Miramax
During a recent appearance on Conan O’Brien’s podcast Conan Needs A Friend, Academy Award-winning actor Javier Bardem discussed his iconic role in the 2007 film No Country For Old Men, which is the role that won him said Oscar.
According to Bardem, however, one of the most iconic scenes from that movie, the coin toss scene, is actually so excellent due to the work of his scene partner, character actor Gene Jones.
“It’s one of those things that many beautiful accidents happened together at the same time: great writing, great directing, amazing actor, who was playing the man in the gas station. He plays fear so well,” Bardem told O’Brien.
“I don’t do anything. He [the other actor, Gene Jones] does the heavy lifting, he plays the unpredictable and fear of being killed, or not knowing what’s going to happen, so well that I just have to be cool and just do my job with the coin.”
Bardem then revealed that it only took them 30 minutes to film the now-iconic scene.
“We shot it in 30 minutes. It was the end of the day. For me, it was the scene where I have to speak the most. The rest I was just killing people. And if my English is bad now, back in 2006 when the movie happened, it was non-existent. For me, it was impossible to say a word in English and I have this five-page-long scene,” Bardem said.
“So I worked on it for months and the day came, and he [the director] is like ‘Okay, Scene 37!’ Scene 37?! But we only have 30 minutes! It’s not that it felt rushed or anything. But it happened. Boom. One take, two takes. Done. Because everyone was really focused, doing their job, and there was nothing else to do but focus on doing it exactly the way it was written, and off we go.”
In addition to Bardem, No Country For Old Men stars Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Stephen Root, and more.
Funnily enough, Gene Jones, the actor who worked with Bardem in the coin toss scene, will have a role in Martin Scorsese’s western epic Killers of the Flower Moon later this year.