Rudin had his biggest impact after the films were shot, largely on the marketing campaigns. The Oscar ads for both pictures have gone to great lengths to tout the artistry of the films and the filmmakers. "The central message with 'No Country' was the marriage of Cormac and the Coens," Rudin says. "It's why I wanted to do the movie in the first place -- teaming great filmmakers with a great American writer who'd been woefully underserved in the movies."

Rudin also had a sizable role in helping position "There Will Be Blood," a film many feared was too grim and uncompromising to make a dent commercially.

Though director Paul Thomas Anderson balked at doing interviews, he agreed to do question-and-answer sessions after early screenings of the film. Vantage also did a series of midnight showings of the film on the same night in more than a dozen cities across the country.

He must be doing something right: "No Country" and "Blood," while not exactly blockbusters, are the biggest box-office hits ever for their respective directors.

"Scott brings an intellectual rigor to all things," says John Lesher, president of the Paramount Pictures Film Group. "He was always asking, 'Is that really the right marketing plan? Should we really show the film to this person or that person? Why would you have a screening on Friday when everyone's going out of town?' He challenges everyone to arrive at the best decisions."

Like theater producers of old, Rudin has a stock company of gifted collaborators, including the novelists Michael Chabon, Richard Price and McCarthy and the filmmakers Wes Anderson, Sam Mendes, Stephen Daldry, Roger Michell and the Coen brothers.

They often find themselves intertwined together, with Rudin as artistic matchmaker. Having had such success with the Coens' adaptation of McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men," Rudin has acquired Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," with the Coens attached to write and direct the film.

When Daldry found himself without a film to direct after Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" fell apart, Rudin got Daldry (who made "The Hours" with Rudin) another great book, "The Reader," to turn into a film.

Rudin knows his place is outside the big studio machinery. "If the Coens and Paul's movies had been run through the studio research process, they'd have been shredded," he says. "Their virtue is their spikiness."

That's Rudin's virtue too. His abrasiveness is balanced by an immaculate eye for good work and an innate confidence in his artistic taste. "For a lot of years, I was driven by fear and insecurity," he says matter of factly. "But now, with these films, for the first time I feel like I have the wind at my back."

The Big Picture runs every Tuesday in Calendar. E-mail questions or ideas to patrick.goldstein @latimes.com.