The main thing that remains of White’s story in the film is the ending, an attack from Native Americans depicted in both versions with the subtlety of a Hollywood Western, but the Coens have changed what that ending means.
There’d be no way to faithfully adapt that to the screen in 2018, so the Coens instead recentered their story on Kazan’s character and turned her from a cartoon into someone with an inner life. In other words, it’s about a hypercompetent man who has secret strengths that women don’t appreciate because he is socially awkward, preferring instead to date jerks, and it is structured so that Alfred gets a chance to show off his skills before the woman who has been rude to him receives her comeuppance. She’s accompanied by her obnoxious fiancé, a fellow city-slicker, and the couple both delight in teasing and tormenting the tongue-tied Alfred. As for the story’s version of Alice, she’s no longer a milquetoast getting pushed around by her brother but “Miss Caldwell”, a spoiled rich kid who has forced her father to send her west to see Deadwood. Arthur (Grainger Hines) in the film-who is ill-at-ease around women, but still manages to find his voice in a crisis. The short story, which evinces an attitude towards women that could politely be described as “proto-incel,” is instead about the other guide, Alfred-renamed Mr. Kazan’s character is naïve but not stupid, and over the course of the story, she becomes romantically involved with Billy Knapp (Bill Heck) one of the wagon train’s guides. For starters, the Coens changed the main character: their version is about Alice and Gilbert Longabaugh (Jefferson Mays and Zoe Kazan) a brother and sister travelling with a wagon train to the Willamette Valley where Gilbert hopes to marry Alice off to a businessman he’s trying to partner up with. While the Coens’ version of “All Gold Canyon” is a faithful adaptation, their take on “The Girl Who Got Rattled” is a complete teardown.
Please note that both spoilers and late 19 th century ideas about race and gender (i.e., extremely racist and misogynistic ones) follow. But two of the film’s chapters are adaptations of works that do have an author: “All Gold Canyon,” which is based on a 1904 short story by Jack London of the same title, and “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” an adaptation of Stewart Edward White’s 1901 short story, “The Girl Who Got Rattled.” Both stories were first published in The Century Magazine. Ostensibly published by “ Mike Zoss & Sons ” in 1873, the fictional book The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier has no credited author for any of its six stories. As a framing device, a hand turns the pages of a beautifully illustrated 19 th century short story collection between chapters. The newest Coen brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, is an anthology film that draws heavily from two sources: Hollywood westerns-including the long-abandoned singing cowboy genre-and the 19 th and early 20 th century adventure stories. There Are Bad Teams, and Then There Is This Year’s Worst in the NFL It Marks the End of a Great American Tradition. One of Our Best, Dumbest Action Franchises Is Dying. Hitchcock’s Adaptation of One of Roald Dahl’s Most Famous Stories Edited Out the Racism. How the Host of One of the Most Popular Podcasts Made America’s Favorite Hairstylist Cry Over Trans Rights
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