Fargo

For the uninitiated...

Theatrical Release: March 1996 (or in Minnesota terms, "mid-winter")

Genre: Crime Thriller

Sub-Genre: Classic Coen Brothers Dark Comedy

Starring:

- Frances McDormand as Marge Gunderson (who won a Best Actress Oscar for playing the Brainerd chief of police)

- William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard (Oscar nominated for knocking a hundred bucks off of that Tru-Coat... They put that on at the factory, ya know?)

- Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare as Carl and his associate Gaear (respectively). The only connection to the city of Fargo in the whole film is when Jerry Lundegaard travels there to meet with Carl and Gaear

Overview: Well, from what I can get from the trailer there, that Jerry Lundegaard fella's got a problem with the defrost on his Oldsmobile. Ya know, my cousin's got the same problem with his Grand Am. Yup, turns out a mouse ran in to his air vent somehow, oh who knows, there's a million places they could crawl in, sure, well one crawls up in his defrost there and up and dies. Maybe Jerry could take it to down to Tanner Motors there by where the Freedom used to be and get them to take a look at it. Well, yeah, he could take it to ole Dondelingers up the road a bit but I know a guy at Tanners there and I just trust them anyways... So Jerry's giving the burnt umber Sierra to Steve Buscemi as partial payment for kidnapping his wife which I don't get but whatever, he's from The Cities and who knows why those people do anything down there, I s'pose... Anyways, the Brainerd cop without Asperger's, the pregnant one, sure, she gets all mixed up in this somehow thanks to that "execution type deal" up in Brainerd and brings some decent-lookin' nightcrawlers to the bald guy. I gotta say now, those aren't bad-lookin' nightcrawlers but if you're gonna go ice fishing, especially out there on Hole-In-The-Day Lake for the Jaycees thing, you're not gonna get a heckuva lot with those dinky crawlers. They're just gonna freeze up on ya and quit movin'. I'm tellin' ya, ya gotta go with some big fat leeches, trust me. Unless you're walleye fishing down on the Whitefish Chain there in Crosslake, then you just

get yourself some lipstick jigs and kinda bounce 'em off the bottom. Anyways, it looks like it gets pretty darn complicated after that. Marge Gunderson, the Brainerd chief of police, has some questions for Jerry, and he cooperates, just like he says. Also, Steve Buscemi isn't circumcised... I don't see how that's any of, oh jeez, ya know, that's totally inappro... Just... Jeez.

This may come as a surprise - nay, a shock - to my fans but here goes... I am from Brainerd. Allow ample time for gasps and dispensing of smelling salts. I consider myself forever a resident of Omaha but my past is inescapable. My family still lives in Brainerd and I still go visit them; I graduated high school there; I know what a pain in the ass "Citiots" are (again, for the uninitiated, those are idiots from The Twin Cities, or simply "The Cities"); I can recommend a good "winter car"; I've been ice fishing; I've worn a blaze orange winter hat; I've mindlessly agreed with people by uttering, "Oh yah?"; I know the trick, the only trick, to ending a conversation in Minnesota (you just have to interject, "Well, I s'pose..." at any point); To clarify, when it comes to the Great Northwoods of Brainerd, I don't fake the funk. I lived the funk. You betcha...

So you can understand why I take my perspective on this particular film a little more serious than your average moviegoer. Let me just get this out of the way first: I friggin' love this movie. I was living in Brainerd when the film came out and the locals were up in arms. Well, as up in arms as you could expect 13,000 lutefisk-eating Lutheran barn dancers to be. Minnesota Nice quickly turned into... Well, it was only Minnesota Irritated but it quickly went right back to nice. Not even the two Academy Awards (Best Actress, Frances McDormand; Best Screenplay Written Directly For The Screen) softened the movie's reception in town. Who the hell did these Coen brothers think they were, anyway, with their fancy Hollywood movies and whatnot? Never mind that the Coen's are from Minneapolis (Oh, there ya go, see, they're from The Cities, that figures...) and they were using the bleak, frozen Minnesota landscape in much the same way they've done with a lot of their other films: Raising Arizona; . Brainerdonians (sure, let's go with that title), according to themselves, were portrayed as naive and simple, people who exist in nearly another country, with it's own set of values, and it's own dialect. Like Canadians who've wandered too far south.

Well I'm here to set the record straight. Let's do a little Minnesota: Fact or Fiction, whaddya say?

Fact: Most people in Minnesota have that accent...

Everything you see in this movie is about as accurate as you can get. The accents, in particular, while occasionally a little overdone, are spot-on. This can be attributed to the Coen brothers outstanding screenplay. which included every little "Yah..." and "Real good now, you bet." And I know Sarah Palin's got a bit of the Minnesota twang but I guarantee you she plays up that Jeez-Golly-I'm-Just-A-Girl-From-Up-North routine. The accent is prevalent all across the northern US, from the Dakotas to the Michigan UP, as well as all of Canada. In Brainerd, it can even be so thick you hard time understanding someone, especially if they're several generations deep in Brainerd. "Boat" becomes "bo-uht", "road" becomes "ro-uhd", "outhouse" is easily trimmed down into "oathoase", and no one in Minnesota has a "roof" over their head. That's a "ruff."

The lack of monosyllabic words aside, the accent is quite endearing and you'd be hard-pressed to come back from Duluth or Bemidji or Longville (Turtle Racing Capital of the World!) without a few new colloquialisms.

Fiction: This movie is a true story...

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

So reads the opening slide of the film, setting the stage for a story so bizarre, you wouldn't believe it if it weren't true. And it has to be true, otherwise the movie studios legal department wouldn't allow this sort of thing to open the movie. Right? The Coen brothers, the genius pair behind Raising Arizona, No Country For Old Men, and There Will Be Blood (two out of three ain't bad, I s'pose), know how to tell a story. The opening slide, by their own admission, was just a ploy to pull you into the story right away. It's bullshit. These events never happened. No harm, no foul, right? But here's something tragic that did happen...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200112/s437052.htm

No follow-up stories on the amount her family was able to sue for...

Fact: "Minnesota nice" exists...

That nearly absurd level of politeness people from Minnesota maintain, even in the face of tragedy, horror, certain death, or multiple homicides. Fargo does a perfect job of capturing this enigma of the American Midwest. It's the juxtaposition of Minnesota Nice and the brutal face-to-face killings that happen left and right (final body count: 6) that give the movie its overall creepiness. Things like this shouldn't happen in a place like Brainerd but if it did, well heck, we'll just handle it like we would anything else since we're just a buncha Joe Six-Packs around here. See how weird that is?

Fiction: Minnesota is really that flat, desolate, and cold...

Complete lie! Brainerd, where most of this film supposedly takes place, is right on the Mississippi River so there are lots of foothills with trees and wildlife to hit with your SUV (ya Citiot). In fact, the Brainerd area is to Minneapolis what Long Island is to New York. Everyone rushes up there on Friday afternoons, screws around the lakes for 48 hours, getting drunk and killing geese, and clogging up the one road into/out of town. Here's a terrific aerial view... And here's one from the ground... (Photos courtesy of the Brainerd Lakes Chamber) And Minneapolis/St. Paul is one of the largest cities in the country, with a diverse population (everything from Norweigans to Swedes!), a theater district second only to NYC, a kickass local music scene, an amazing skyline, and - oh yeah - the motherfucking Mall of America. Does your town have a mall so big you could land a space shuttle in the amusement park? That's right! The Mall Of America has an amusement park INSIDE! I win!!

So, flat? No way.

Desolate? Hardly.

Cold? Holy shit, does it get cold there...

Here's an actual picture I took two winters ago on Groundhog Day at my sister's house....

You're reading those two frozen wolves correctly: -25 F.

If you can't wrap your mind around how cold that is, imagine it's 25 degrees outside. Pretty cold, right? Now imagine it got 50 degrees colder. And this is before wind chill. It's literally too cold to snow. The snot in your nose solidifies in seconds upon stepping outside. You have to plug your car into an outlet overnight or it positively won't start the next morning. Eskimos won't even live here... Stop laughing, this is all true.

Fargo wasn't filmed in Brainerd. Or Fargo. Or Minnesota. The iconic scenes of snow-driven plains and yes, even the statue of Paul Bunyan (created solely for the movie), were all filmed in that vast wasteland of a state west of Minnesota... It's um, shit... No one goes there, how the hell should I know - NORTH DAKOTA! - That's right... Fucking. North. Dakota. In the northeasternmost county of the state in a truck stop of a town called Bathgate.

Overall: 10 out of 10. A movie unlike any other. Nearly impossible to categorize (Comedy? Thriller? Action? Crime? Documentary?), it seems to have something for everyone. This movie sits comfortably in the middle of my Top Ten Movie list.

PS: If this is a movie you own and have seen a dozen times, I'd highly recommend watching it again after going to the Special Features and enabling the Trivia Track option. It plays the movie with pop-up info boxes. Like a Pop-Up Video!

Movie Trivia: During a scene in the cabin on Moose Lake, where Gaear is watching the Barely-Comes-In Show on the requisite Vietnam-era TV (standard with any Northwoods cabin purchase), who should happen to be the actor in the soap opera? Damn right... That's Bruce Campbell.

Best Scene: The woodchipper scene...

Did you see who that was on the TV in the very beginning?!

What my wife said:

Me: I know it was a little offbeat and kinda violent but I wanted you to see what Minnesota's really like before I took you home with me for Thanksgiving. So did you like the movie?

Wife: Oh, you betcha...

Who would enjoy this movie: People from 49 states.

Watch it if you like: A Simple Plan. No Country For Old Men. Other Coen brothers movies.

Next in the Q: Something Christmas-related, I guarantee it!

High-five, Paul!