The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

[lena]

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen's third collaboration with French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. The first was Paris, je t'aime (2006) and the second Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), which garnered Delbonnel his fourth Oscar nomination.

[scarlett]

The song playing over the intro of the film is an instrumental version of "The Street of Laredo", a.k.a. the "Cowboy's Lament". The song, derived from an old Irish ballad and first made famous by Marty Robbins in the 1950s, is about a cowboy who has been fatally shot and, in his last dying moments, asks a passing cowboy to see to his funeral procession.

[clayton]

The second song sung by Liam Neeson is "The Sash". This is also known as "The Sash My Father Wore", a ballad from the Irish province of Ulster commemorating the victory of King William III in the Williamite War in Ireland from 1690-91.

[melinda]

The opening song of the first segment, "Cool Water" has the line "Keep a-moving Dan, don't you listen to him Dan...". Buster then mentions his horse is called Dan. In fact, the Dan referred to in the song is a mule, Dan being a slang pet name for any mule much like Ned for a donkey. A nominal "Dan" appears often in early Cowboy Songs.

[toni]

The song that Buster sings after killing Joe at the poker table, "Surly Joe the Gambler", is a parody of a song by Marty Robbins, "Little Joe the Wrangler"

[kristen]

After the altercation with Curly (Surly) Joe, Scruggs comments that he is not by nature a devious man, but when unarmed your tactics might be Archimedean. He's referring to Archimedes, who was known in ancient Greece for, among other things, applying the principles of mathematics to the lever. Buster used the tabletop plank as a lever against Joe.

[wallace]

In the Buster segment, the last image quickly shows the last page of the book chapter on Buster, talking about his burial ceremony "We give him to you as he gave you so many. We give him to you, Lord, and humbly ask that you never send him back."

[wesley]

When the title was announced, its episodic nature led many people to erroneously believe that the Coen brothers had been developing a TV (mini) series, despite always maintaining that they aren't interested in doing a television show due to its open-ended format. Later speculation that the episodes were re-cut and reorganized into an anthology movie have been denied by the brothers, who indicated that their screenplay remained the same throughout production, and the movie was released the way they had always intended.

[jessica]

While almost unrecognizable due to his slim physique, the young orator is played by Harry Melling, who is best known as cousin Dudley Dursley in the "Harry Potter" films.

[ronnie]

The song "Surly Joe" was first heard in a movie in the James Stewart western, Destry Rides Again (1939), under the title "Little Joe, the Wrangler".

[jesse]

The poker hand Buster Scruggs refuses to play in the saloon is infamously known as "the dead man's hand" (a two-pair of black aces and eights) as legend has it that was the hand held by Wild Bill Hickock when he was shot in the back of the head and killed by the coward Jack McCall.

[toni]

In the segment "Mortal Remains", Thigpen begins to tell the story of The Midnight Caller. In True Grit (2010), Mattie asks if LaBoeuf and Cogburn would like to hear a story with the same name, but the story itself is not heard.

[phyllis]

In "Meal Ticket", one of the passages the artist (Harry Melling) recites is Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Liam Neeson, who plays the impresario, was going to play Lincoln in Lincoln (2012) before Daniel Day-Lewis came on board.

[nora]

"All Gold Canyon" is based on a story by Jack London. "The Gal Who Got Rattled" inspired by a story by Stewart Edward White.

[ronnie]

Consists of six segments: "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", "Near Algodones", "Meal Ticket", "All Gold Canyon", "The Gal Who Got Rattled" and "The Mortal Remains".

[elmer]

The guitar that Buster plays is a modern reissue of a 1930s Recording King single 0 RPS-7. Relaunched in 2007 and featuring new and classic designs, the Recording King brand started out as an exclusive brand of the mail-order giant Montgomery Ward and, as it could be ordered out of a catalog, it became very popular during the thirties and forties. The best-known player of Recording Kings was the highly influential "American primitive" musician, the late John Fahey.

[kristina]

At 132 minutes, this is the longest film directed by the Coen Brothers.