Things got off to a shaky start when the projector immediately failed. So when McCarthy's ageing silver Cadillac emerged from the shimmering New Mexico desert one chilly November morning to meet Hillcoat and me, at a deserted Albuquerque screening room, the stakes couldn't have been higher. Without him, we were at the mercy of increasingly nervous investors, and our Hollywood film-making future hung in the balance. We knew that only McCarthy's approval would allow us to release the film we'd really wanted to make.
The director John Hillcoat and I were under no illusions. Another year later, as the picture was being locked in a West Hollywood cutting room, he agreed to drive up from Santa Fe to watch it, with a view to giving it his almighty blessing. In February 2008, in sub-zero temperatures in Pennsylvania's rustbelt, he turned up on set, with his 11-year-old son John, to see how filming was going. McCarthy, who has a messianic following, is frequently described as "America's greatest living author", and is increasingly viewed by Hollywood as the golden goose. Unfortunately for me, by the time I had finished my screenplay a year later, it was Oprah Winfrey's favourite book, and McCarthy, who had seen the Coen brothers' film of his No Country for Old Men win four Oscars, was showing a keen interest, along with the rest of Hollywood. Fortunately for me, it hadn't been published when I began the task of adapting it for film. T he Road is one of the most frightening, daring, dark and desperate books to have emerged in recent years, rightly winning the Pulitzer prize for its author Cormac McCarthy and going on to sell millions.
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