“I ain’t no extra baby, I’m a leading man,” sang Tom Waits in his raspy stomper of a 1992 tune, Goin’ Out West. In a way, he’s right. As often as he’s been cast in films for 40 years as barflies, sybarites, or just the guy at the piano, there’s something about Waits that uniquely pulls focus. He may only have a few minutes of screen time at his disposal – heck, seconds, even – but the Waitsian aroma is so strong that every film he’s in becomes, however briefly, just about him.

In the Coen Brothers’ new-to-Netflix western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Waits commands a whole half-hour practically to himself, playing a crooning prospector in the fourth of the film’s sequential segments, “All Gold Canyon”. Only one other actor intrudes for a few minutes to bother him, as he wends his way through the pristine North California landscape, using a system of panning up and down a stream that lets him identify where the most prolific seams are.

Looking up wistfully towards his hoped source of fortune, he addresses it as “Mr Pocket”, wishing the treasure trove a good night’s rest as he strikes camp. This feels like archetypically Coens-y writing, beautifully tailored to Waits’ intimate style of soliloquy. So it’s a surprise to learn that the tale comes from an old literary source, Jack London’s 1906 short story of the same name.