Editor’s note: Page to Oscar is a recurring Booked & Screened series exploring Oscar-nominated and winning adapted screenplays—and how those stories make the leap from page to film.

The ancient epic “The Odyssey” has proven to be a notoriously difficult story to adapt to the big screen. It basically comprises 24 separate stories that aren’t knitted together very well. It spans a decade in time and includes what feels like countless characters. 

Which is why it’s no surprise that it’s been a while since we’ve seen a big-budget take on the story, and it’ll take Oscar-winning Christopher Nolan and a 3-hour runtime to get it done. 

But if we go back 25 years, you’ll find a unique take on “The Odyssey” story in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Only, it was sort of an accident. 

The 2000 comedy starred George Clooney (Ulysses, aka Everett), John Turturro (Pete) and Tim Blake Nelson (Delmar) as three escaped convicts searching for buried treasure in the American south in the 1930s. Unbeknownst to Pete and Delmar, Everett made up the story about the treasure to try to get them to help him escape so he can make his way back home to his wife and children. 

Along the way, they encounter many trials corresponding to some of the difficulties the original Odysseus faced in the ancient tale. John Goodman plays the one-eyed Big Dan, a con man who is a version of Polyphemus, the cyclops in The Odyssey. Sheriff Cooley (Daniel von Bargen) is a version of Poseidon and the Blind Seer (Lee Weaver) is the character Tiresias. 

Holly Hunter is Penny Wharvey-McGill, or Penelope from the original epic. She has a suitor, Vernon T. Waldrip, like the many men trying to claim Penelope as their own. 

The Coen brothers were nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay award at the Oscars that year, but “O Brother, Where Art Thou” lost out to “Traffic,” which was an adaptation of a British television series. Fellow nominees included “Chocolat,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Wonder Boys.”

“O Brother, Where Art Thou” includes many of the same plot elements as “The Odyssey,” if not the entire plot of the epic. But it didn’t start out that way. 

The film was written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, and directed by the former. At a 15th anniversary screening of the movie in 2015, Joel Coen said the story didn’t start out inspired by “The Odyssey.”

“It started as a ‘three saps on the run’ kind of movie, and then at a certain point we looked at each other and said, ‘You know, they’re trying to get home—let’s just say this is ‘The Odyssey,’” Joel told the audience at a Q&A after the screening, according to IndieWire.  

“We were thinking of it more as ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ We wanted the tag on the movie to be: ‘There’s no place like home.’”

In an appearance on CBS’ “Early Show,” the Coen brothers said neither had actually read the original epic poem by the ancient Greek writer Homer, though they had read a graphic novel version. 

In fact, they told The Guardian in 2000 that they think the only person on set who had read the original tale was Nelson, who studied the Classics in college. They mused he might have even read it in the original ancient Greek. 

“Between the cast and us, Tim Nelson is the only one who’s actually read ‘The Odyssey,’” Ethan said. 

One wonders if the decision by the Coens not to read the full text was actually a blessing in disguise, allowing them to stay true to the themes of the story without getting bogged down in the particulars of the sprawling plot. 

Now, let’s see how Nolan handles things. 

About the writer

Danielle Haynes is the co-founder and co-editor of Booked & Screened, covering book-to-screen adaptations, film and TV development. This Classics minor has also read “The Odyssey,” but not in the original Greek. She barely passed those language classes.