“When he read Sheriff Bell’s final monologue in No Country for Old Men, producer Scott Rudin was reminded of Nicolas Cage‘s film-closing fantasy of the future in Raising Arizona. “They’re so incredibly similar,” he says. “[Cormac McCarthy‘s book] is fundamentally a lament for a different time that has disappeared.”

It was not only Joel and Ethan Coen‘s signature voice, often tinged with a Texas twang, that made Rudin think of the duo, he says, “but the way their films’ believably explode into action. They’re the filmmaking equivalent of what McCarthy does in his books. The philosophical ideas in the book dealt with the fate and destiny of the characters, these Melville-like themes that the Coens had dealt with in their films.”

“‘You get this synergy of a great filmmaking team and a great novelist coming together in something bigger than both of them,’ says Rudin.” — from Anne Thompson‘s 12.6 Variety profile of the prolific producer.