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.
After 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 himself to 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.
EVERETT
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-
OLD MAN
You seek a great fortune, you three
who are now in chains...
The men fall silent.
OLD MAN
And you will find a fortune - though
it will not be the fortune you seek...
The three convicts, faces upturned, listen raptly to the
blind prophet.
OLD MAN
...But first, first you must travel
a long and difficult road - a road
fraught with peril, uh-huh, and
pregnant with adventure. You shall
see things wonderful to tell. You
shall see a cow on the roof of a
cottonhouse, uh-huh, and oh, so many
startlements...
The cloudy eyes of the old man stare sightlessly down the
track as the seesaw handle rises and falls through frame.
OLD MAN
...I cannot say how long this road
shall be. But fear not the obstacles
in your path, for Fate has vouchsafed
your reward. And though the road
may wind, and yea, your hearts grow
weary, still shall ye foller the
way, even unto your salvation.
The old man pumps - reek-a reek-a reek-a - as all contemplate
his words.
Loud and sudden:
OLD MAN
IZZAT CLEAR?
The men start, then mumble polite acknowledgement.
The railroad tracks wind to the setting sun. Reek-a reek-a
reek-a - the flatcar rolls, in wide shot, toward the golden
horizon.
FADE OUT
DAY
A hot dusty road leading up to a lone farmhouse.
The three men walk, clanking and abreast.
DELMAR
How'd he know about the treasure?
EVERETT
Don't know, Delmar-though the blind
are reputed to possess sensitivities
compensatin' for their lack of sight,
even to the point of developing para-
normal psychic powers. Now clearly,
seein' the future would fall neatly
into that ka-taggery. It's not so
surprising, then, if an organism
deprived of earthly vision-
PETE
He said we wouldn't get it! He said
we wouldn't get the treasure we seek!
Everett grows testy:
EVERETT
Well what does he know - he's an
ignorant old man! Jesus, Pete, I'm
telling you I buried it myself, and
if your cousin still runs this-here
horse farm and has a forge and some
shoein' impediments to restore our
liberty of movement-
Bang! A rifle shot kicks up dust in front of the men.
CHILD'S VOICE
Hold it rah chair!
The front of the farm house shows only a harshly shaded front
porch and a dark screen door.
The screen door swings open and a child emerges on to the
porch and steps down into the sunlight, holding a gun almost
bigger than he is. The grimy-faced boy, about eight years
old, wears tattered overalls.
CHILD
You men from the bank?
PETE
You Wash's boy?
CHILD
Yassir! And Daddy tolt me I'm to
shoot whosoever from the bank!
He pokes his rifle at the three men, who raise their hands.
DELMAR
Well, we ain't from no bank, young
feller.
CHILD
Yassir! I'm also suppose to shoot
folks servin' papers!
DELMAR
Well we ain't got no papers.
CHILD
Yassir! I nicked the census man!
DELMAR
There's a good boy. Is your daddy
about?
THE BACK OF THE HOUSE
Wash Hogwallop, a sour-looking bald man, sits near a rusted
bathtub in a yard littered with ancient car parts and farm
implements overgrown with weeds. He is whittling artlessly
at a stick.
He glances up as the three convicts clank around the corner,
then returns to his whittling.
WASH
'Lo, Pete. Hooor yer friends?
EVERETT
Pleased to make your acquaintance,
Mister Hogwallop. M'name's Ulysses
Everett McGill.
DELMAR
'N I'm Delmar O'Donnell.
PETE
How ya been, Wash? Been what, twelve,
thirteen year'n?
Still looking sourly at his whittling:
WASH
You've grown chatty.
He tosses the stick aside and sighs.
WASH
I expect you'll want them chains
knocked off.
THE HOGWALLOP KITCHEN
The four men and little boy sit around the kitchen table
eating stew. A Sears Roebuck catalogue on the boy's chair
brings him to table height. The cons are now rid of their
chains and are dressed in ill-fitting farmer's wear.
WASH
They foreclosed on Cousin Vester. He hanged himself a year
come May.
PETE
And Uncle Ratliff?
WASH
The anthrax took most of his cows.
The rest don't milk, and he lost a
boy to mumps.
PETE
Where's Cora, Cousin Wash?
Wash glances at the little boy.
WASH
Couldn't say. Mrs. Hogwallop up and
R-U-N-N-O-F-T.
EVERETT
Mm. Must've been lookin' for answers.
WASH
Possibly. Good riddance, far as I'm
concerned...
The three men slurp their stew.
WASH
I do miss her cookin' though.
DELMAR
This stew's awful good.
WASH
Think so?
He sniffs dubiously at his spoon.
WASH
I slaughtered this horse last Tuesday;
'm afraid she's startin' to turn.
LIVING ROOM
Later. The four men sit about listening to a big box radio.
Wash is whittling once again; Everett dips his comb into a
pomade jar and carefully works on his hair; Pete is digging
around with a toothpick; Delmar dreamily waves one hand in
time to the music.
The music ends.
ANNOUNCER
Well, that's the last number for
tonight's 'Pass the Biscuits Pappy
O'Daniel Flour Hour.' This is Pappy
O'Daniel, hopin' you folks been
enjoyin' that good old-timey music,
and remember, when you're fixin' to
fry up some flapjacks or bake a mess
a biscuits, use cool clear water and
good pure Pappy O'Daniel flour for
that 'Pass the Biscuits, Pappy'