The Coen brothers struggled with a key aspect of Tommy Lee Jones' No Country For Old Men role

"No Country for Old Men" makes sparing use of voiceover, but to really convey the fullness of Bell's book monologues, it would almost have required using a Terence Malick level of narration. Instead, the Coen brothers chose to have Bell's deputy Wendell, played by Garret Dillahunt, serve as a springboard for some of his thoughts.

"For the most part," Joel acknowledged, "[Bell's narration] isn't there in the film, except to the extent that we incorporated parts of it that we thought were important to kind of maintain the voice of this character in dramatic scenes. Especially the scenes the sheriff has with his deputy throughout the movie."

Another option, which the Coens never seriously considered, was the use of flashbacks to show some of the history of World War II and other things that Bell reveals in the narration of his book . In the end, they decided there was just too much hardware and needed to be streamlined.

"We sort of resigned ourselves," Ethan said, "to the fact that it was too big, that the experience of war, it was too big to be treated as some kind of voice monologue off or what? I don't know, it was a headache. Or some kind of - you know, what's obnoxious is that you can have flashbacks, which was totally nonsense."

The only downside to the Coens' approach is that the ending of "No Country for Old Men" may have thrown some viewers into a loop, since the film was more focused on Josh Brolin's character, Llewelyn Moss, in the beginning. It almost seemed to pull a bait and change with him and Bell as the protagonist, but somehow it goes towards the idea that we're all the main character in our own story until fate catches up with us. . p>