O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU

"O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU"  

by

Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

BLACK

In black, we hear a chain-gang chant, many voices together, spaced around the unison strike of picks against rock. A title burns in:

            O muse!

            Sing in me, and through me tell the story

            Of that man skilled in all the ways of contending...

            A wanderer, harried for years on end...

On the sound of an impact we cut to:

A PICK

splitting a rock.

As the chant continues, wider angles show the chain-gang at work. They are black men in bleached and faded stripes, chained together, working under a brutal midday sun.

It is flat delta countryside; the straight-ruled road stretches to infinity. Mounted guards with shotguns lazily patrol the line.

The chain-gang chant is regular and, it seems, timeless.

We slowly fade out, returning to

BLACK

The last of the voices fades.

Aftar a long beat we hear the guitar introduction to Harry McClintock's 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain.'

A WHEAT FIELD

A road cuts across the middle background. Noonday sun beats down.

We hear the distant picks and shovels of men at work and see, rising above ground level, the occasional upraised pick and spade heaving dirt. Men are digging a ditch alongside the road.

After a long beat, three men pop up in the wheat field in the middle foreground. They wear faded stripes and grey duck-billed caps. They scurry abreast toward the camera, throwing an occasional glance back at the ditch-diggers. A clanking sound accompanies their run. Oddly, the wheat between them sweeps down as they run. After a brief sprint they drop back down into the wheat.

In the background a man enters frame left, strolling along the road, wearing a khaki uniform and sunglasses, a shotgun resting against one shoulder. He glances idly down into the ditch and strolls on out of frame right.

The three men rise back up from the wheat and, clanking, resume their sprint.

THREE PAIRS OF EYES

They are topped by three cap bills, and peer out from behind a blind of greenery. We hear distant whistling.

The men are looking at a weathered barn. A young boy, whistling, is heading down the road that leads away from the barn, jiggling the traces of the old plough horse that leads him. He turns a corner and is gone.

BARNYARD

The three clanking men (we can now see their leg irons) are awkwardly chasing a chicken around the yard. The squawking yardbird doesn't need to move much to elude the three bunched men.

COUNTRY LANE

It curves in a gentle S into the background. It is sun-dappled, pretty.

We hear clanking footsteps approaching at a trot.

The three men enter in the foreground and trot on down the lane. The leftmost has a flapping chicken tucked under one arm.

AFTERNOON CAMPFIRE

The three men sit in a side-by-side arc around a dying fire, one of them contentedly picking his teeth with a small chicken bone, another wiping grease off his chin with a sleeve, the third idly poking at the fire with a spit.

Each of them, still bound by chains, clinks as he moves.

One of them abruptly cocks his head, listening.

The others notice his attitude and also freeze, listening.

We hear the distant baying of hounds.

ROLLING HILLS

From high on a ridge we see the three chained men running toward us.

In addition to their clanks we hear a distant chugging sound.

TRACKING

Laterally with the clanking, running feet.

The chugging sound is very loud.

RUNNING

Next to a freight train. A boxcar door is open.

INSIDE THE BOXCAR

The lead convict hooks an elbow in and starts hauling himself up, his two clanking friends keeping pace outside.

Six hobos sit in the boxcar, lounging against sacks of O'Daniel's Flour. They impassively watch the convict clamber in as his two confederates run to keep up.

The convict hauls himselfto his feet. In spite of his stubble he has carefully tended hair and a pencil mustache. He is Everett.

As he dusts himself off:

                                                EVERETT

                        Say, uh, any a you boys smithies?

The hobos stare.

Everett gives an ingratiating smile as, behind him, the second convict starts to haul himself into the boxcar, the third convict still keeping pace outside.

                        Or, if not smithies per se, were you

                        otherwise trained in the metallurgic

                        arts before straitened circumstances

                        forced you into a life of aimless

                        wanderin'?

The convict running outside the boxcar door stumbles and disappears and the middle convict is yanked out immediately after. Everett, just finishing his speech, flips forward in turn, smashes his chin onto the floor and is sucked out the open doorway, his clawing fingernails leaving parallel grooves on the boxcar floorboards.

The hobos impassively watch.

OUTSIDE

The three men tumble, clanking, down the track embankment.

Squush - they come to a rest in swampland at the bottom.

They shake their heads clear, then rise to their feet in the muck and watch the train recede.

Its fading clatter leaves the baying of hounds.

                                                EVERETT

                        Jesus - can't I count on you people?

The second con is Delmar.

                                                DELMAR

                        Sorry, Everett.

Everett looks desperately about.

                                                EVERETT

                        All right - if we take off through

                        that bayou -

The third con, Pete, bald but also with beard stubble, angrily cuts in.

                                                PETE

                        Wait a minute! Who elected you leader

                        a this outfit?

                                                EVERETT

                        Well, Pete, I just figured it should be

                        the one with capacity for abstract

                        thought. But if that ain't the consensus

                        view, hell, let's put her to a vote!

                                                PETE

                        Suits me! I'm votin' for yours truly!

                                                EVERETT

                        Well I'm votin' for yours truly too!

Both men look interrogatively to Delmar.

He looks from Pete to Everett, and nods agreeably.

                                                DELMAR

                        Okay - I'm with you fellas.

Everett makes a sudden hushing gesture and all listen.

The baying of hounds is louder now, but through it we hear a distant scrape of metal against metal, like the workings of a rusty pump. The men turn in unison to look up the track.

A small, distant form is moving slowly up the track toward them.

As it draws closer it resolves into a human-propelled flatcar. An ancient black man rhythmically pumps its long seesaw handle.

The three convicts look out at the swampland which begins to show movement, the bowing grass trampled by men and dogs.

The flatcar draws even and slows.

                                                EVERETT

                        Mind if we join you, ol' timer?

                                                OLD MAN

                        Join me, my sons.

The three men clamber aboard and the old man resumes pumping.

The three men exchange glances; Delmar waves a clanking hand before the old man's milky eyes. No reaction.

                                                DELMAR

                        You work for the railroad, grandpa?

                                                OLD MAN

                        I work for no man.

                                                PETE

                        Got a name, do ya?

                                                OLD MAN

                        I have no name.

                                                EVERETT

                        Well, that right there may be why

                        you've had difficulty finding gainful

                        employment. Ya see, in the mart of

                        competitive commerce, the -