What you should know about 'the road' director john hillcoat - fall preview 2008 -- new york magazine - nymag

HOW HE GOT THE JOB Hillcoat’s 2006 neo-Western, _The Proposition_, a mythic story of outlaws told against the brutal Australian outback, captured the same bleak mood of_ The Road_, a novel

about a father (Viggo Mortensen in the film) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who survive a global apocalypse. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job if it had happened any later,” Hillcoat

says, noting that he was hired before the novel was published—and before _No Country for Old Men_ turned McCarthy into Hollywood’s “It” author. WHY _THE ROAD_ SUITS HIM “The environment is

of equal importance to the main characters in all of Cormac’s writing,” Hillcoat says, noting that he is also drawn to “extreme worlds.” (_The Proposition _was_ _inspired in part by

McCarthy’s _Blood Meridian._) “Settings like these test the truth of humanity, where you see how good and how bad people can really be.” WHAT IS IT WITH AUSSIES AND POSTAPOCALYPTIC SCI-FI?

Hillcoat bristles at _postapocalyptic_: “It lends itself to so many clichés.” Which is why he steered clear of _Mad Max_–isms and stuck to the novel’s minimalist urgency, including its

refusal to explain What Happened: “We wanted something more resonant than, you know, the Statue of Liberty cut in half.” THE ROAD Directed by John Hillcoat. Weinstein Company. November 14.