"No Country for Old Men": A Texan's Take

If you haven't seen Oscar contender "No Country for Old Men," a Coen brothers movie based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, you need to know the "country" in the title refers to West Texas.

We Texans call it the Trans-Pecos, because it's on the west side of the legendary Pecos River. (Remember Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos?)

This movie is about law enforcement - and vicious law-breaking - West of the Pecos.

So, as the Academy Awards draw nearer, a few things one old Texas man who has already seen the film twice thinks you might enjoy knowing about the movie:

1. In case you're wondering, Sanderson, Texas is a real town and it's the seat of Terrell County. The town, once a thriving division point for the Southern Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific), went into economic decline when the railroad closed its shops there.

2. In 1980, the year in which the events of the novel and movie play out, Terrell County indeed had only a sheriff and one deputy.

3. Though Sanderson and Del Rio were the venues for much of the action in the movie, most of the shooting was done in Eagle Pass and the Big Bend National Park.

4. True to the signage shown in the film, the way to get to Del Rio from Sanderson is U.S. 90, an important east-west highway that prior to the opening of Interstate 10 was one of the main routes to and from California to the East Coast. I-10 also played a role in the decline of Sanderson.

5. Llewellyn Moss' wife and mother-in-law, played by Kelly McDonald (born in Glasgow, Scotland) and Beth Grant (born in Alabama), were over-coached when it comes to sounding like a Texan. To this Texan, they sounded like poor white Southern trash and opposed to poor white West Texans.

6. Any hunter will tell you that the antelope shooting scene was very realistic, though the wide shot of the heard, probably computer-enhanced, had too many antelopes in it.

7. I wish they had shown more wide shots of that beautiful country. I also would have liked to have seen a wide shot of El Paso and even Odessa. Sadly, the El Paso and Odessa scenes were shot in New Mexico.

8. Though the Texas Rangers and federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are alluded to, in the real world, all that killing would have been way more than one sheriff and one deputy could possibly handle. The state Rangers and feds would have been everywhere looking for that wonderful villain so well played by best supporting actor nominee Javier Bardem.

9. For some dumb reason I can't name, I must confess I have not yet read the novel. The good news is, friends of mine who have read McCarthy's Faulkneresque fiction says the movie is quite faithful to the book. Much of the dialog, unusually, is even word-for-word.

10. I'll never be comfortable again around cylindrical oxygen tanks.