Moments into the epilogue of True Grit, when the Coens finally remind us we've been watching the reminscences of the grown Mattie Ross all along, I nearly leapt out of my seat with a start and blurted the following:
Holy fuck! BUFFALO BILL!
But not just the generic Buffalo Bill of Wild West show myth. Specifically the Buffalo Bill assayed by Paul Newman in Robert Altman's superbly cynical Bicentennial western Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's Lesson. When Mattie approaches the circus workers in search of Rooster Cogburn, the Coen brothers have them framed, clothed, hued, you name it just like the fellows pictured above.
I haven't seen this, to me, overt reference mentioned in any reviews, but the Coens' admiration for Altman is well-documented. Dating back to their first collaboration with Jeff Bridges, here's an excerpt from "Strikes and Gutters -- A Year with the Coen Brothers" by Alex Belth, Projections 8:
I began thinking about The Long Goodbye again and the way Altman captured the bleached-out daylight, then added warm yellows and oranges to the night scenes. His California was sensual and mysterious. And I was beginning to see how that worked.
One night before Thanksgiving I was over at Joel's house in Santa Monica, and I told him how I thought The Long Goodbye was such an evocative depiction of the area. He smiled and said, "Curry's brand catfood."
"Yeah," he continued, "That's our favorite Altman movie."
I told him how, when I first read Lebowski, I kept thinking about Gould.
"Well, this is kind of our Long Goodbye," he confided in me.
Then there's this: Rooster Cogburn explains that he lost his eye riding with William Quantrill, the man who led the infamous Lawrence, Kan., massacre of 1863. And here's Altman's William Cody:
William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: My daddy was killed trying to keep slavery out of Kansas.
Oswald Dart: How did he do that?
William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody: Well, my daddy hated slavery with such a passion that rather than let the coloreds get in as slaves, he just fought to keep 'em out of the state.
