No Country For Old Men contest!

*Raising Arizona: the examination of trailer-park life, as well as the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, here resurrected as the dead-serious Anton Chigurh. (In Raising, the Lone Biker shoots at a lizard on a rock as he drives past, in No Country Chigurh shoots at a bird on a bridge as he drives past — and misses. The scene is straight from the book.) Also, the scene where the fugitive has a strange conversation with a gas-station attendant.

(There is another, funnier reference to Raising — in No Country, Sheriff Bell squats down to examine the dent in the wall made by Chigurh shooting out the lock — in Raising, the Lone Biker squats in the exact same attitude to examine the word “FART” scrawled on the wall.)

*Miller’s Crossing: the hotel ambush, characters leaping out the window to turn the tables on their pursuers, killers shooting through walls to nail would-be attackers. (The Coens altered and re-arranged the action of the ambush at the Eagle Hotel, which is significantly more complicated and less suspenseful in the book.)

*Barton Fink: The long hotel corridor, the lone tenant in the hotel listening for the thing that may be coming to kill him, calling downstairs for help that will not arrive.

*Hudsucker Proxy: this is harder to place, although I notice that the Coens saw fit to have a wise black man give advice to Moss as he hitch-hikes — another scene not in the book. Also there is, I think, a link between the designs of the Hudsucker boardroom and the strangely-designed office of The Man Who Hires Wells.

*Fargo: the simple, moral sheriff with the keen, intuitive detective skills, paired with a deputy whose skills aren’t quite as well-honed as his boss’s, and the final showdown between the sheriff and the psychopathic killer (which, in No Country almost takes place but then, crucially, does not). Also, the document case full of money — magically, the million dollars that fits into the case in Fargo has grown into over $2 million in No Country, but still fits in the same case.  In No Country, Bell goes to a motel to corner a fugitive and checks to see if he’s climbed out the bathroom window, perhaps because that’s where the fugitive in Fargo, Jerry Lundergaard, was caught — the scene is not in the book.

*The Big Lebowski: characters whose life experience is filtered solely through their experiences in Vietnam (which is in the book).

*O Brother Where Art Thou: shooting animals and then commenting on it, another strange conversation between a fugitive and a store clerk. (Too bad Anton Chigurh doesn’t use pomade to style his hair.)

*The Man Who Wasn’t There: executions, specifically by electric chair (in the book, prisoners are executed in the gas chamber).  And the main characters reluctance to speak very often.

*Intolerable Cruelty: the over-zealous, unstoppable attack dog (which does not exist in the book).

*The Ladykillers: dropping things off a bridge, Stephen Root as the man with the money, an orange cat as a harbinger of death. (And, the bird Chigurh shoots at on the bridge is a raven — as though the Coens are trying to kill their own poorly-received movie.  In the book it’s a hawk.)

As a special bonus, there is a reference to The Shining (which, like No Country, is set in 1980), when Moss calls Carla Jean to tell her he’s coming to get her and make her safe. The shot is lifted directly from the scene where Scatman Crothers calls his snowmobile-renting pal from the airport in Denver. The pay-phone is the same model as the one used in The Shining, Moss is placed in the same place in the frame, and, well, the rescue operation turns out about as well for Moss as it did for Scatman.

I invite my readers to contribute their own observances here.