think it can't be filmed. He needs to be an impossibly big pile of lard and muscle whose appearance simultaneously evokes comedy and terror. I think he's a primary example of something that can only exist in our individual imaginations.
When I first read Blood Meridian it felt like Peckinpah written by Hemingway - McCarthy's writing is probably more mannered than Hemingway but that is still how I describe the feel of the book to anyone who has not read it. Given that Peckinpah is no longer with us then Ridley Scott would have been a good choice when he was at the height of his powers but those days are gone. If you want someone to adapt a book well and get the visuals and tone 'right', according to the original I think Denis Villeneuve would be the go to director.
The only person who I think could've done it was Stanley Kubrick
Judge Holden looks like he's about to say "For I beheld Satan when he fell down from HEAVEN, L I K E L I G H T E N I N G!"
The guys who filmed "The Road", also a McCarthy book, is working on "Blood Meridian" right now
Damn, wish I mentioned that in the video
I think so much of the point of Blood Meridian is hard subtext that is hard to depict on film. If you just show the events of the film, it's just a few hours of horrific violence and depravity where no one wins in the end. It's really hard to show nihilism in film. But if the director/writer change it enough that it becomes filmable, they run the risk of it not really being Blood Meridian.
Amazing video! Your channel is a hidden gem.
I wanna see someone dare to make this into a movie with no censorship.
The only thing that can be done by putting "Blood Meridian" to film is make a mess of it. It's the third rail of McCarthy novels.
The following comparison is not in the same league, but it reminds me of it when I think about it. I saw the film adaptation of "American Psycho" before I read the book, and the film was disturbing enough. They toned it down quite a bit. I couldn't even finish the book because I found some of it so disturbing and vile. The film is a somewhat different story than the book tells, but the book is told from the point of view of a schizophrenic, so who cares? The could just make up different things he was hallucinating about and tell the same story. The book seemed less like a piece of literature and more like Ellis vomiting up a jaded worldview.
"Blood Meridian" is like a journey through some otherworldly hell, and I'm never sure sometimes if the characters depicted are demons or the damned or neither.
"what do you think about this video"
well how can I put this... I just ordered the Blood Meridian book AND No Country for Old Men.
I think the focus of the narrative is about the "the kids" isolation from society and his station in the world is lead by the judge( it begins and ends with him ). His development is stunted by the world he inhabits. His most endearing associate toadvine was a another bastard child who encountered each other and near beat each other to death lacking any other form of communication other then violence. As endorsed by the novels opening words 'see the child'. His only true endearing experience with a woman was a conversation with a mummified corpse left by doomed caravan. He enters the judges sphere of orbit leaves his sphere of orbit and returns to his sphere of orbit a victim of the monsters abstract and horrible appetites. The focus on violence is a by product of the times and frontier they inhabit. But the focus on the story is ' the kids development from conception to his bastard victims ending his journey in all its unforgettable nihilistic horror..
If John Carpenter were alive, he could pull off a film adaptation of Blood Meridian. Film it like a brutal horror film. Make people walk out to vomit or cry in the lobby. Bill Friedkin could do it as well.
John Carpenter is alive
I want a blood meridian movie that can do it justice, even if the violence will exceed the levels of for example the boys, i hope they will do it properly to allow and honor Cormac. Even if the violence and sadism will be unhinged, i hope the portrayal of Judge Holden will be as terrifying and scarry as in the books
Saying The Road is more known than No Country for Old Men is crazy…
I think the coen brothers should probably do something with it because no country for old men is genuinely my favorite movie of all time and they could def cook.