One of the closest adaptations of a major novel anyone has made. The Coens have said the process was largely a matter of tearing pages out of McCarthy's book and taping them into a script, and a great deal of the dialogue is verbatim. It keeps the choices a studio would normally remove: Moss dies off screen and is found already dead, Chigurh survives, and the film ends on Bell describing a dream about his father rather than on any confrontation. All three are the novel's.