User:FrostFairBlade/sandbox/Fargo (1996 film)

 

Plot

In 1987, Jerry Lundegaard, the executive sales manager of a Minneapolis car dealership owned by his father-in-law Wade Gustafson, has embezzled and is desperate for money, so he plots to have his wife Jean kidnapped. Mechanic and convicted felon Shep Proudfoot arranges a meeting for Jerry in Fargo, North Dakota, with criminals Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud, who agree to do the job. Jerry gives them a new Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera and promises them half the ransom, which he claims is $80,000. Jerry pitches Wade a lucrative real estate deal and believes Wade has agreed to lend him $750,000 to finance it, so he attempts to call off the kidnapping. Wade and his accountant Stan Grossman inform Jerry that Wade will make the deal himself and pay Jerry only a modest finder's fee.

Carl and Gaear kidnap Jean and transport her to a remote cabin in Moose Lake. A state trooper stops them near Brainerd for not displaying temporary registration tags. When the trooper hears Jean whimpering in the back seat, Gaear shoots him, then kills two passers-by who witnessed the scene.

Brainerd police chief Marge Gunderson, who is seven months pregnant, begins investigating. She correctly deduces that the dead trooper was ticketing a car with dealer plates. She later learns that two men driving a dealership vehicle checked into a nearby motel with two prostitutes and placed a call to Shep. After questioning the prostitutes, Marge visits Wade's dealership, where Shep feigns ignorance and Jerry nervously insists no cars are missing. While in Minneapolis, Marge reconnects with Mike Yanagita, a high school classmate. Mike awkwardly tries to romance her before breaking down and telling her that his wife has died.

In light of the three murders, Carl demands Jerry hand over the entire $80,000. Jerry tells Wade the kidnappers have demanded $1 million and will deal only through him. Shep finds Carl with a call girl in a Minneapolis hotel room and attacks him for bringing Shep to the attention of the police. Carl angrily calls Jerry and demands that he bring the money immediately. Wade insists on delivering the ransom himself and meets Carl at a parking garage. Wade refuses to hand over the ransom without seeing his daughter, so Carl shoots him. Wade fires back, wounding Carl in the jaw. Carl kills Wade and a garage attendant, then drives away with the ransom.

On the way to Moose Lake, Carl discovers the briefcase contains $1 million. He takes $80,000 to split with Gaear then buries the rest in the snow alongside the highway. At the cabin, Carl finds that Gaear killed Jean because she would not be quiet. Carl says they should split up and leave immediately, and they argue over who will keep the Ciera. Carl uses his injury as justification, insults Gaear, and attempts to leave with the car. Gaear follows Carl outside and kills him with an axe.

Marge learns from a friend that Yanagita lied; he has no wife and is mentally ill. Reflecting on this, Marge returns to Wade's dealership. An agitated Jerry again insists no cars are missing; he angrily tells Marge he will double-check his inventory. Marge sees Jerry driving off the lot and calls the state police.

Marge drives to Moose Lake, tipped off by a local bartender who overheard a customer brag about killing someone. She sees the Ciera, then discovers Gaear feeding Carl's body into a woodchipper. Gaear attempts to flee, but Marge shoots him in the leg and arrests him. Shortly after, Jerry is arrested at a motel outside Bismarck, North Dakota.

Marge's husband, Norm, tells her the Postal Service has selected his painting of a mallard for a three-cent postage stamp and complains that his friend's painting won the competition for a twenty-nine cent stamp. Marge reminds him that smaller denomination stamps get used to make up the difference between the face value of old stamps and the new cost of first class postage. Norm is reassured, and the couple happily anticipate the birth of their child.

Cast

• Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson: The police chief of Brainerd, Minnesota
• William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard: An unscrupulous executive sales manager of a Minneapolis car dealership
• Steve Buscemi as Carl Showalter: An overly-talkative criminal who agrees to kidnap Jerry's wife
• Peter Stormare as Gaear Grimsrud: A violent, reticent criminal who is the other accomplice in Jerry's kidnapping plan
• Harve Presnell as Wade Gustafson: A wealthy car dealership owner
• Kristin Rudrüd as Jean Lundegaard: Jerry's wife

Fargo also features Steve Reevis as mechanic Shep Proudfoot, and Larry Brandenburg as Jerry's accountant, Stan Grossman. John Carroll Lynch appears as Marge's husband, Norm, while Tony Denman plays Jerry and Jean's son Scotty. Steve Park portrays Mike Yanagita, a former classmate of Marge's. Larissa Kokernot and Melissa Peterman make appearances as prostitutes.

Production

Conception

• Steve Buscemi, who had acted in an earlier Coen brothers film called Barton Fink (1991), remembered Joel Coen telling him about Fargo around that same time
• After releasing box office bomb The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), which grossed only $2.8 million in North America despite a budget of $25 million, the Coens wrote the script for The Big Lebowski (1998)
• They wanted Jeff Bridges in the lead role, but had to wait until the actor had finished his previous commitments
• The brothers had been partially inspired by the murder of Helle Crafts, whose husband tried to dispose of her body by feeding it into a woodchipper
• They also were influenced by a story they had read about John McNamara's attempt to defraud General Motors

Writing

• Joel Coen, on Jerry: "Jerry's a fascinating mix of the completely ingenuous and the utterly deceitful. Yet he's also guileless; even though he set these horrible events in motion, he's surprised when they go wrong."
• The Coens, who typically do not know where the story will go as they write, took a four-to-five month break from writing the script during the scene where Shep Proudfoot attacks Carl Showalter
• The Coens wrote in Mike Yanagita, a side character that had nothing to do with the kidnapping, because they wanted to put Marge into a different situation where she reacts differently
• Joel Coen, on the film's usage of regional accent: "We were trying to write the dialogue in the move with a specific rhythm of speech that you find out there. We were trying to be true to that. And that is as regionally specific—as if you go to the South."
• Joel admitted they named the movie "Fargo" because it sounded better than naming it after Brainerd, noting that people were unaware that Brainerd was a real place

Development and pre-production

• The production of Fargo had a smaller budget of $6.5 million
• To prepare the actors for speaking in a Midwestern accent, accent coach Elizabeth Himelstein collected tapes of native North Dakotans speaking, and took the cast on field trips

Casting

• Per the style of the Coen brothers, most of the starring roles were written with a particular actor in mind
• Frances McDormand, the wife of Joel Coen, was cast as Marge Gunderson; she had previously made her film debut in the Coen brothers' Blood Simple (1984)
• McDormand had partially modeled the character of Marge after her real-life sister Dorothy, a prison chaplain
• Steve Buscemi, who had previously worked with the Coens on three of their movies, was cast as Carl Showalter
  • Joel Coen explained that they had written the part for Buscemi because they felt the actor's Scandinavian heritage would be appropriate for the setting
• William H. Macy originally auditioned for the role of the accountant Stan Grossman, but had asked to additionally try out for Jerry Lundegaard
  • While the Coens pictured Jerry differently—they thought of the character as "a little overweight and uncomfortable in his body"—they were impressed by Macy's audition and believed that his interpretation was better than their original idea
• Macy loved the part, practiced the lines, and flew to the New York auditions to read for the directors again: "I found out that they were auditioning in New York still, so I got my jolly, jolly Lutheran ass on an airplane and walked in and said, 'I want to read again because I’m scared you’re going to screw this up and hire someone else.' I actually said that."
• The role of Jean Lundegaard went to Kristin Rudrüd, a Fargo native
• Steve Park was cast as Mike Yanagita
• Park recalled that he nearly passed on the audition, believing that he was a poor fit for the role, but realized that he understood the character's feelings of loneliness
• John Carroll Lynch played Marge's husband Norm; it was his first big acting role, as he had done three movies up until then, all based in Minnesota

Filming

• Production began in Minneapolis in January 1995
• The Coens had hoped for a lot of snowfall, but the weather was too warm, so production initially shifted north to the Grand Rapids area
• For her role as Marge, McDormand wore a prosthetic belly filled with birdseed to simulate being pregnant
• The scene with Mike Yanagita was filmed in a single day at a Holiday Inn in Minneapolis

Post-production

• The Coens edited the film under their pseudonym Roderick Jaynes

Music

• The music was composed by Carter Burwell, a frequent Coen brothers collaborator who has scored almost all of the brothers' films
• Joel and Ethan had wanted the audience to believe that the violence was real, while also enabling them to laugh at the buffoon-like characters committing the violence
  • Burwell proposed that the soundtrack should be overly serious to highlight the ridiculous elements in the film
• The film's main theme is based on a Norwegian folk song called "Den Bortkomne Sauen" (The Lost Sheep)

Release

Context

• Fargo was released during a time where independent films had been achieving bigger and bigger success during the 1980s and 1990s
• In an article for The Independent, journalist Ed Power writes that popular culture had been shifting into a more idiosyncratic direction as people started to embrace "lovable weirdos", and that independent directors like the Coen brothers were able to latch onto the cultural zeitgeist at the time
• In an essay examining Fargo, David Sterritt writes that "the Coens were plugging into a current filmmaking trend—the vogue for intertwining elements of crime and comedy in deliberately exaggerated ways—that had taken on considerable momentum thanks in part to their own previous work, most notably Blood Simple and Raising Arizona."
• 1996 was termed "year of the indies" due to the success of independent films at the box office that year
• Joel Coen: "The fact that Fargo is a reality-based drama really does make it quite different from Blood Simple [...] So whereas Blood Simple was kind of an overheated melodrama, Fargo is meant to be more dispassionate in approach and tone."

Reception

Awards and accolades

• Joel Coen won Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
• At the Society of Texas Film Critics Awards 1996, Fargo won two awards for Best Film and Best Actress (McDormand)
• Fargo won Best Film at the 1996 New York Film Critics Circle Awards, McDormand was nominated for Best Actress

Reception from local Minnesotans

• At the time of the film's release, the local reception to Fargo was mixed, with many finding the film's depiction of local culture and the regional accent a caricature
• Minnesotan journalist James Lileks remarked, "I don't think the accent is inherently funny, but that's because it's familiar. Whereas I laugh at Apu the convenience-store owner on The Simpsons, and I'm sure Bengalis wonder please to say what is being so funny about the manner of his speech, thank you! Come again!"
• Chris Hewitt, the film critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, loved the movie; he appreciated the "accurate details" in the Coen brothers' characterization of Marge, and that he believed the two "created these exaggerated people because they love them and their inconsistent behavior."
• Pioneer Press columnist Katherine Lanpher also defended Fargo, stating, "Life is still pleasant enough here [in Minnesota] that we should be able to withstand a few sly pokes in the ribs."
• Speaking about potential criticism, McDormand said: "People get defensive about regionalisms in their accent and in their diction because it's the core of who you are. You (should be) proud of that. You have to be loyal to it. Marge is more of a well-rounded, three-dimensional character because of her accent."

Legacy

Cultural impact

• Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998) has been compared by critics to Fargo; Raimi, a frequent collaborator with the Coens, recalls that the brothers had given him advice on how to shoot film in the snow
• Critics have also likened Mark Mylod's The Big White (2005) and Harold Ramis' The Ice Harvest (2005) to the film
• Director Joe Russo has said that Fargo was an influence on Captain America: Civil War (2016)
• Despite the film not being filmed in Fargo, North Dakota, visitors to the city can see the original woodchipper used in the film at the Fargo-Moorhead Visitor Center
• According to The Kansas City Star, the Visitors Center used to also have bundles of prop money used in the film, but it was removed after a United States Secret Service agent notified the staff that possession of any counterfeit money was a federal offense

Sequels and spin-offs

• A television pilot based on the film was directed by Kathy Bates and written by Robert Palm and Bruce Paltrow; it starred Edie Falco as Marge and Paltrow as Deputy Sheriff Lou

References

Cited literature

• Conard, Mark T. (2009). The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. The Philosophy of Popular Culture. The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0-8131-2526-8. Retrieved April 1, 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Abrams, Jerold J. ""A Homespun Murder Story": Film Noir and the Problem of Modernity in Fargo". In Conard (2009).
• Levine, Josh (2000). The Coen Brothers: The Story of Two American Filmmakers. Toronto, Ontario: ECW Press. ISBN 978-1-55022-424-5. Retrieved March 31, 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• King, Lynnea Chapman (2014). The Coen Brothers Encyclopedia. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-8108-8576-9. Retrieved April 1, 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Luhr, William G., ed. (2004). The Coen Brothers' Fargo. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80885-9. Retrieved April 1, 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Luhr, William G. Introduction. In Luhr (2004).
  • Sterritt, David. "Fargo in Context: The Middle of Nowhere?". In Luhr (2004).
  • Grace, Pamela. "Motherhood, Homicide, and Swedish Meatballs: The Quiet Triumph of the Maternal in Fargo". In Luhr (2004).
  • Sharrett, Christopher. "Fargo, or the Blank Frontier". In Luhr (2004).
  • Brottman, Mikita. ""Kinda Funny Lookin'": Steve Buscemi's Disorderly Body". In Luhr (2004).
  • Luhr, William G. "Fargo: "Far Removed from the Stereotypes of..."". In Luhr (2004).
  • Ciment, Michel; Niogret, Hubert. "Closer to the Life Than the Conventions of Cinema: Interview with the Coen Brothers (conducted in Cannes on May 16, 1996)". In Luhr (2004).
  • Probst, Chris. "Cold-Blooded Scheming: Roger Deakins and Fargo". In Luhr (2004).
  • Brophy, Philip. "Carter Burwell in Conversation: Music for the Films of Joel and Ethan Coen". In Luhr (2004).
  • Doherty, Thomas. "Review of Fargo". In Luhr (2004).
  • Greenberg, Harvey Roy. "Prairie Home Death Trip". In Luhr (2004).
• Rowell, Erica (2007). The Brothers Grim: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen. The Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-5850-3. Retrieved March 31, 2024.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)