How did the actor lose his limbs in the Ballad of Buster Scruggs?
This concerns the episode called "Meal Ticket" from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Is there any hint as to how the Companion/Actor lost his legs and arms? There is a scene in brothel when Impressario says the Actor had intercourse but just once. Is it possible source of injury?
Best Answer
The actor, Harry Melling, has all his limbs. In order to play the role, there was some stage tricks, use of a motion base, and a lot of CGI. More about that can be read here.
In-story, how the character got this way is not addressed. Harry Melling believes it is a birth defect though:
You know, it’s important to to sort of have an idea of what happened to him. We’re talking post-Civil War, so having four limbs amputated is, from research, unheard of. Even having four limbs amputated now is a major major risk. So then you sort of steer towards the idea of this must be a something he had from birth and then you look into that line of research, and you find this particular syndrome that I sort of looked into. All of that work has to be done but not necessarily waved in front of the camera. How he moves is important. But all of that became secondary, because the story telling is this guy who went around performing these speeches and the audience is depleting.
Interview: Harry Melling talks The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Netflix and Liam Neeson with horses
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Who played the amputee in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs?
In \u201cMeal Ticket,\u201d an impresario (Liam Neeson) travels the West with a quadruple amputee dramatic artist (Harry Potter's Harry Melling), who makes up for his lack of limbs with his oratory skill. The artist delivers monologues to rapt audiences, and the impresario collects payment afterwards.Why did Buster Scruggs not play the hand?
1. In Frenchman's Gulch, the poker hand that Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson) refuses to play is Aces and Eights \u2014 which is a pretty decent poker hand, so some viewers well-versed in poker were confused by his outright refusal. The reason he reacts so negatively is, perhaps, superstition.Does Harry Melling have arms?
We had to change out Harry Melling's arms and legs pretty much throughout the show, and then come up with a really super complicated head replacement setup when he's being carried up the stairs at one point. The easiest part was when he was almost like a statue propped on a chair.What does the last story in Buster Scruggs mean?
Through the six shorts in Buster Scruggs, we can see the randomness of death and the unfairness of life, but in the final installment, \u201cThe Mortal Remains\u201d, the Coens pull the camera way back to see a trip to the afterlife as if it were a western.Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Meal Ticket ending
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Images: Pavel Danilyuk, Pavel Danilyuk, Mikhail Nilov, Pixabay