The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
- During the filming of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Tim Blake Nelson improvised one of the most famous lines in the movie.
- Many of the practical effects used in the climax were achieved without any CGI.
- The original script for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was written over a decade before production finally began in 2018.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a 2018 American Western anthology film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, consisting of six distinct short stories set in the American frontier. The segments range from a singing gunslinger who is the fastest draw in the West (Tim Blake Nelson), to a bank robber whose execution is repeatedly interrupted (James Franco), to a limbless orator performing Shakespeare in small-town theaters (Liam Neeson and Harry Melling), to a grizzled prospector seeking gold (Tom Waits), to a young woman's covered wagon journey to Oregon (Zoe Kazan), to a stagecoach ride with mysterious passengers (Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson). The Coens' trademark blend of dark humor, philosophical fatalism, and gorgeous visual composition ran through each segment, unified by the theme that death is the West's only certainty and arrives without regard to character, virtue, or narrative satisfaction.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Best Screenplay award, and debuted on Netflix.
