Don't Make a Scene: Fargo (1996)

The Story: It's Oscar night (is it over yet?). And Frances McDormand has won...what...three of them?

Why don't they just call off the ceremonies and send this year's to her Amazon Prime?

 

Her first Oscar came about because of Fargo, the satire of police procedurals made by Joel and Ethan Coen back in 1996. For those who don't quite "get" Fargo—including that one star reviewer on Amazon who railed against the film-makers for making fun of a "true incident" (it wasn't and it isn't)—and need to rely on those too-frequent "The End of (say) The Wizard of Oz Explained..." articles that pop up like weeds on the Internet, it is the Coen's "anti-Dragnet" where not everybody is competent, but bad things happen, and the law wins in the end. We're used to these things stating pompously "The Story You Are About to See Is True, The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Innocent."

 

Fargo starts similarly to that, too*...which is why that Amazon reviewer is a bit confused. After all, movie-makers don't make things UP!

Anyway..."anti-Dragnet." I've always found amusing Jack Webb's interrogation scenes where the actor/actress just casually answers questions ("I didn't know he was an axe murderer, looked fairly normal to me...") while Sergeant Joe Friday presses, presses, presses for specifics in as few words as possible for "the facts." It looks so easy on "Dragnet." But most interviews go something like this one in Fargo, where you ask an open ended question and you get the least responsive answer..."I dunno. They were tall." "How tall?" You know...taller than me." You almost don't want to say "Thank you" at the end of the interview.

I also love that Fargo's editor Roderick Jaynes (actually, Joel and Ethan Coen...again) holds on faces for just a fraction of a second longer than necessary to get that "awkward" feeling of a conversation going South. When I saw this in the theater, I kept getting "nudged" to stop giggling so much. "What's so funny?" "Everything!"

 

The Set-Up: A kidnapping and a series of murders have plagued the Minneapolis area near Brainerd. To get a lead on the suspects, police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) interviews two hookers (Larissa Kokernot, Melissa Peterman) at their usual place of business.

 

Action. 

 

INT. STRIPPER CLUB 

HOOKER ONE Yeah, we both did. She went to college, too.

HOOKER TWO I went to Normandale... 

HOOKER TWO ...for about a year and a half.

Marge sits talking with two young women at one end of an elevated dance platform. The club, not yet open for business, is deserted.

HOOKER ONE Yeah, that's where we met. But I dropped out,

HOOKER ONE ...though...

HOOKER TWO Yeah. She dropped.

HOOKER ONE Yeah.

MARGE So, where you girls from? 

HOOKER ONE Chaska. 

HOOKER TWO LeSeure. But I went to high school in White Bear Lake. 

HOOKER TWO Go, Bears!

MARGE O-kay, 

MARGE I want you to tell me what these fellas looked like. 

HOOKER ONE Well, 

HOOKER ONE the little guy, he was kinda funny-looking. 

MARGE In what way? 

HOOKER ONE I dunno. Just funny-looking. 

MARGE Can you be any more specific? 

HOOKER ONE I couldn't really say. 

HOOKER ONE He wasn't circumcised. 

MARGE Was he funny-looking apart from that? 

HOOKER ONE Yah. 

MARGE So....

MARGE you were having sex with the little fella, then? 

HOOKER ONE Uh-huh. 

MARGE Is there anything else you can tell me about him? 

HOOKER ONE No. 

HOOKER ONE Like I say, he was funny-looking. 

HOOKER ONE More'n most people even. 

MARGE And what about the other fella? 

HOOKER TWO He was a little older. Looked like the Marlboro man. 

MARGE Oh, yah? 

HOOKER TWO Yah. Maybe I'm sayin' that cause he smoked Marlboros. 

MARGE Uh-huh. 

HOOKER TWO Ya know, like a subconscious-type o' thing. 

MARGE Yah, that can happen. 

HOOKER TWO Yah. 

HOOKER ONE Hey, they said they were goin' to the Twin Cities? 

MARGE Oh, yah? 

HOOKER TWO Yah. 

HOOKER ONE Yah. Is that useful to ya? 

MARGE Oh, you betch, yah.

HOOKER ONE Yah!

Fargo

 

Words by Joel and Ethan Coen

 

Pictures by Joel and Ethan Coen

 

Fargo is available on DVD and Blu-Ray from M-G-M Home Entertainment.

* "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."