How much did Faulkner have to do with the final version of The Big Sleep?
Actually, I would not try to use numbers or percentages. It becomes very difficult when it is a collaborative work. Now in other instances, he worked on a long film called The De Gaulle Story, about sharing the gold in the Second World War. That was pretty much his own with very little collaborative work, but in some of the others, one such as The Big Sleep, it was a collaborative process. In the film Barton Fink by the Coen Brothers, there is a Faulkner-inspired character who is drunk in his scenes. One thing that is always mentioned in context with Faulkner is alcohol. Was he an alcoholic? It becomes a matter of definitions. Yes, he did drink. He drank a good deal. Although he at one time quit for a considerable time. I guess partly to show that he could discipline himself that way. He had episodes which have some of the characteristics of what we call alcoholism. And there are a number of ways of defining alcoholism. He sort of put himself out on more than one instance when he drank
