# Fargo (1996) | Ep. 15 - Part 1

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 18 Mar 2022, 1 h 30 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO1807040268.mp3

Oh ya, you betcha. Luke, Westy, and Matt begin the story of the Coen brothers' snowbound crime classic and the cheerfully pregnant police chief at the heart of it. In Part 1 we cover the film's opening, directors Joel and Ethan Coen, the cast, and the second act — including the famously cheeky ""true story"" card, William H. Macy's flailing Jerry Lundegaard, and the bleak white Minnesota expanse. There's a wood chipper in the third act, and we're not there yet. Part 2, covering the crew, the finale, reception, and the film's legacy, is available now. Connect with ATRM: To support what we do, access our archive and listen to exclusive episodes, become an ATRM patron: Listen on Patreon Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Twitter: @ATRightMovies YouTube: Subscribe to our channel Instagram: @allthe_rightmovies Facebook: Join our movie group Bluesky: @alltherightmovies.com TikTok: @alltherightmovies Website: alltherightmovies.com

## Transcript

[0:04] All the right movies. So we got a trooper pull someone
[0:07] over, we got a shooting. These folks drive by, there's a
[0:12] high speed pursuit ends here. And then this execution type
[0:16] deal. Yeah, I'd be very surprised if a
[0:19] suspect was from Brainerd. Yeah.
[0:23] And I tell you what, from his footprint, he looks like a big
[0:26] fella. To squeeze money out of his
[0:31] wealthy father-in-law, Jerry Lundegaard hires 2 criminals to
[0:35] kidnap his wife so he can pick up the ransom.
[0:37] It all starts to go horribly wrong and small town cop Marge
[0:40] Gunderson arrives on the scene to unpick the mystery.
[0:43] Fargo represented a turning point in the careers of Joel and
[0:46] Ethan Corn. After a run of box office bombs,
[0:48] it was a hit with audiences while retaining its appeal to
[0:51] critics and the award circuit. My name is Luke and the two
[0:55] funny looking fellas with me are Westie.
[0:58] I'm not sure I agree with you 100% on your police work there,
[1:01] Lou. And Matt?
[1:02] He says oh so I get it. So you think I'm some kind of
[1:06] jerk for asking? Only he don't use the word jerk.
[1:09] Three people embranded a dead and all the right movies.
[1:12] The smooth smoothies are on the case.
[1:33] Hello and welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast on
[1:35] classic and hit films that is a fountain of conversation.
[1:38] It's a geyser or daddy. You don't.
[1:45] On today's episode, we're talking about the 6th Cohen
[1:48] Brothers film, and it's an important one in their career.
[1:50] The first Oscar winner, the one that really introduced them to
[1:53] mainstream audiences. It's Fargo.
[1:56] Oh, you betcha. Before we go into that, I'm
[1:58] going to tell you about a super proposition that we have for you
[2:01] over at Patreon. Oh yeah.
[2:03] If you like what we do on the show, our classic podcast, and
[2:06] would like us to continue this, then your support on Patreon
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[2:11] Yeah, our patrons help us continue to put out five star
[2:13] content all the time, including this show, our Patreon exclusive
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[2:22] If you support us, you get access to all of the podcasts
[2:24] that we've produced so far. There are almost 90 covering
[2:27] some of the biggest Hollywood movies ever, and you can be a
[2:30] part of the show by voting for which films we cover, the score
[2:33] that they gets, and you can ask us questions which will answer
[2:35] live on the show. So if you like the sound of
[2:38] that, sign up at patreon.com/all the Right Movies and we'd be
[2:42] very happy if you did. Definitely would, and it
[2:44] wouldn't cost you 750 grand for the certainly.
[2:47] Wouldn't a lot smaller than. That a lot smaller than that.
[2:51] So count yourself. That's a lot.
[2:55] It is a lot. It is a lot.
[2:57] I mean, it's a lot. It's a lot.
[3:01] The link for parenting is also in the description for this
[3:04] podcast as well, guys. So I mean, there's no excuses,
[3:07] no. Excuses.
[3:07] Just click away, subscribe, enjoy yourself.
[3:10] Or the excuse could be that I just don't want to pay you any
[3:13] money, yet I get this for free, that's why I wouldn't bother.
[3:16] That's a fact. Yeah, yeah.
[3:18] Free for a very short period. They don't want to sit down
[3:21] debate with us. No, I'm not going to debate you
[3:24] on this one. I'm working with you on this
[3:27] thing. I'm going to do a Patreon count
[3:31] now, geez. Yeah, work with us on this
[3:36] thing. Come on, guys.
[3:40] OK, so back to business. Matt, why do you want to talk
[3:43] about Fargo? Well, any excuse to talk about
[3:45] the corns is fine by me, but this one, this one, to me it was
[3:49] like the gateway drug to the corns, which I think probably
[3:51] was for a lot of people. I had seen reason I was on a few
[3:55] years earlier, but I didn't really know who they were then
[3:57] so didn't mean anything. Their name.
[3:59] When I saw this one I knew they were in name and there was going
[4:02] to be something about this film in the first few and I was so
[4:05] confused because nothing was playing out the way I was
[4:08] expecting it to. The plot was surprising.
[4:11] It had characters like of which I've never really seen before.
[4:14] It was this weird mixer of violence and comedy that I
[4:16] wasn't expecting. But that is the corns.
[4:19] And I think in its own way, it is the most accessible thing
[4:21] they've ever made because you watch it and you get drawn into
[4:24] it and you go, ah, right, that's what they're about.
[4:27] This is what they do. And I said that's why it was
[4:30] like a get me a drug for me into the corns.
[4:32] Because then everything you watch from them after this makes
[4:35] much more sense. So it's an important film, I
[4:38] think. And as well said, this is a
[4:39] whole bunch of great performances to talk about.
[4:42] We get to talk about Frances Mcdormand for the first time.
[4:44] That's exciting. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
[4:46] In the film itself, it's just so watchable, such a great film,
[4:49] and I'm never tired of watching it.
[4:51] Fantastic. Like you might.
[4:53] This is my entry to the Coen Brothers.
[4:56] It was the first film. I hadn't seen anything
[4:57] beforehand, right? I was at the time, I was an avid
[5:01] Empire magazine reader. I think I mentioned that before
[5:03] about some of the other films that we've covered and and it
[5:06] was right in that time Fargo got a clone five star review.
[5:09] So I was desperate to see it. Yeah, I think that's we all
[5:11] were. We're all like Empire, Total
[5:13] Film. You're getting bought.
[5:14] Totally, Yeah. When it came out on VHS, it was
[5:17] paired up with Blood Simple in this box set, the fourth of
[5:20] them. So I bought the box set.
[5:22] I was like 1516 at the time and that kind of seemed like a badge
[5:26] him on it to me. I kind of felt like I knew where
[5:29] it was at. The middle of your collection,
[5:32] Anyone will say no. This guy knows these films.
[5:36] Yeah. Yeah.
[5:37] Just leaves in the middle of the table.
[5:38] Oh, what's that doing there? Left that out again, still got.
[5:42] The rubber on it. I mean, I had like, I was like
[5:51] film. Madden had very little interest
[5:52] in the usual teen things, fashion, popular culture or
[5:56] trying to go to bars or anything like that.
[5:58] No, no, no, no. What's hot is a double pack VHS
[6:01] of Corn Brothers films. We're all guilty of that.
[6:07] That is cool. That's the new cool.
[6:10] That'll get me noticed. So yeah, Fargo.
[6:13] Fargo was the start of my love for Corn Brothers films and
[6:15] hasn't changed in 25 odd years. Still love the film, still love
[6:19] the corn. So I'm excited to talk about
[6:20] this. What about you, Westie?
[6:22] Yeah, I'm totally different. I came to this one super late.
[6:26] I'd seen Lebowski, I'd seen Hudsucker Proxy, I'd seen
[6:29] Miller's Crossing, that scene, Blood Simple.
[6:32] That's in Reason Arizona, before I came anywhere near this film.
[6:35] And then I I got it, watched it because obviously I love the
[6:38] corn brothers. I think it was after that old
[6:40] brother. Where are they?
[6:40] I saw this that late. Yeah, it was like early 2000s
[6:45] and I was like, oh, that makes sense.
[6:46] Now the films make complete sense because this is the first
[6:50] one where it's a pure Coen Brothers film.
[6:54] It's beautifully complicated. It's one of them films where
[6:57] it's just it takes you on a journey and it kind of holds
[7:00] your hand and you go, everything bad happens, but you don't feel
[7:03] bad because of it. You're kind of on that ride and
[7:05] you want to go on that ride. It's just beautifully written
[7:08] and it's so simple and it's timeless and it's so original
[7:12] and the acting and the characters are just so lovable
[7:16] but at the same time hateable. And it was one of them films.
[7:19] I'm like, as I was watching it every minute, the tick by, I
[7:22] thought to myself, I wish I'd have seen this earlier.
[7:25] That was one of the things where I just kind of went, I've
[7:28] totally missed the trick here. I've missed the boat and I know
[7:31] it, but I've got to try and claw my way back with the corns and
[7:34] I've watched it so many times since and I'm I'm excited to
[7:38] talk about. I think it's it's a really,
[7:39] really wonderful, really, really original, really excellent film.
[7:43] Yeah, I think we're all in agreement there, Yeah.
[7:46] Fargo was written by the Coen Brothers, directed by Jewel and
[7:49] produced by Ethan for Polygram Filmed Entertainment and Workman
[7:52] Title Films, distributed by Gramercy Pictures and released
[7:55] on the 8th of March 1996. Filmed at various locations in
[7:59] Minneapolis and North Dakota, it stars Frances Mcdormand, William
[8:02] H Macy, Steve Buscemi, Peter Stomar and Harve Presnell.
[8:06] Are you ready for a trip out of the snowy Midwest?
[8:08] Westie. Oh, you betcha.
[8:11] Blood has been shed, Matt. Oh yeah, yeah.
[8:13] Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
[8:15] Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[8:39] The film opens proclaiming we're about to see a true story.
[8:42] At the request of survivors, the names have been changed.
[8:45] The rest is told exactly as it occurred.
[8:48] Exactly. Exactly.
[8:52] In our first sequence we're starting with the cold opening
[8:55] scene as Jerry Lundegaard meets a couple of funny looking fellas
[8:58] at the King of Clubs bar and ending it with Jerry at home
[9:01] with his family. Westie, do you want to start us
[9:03] off? Yeah, that introduction to
[9:06] William H Macy when he walks into that bar and then you see
[9:08] Buscemi, you can tell it's a really well written dialogue
[9:13] sequence and less act as it would have been quite wooden in
[9:17] just the delivery because you know, the lines are very
[9:19] specific and you can feel the lines are very specific.
[9:22] But it's the way H Macy delivers them, especially when he starts
[9:24] talking about his situation and he's like, oh, it's very
[9:27] personal. Kind of it's a it's a well, you
[9:30] know, you and that changes the subject.
[9:32] He's kind of like thinking halfway through and then he does
[9:35] that all the way through the film.
[9:36] But it's great. But you actually get some
[9:38] humanity from Buscemi here when he wants to understand the
[9:40] situation, he wants to understand what's going on.
[9:43] And he's like, well, it's your wife and you want to fucking.
[9:44] And the end of the scene he's like, do you want to oh,
[9:46] fucking, let's just check out that.
[9:48] You know, this chat of the car. It's just it's just brilliantly
[9:51] done. And even from the first scene,
[9:54] from the first moment you understand these characters,
[9:56] they've already fucked up. It's already a mistake.
[9:59] He's already an hour late, he's peed three times already.
[10:02] It's but it's just the delivery here, the introduction to the
[10:06] characters. You don't trust anyone, but you
[10:09] definitely want to go forward with them.
[10:11] And I think that's just testament to the coins.
[10:13] I think it's really, really brilliant introduction.
[10:14] Yeah, it's such an enticing opening, isn't it?
[10:17] The whole setup of the whole scene.
[10:19] I really want to know more about what's happening here and it's
[10:22] like in this 234 minute scene and I just want to talk about
[10:25] these two out of towners here for a moment.
[10:28] They've been here an hour already.
[10:30] They've got 7 beers on the table.
[10:33] Christ knows what else they've done, drank shots or whatever.
[10:37] But firstly, Peter Stomach is Gay Grimsrud.
[10:41] He's absolutely amazed and he looks like he's asleep when we
[10:45] first see him. And he stays in that position
[10:48] for a good long while. The only two further moves that
[10:52] he does is lean into Jerry, into the table.
[10:55] And he looks really fucking intimidating.
[10:57] And he even smokes aggressively with that cigarette cupped in
[11:00] his hand, blowing smoke through his nose.
[11:03] And the only thing he says is, oh, your fucking wife.
[11:06] You know, when Carl's asking why Jerry does his father-in-law for
[11:10] the money? Yeah.
[11:11] And your fucking wife, Jerry. And, and Busemi is Carl,
[11:19] obviously. He's the mouthpiece of the
[11:20] outfit. And he makes out like he's the
[11:22] smart one. I'm not going to debate you on
[11:24] this, Jerry. But his opinion of himself as
[11:28] the brains of the operation are completely outweighed by his
[11:30] limited vocabulary. In the scene, he tries to come
[11:32] up with something smart to say. You're tasking us with this
[11:35] mission, but you won't. You won't Fuck it.
[11:39] Let's take a look at that here. And this happens again in the
[11:45] car when he's trying to say something about second hand
[11:47] smoke being carcinogenic. He just stumbles over his lines
[11:49] and he can't find the words. Love the characters that are
[11:52] built here just straight away in this tiny little scene.
[11:55] Yeah, and then you get further insight into Jerry in his
[11:58] predicament when he got that glimpse at his home life, don't
[12:01] you? Because straight away you
[12:02] realize weird. Such an asshole.
[12:06] Grumpy bastard. A grumpy bastard, archetypal big
[12:09] man in a very small town. And you can see he's so
[12:12] accustomed to having his own way when Jerry gets home because
[12:15] he's there on his couch watching some game on his TV, and he
[12:19] barely acknowledges Jerry's presence like anyone else would
[12:21] be. Oh, you know, Hi.
[12:22] Hi. How are you doing?
[12:23] Thanks for you know, just want to.
[12:26] Doesn't. Turn around just enraptured in
[12:28] the game and said. And even when Jerry asked Jean
[12:31] if we're to stay in for supper, she doesn't know she has to ask
[12:34] him. So he's clearly just arrived
[12:36] completely unannounced and just plugged himself out of the glass
[12:39] of whiskey at the expense of everyone else.
[12:41] And I think Weird is a large part of why for quite a bit of
[12:45] the film, I still have a little bit of sympathy for Joey because
[12:48] he saw a pattern item and he's so selfish.
[12:51] Like when that they're talking about the deal that Joey's
[12:53] really keen to do and Joey says, yeah, it's a lot.
[12:56] Weird just goes off on this story about having a couple of
[12:58] parking lots back in the 50s that he has done.
[13:01] Lost a lot of money. Lot of money, lot of money.
[13:04] Do you love the way that Jean says super though?
[13:06] Isn't that the cutest thing in the working dead?
[13:09] You staying for supper? Just really sweet.
[13:14] I love her make like. I hear that I.
[13:17] Love. Her so sickly sweet just.
[13:21] Lovely one. And the other thing about where
[13:25] he I'm always puzzled by his reaction to Scotty.
[13:27] You know, Scotty's you're asleep because he's a teenager.
[13:30] He doesn't want to hang out with his parents as.
[13:31] Grandpa McDonald's, obviously. And he wants to go to
[13:33] McDonald's. And where does They don't drink
[13:34] milkshakes, I assure you. Like, what does he think they do
[13:37] at McDonald's? Like, he's such a grumpy old
[13:40] granddad, isn't he? Thinks he knows everything about
[13:43] everyone. And lastly, you just get one of
[13:46] the best and one of the most telling lines in the film, which
[13:48] explains everything about Jerry. When Jerry is still trying to
[13:51] persuade about the deal, it's going to be real good for Jane
[13:53] and Scotty and me. It really just goes, Jane and
[13:55] Scotty never have to worry. Like, fucking hell yeah.
[13:59] Your son-in-law. Yeah.
[14:01] Yeah, you're kind of on his side.
[14:02] Immediately once that happens on you, you just think, oh God,
[14:05] what a full. Yeah, Ways played by half
[14:08] personal. It was his first film since
[14:10] Paint Your Wagon in 1969. Wow, wow, crazy.
[14:14] He's. Great.
[14:15] And Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, well, he got like a second
[14:18] career after this. He's in face Off and old school
[14:21] Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, he's great, but he's been
[14:23] working in theatre for 25 years and.
[14:25] You can kind of tell he's got this real bulgy demeanor.
[14:27] Like when he's on screen, he's like a big, like he's like a,
[14:30] like a baked potato. He's just like, oh, loads of
[14:34] butter. Really Moorish.
[14:38] Perfect for the corns. I'm surprised I didn't use them
[14:39] more than once. The buttery potato that is half
[14:43] pressing. Fantastic performance.
[14:46] Beautiful. Now her dad.
[14:50] He's real well off. So why don't you just ask him
[14:53] for the money? Well, your fucking wife, you
[14:55] know. Or your fucking wife, Jerry.
[14:57] OK, real good. So haven't made the deal.
[15:00] We find out a bit more about Jerry's work and family life.
[15:03] Wade thinks his parking lot proposal is pretty sweet.
[15:06] Carl and Gear find themselves some company and Brainerd before
[15:09] our next sequence where the kidnapped Gene before Jerry's
[15:11] deal with Wade falls apart. West.
[15:14] Are you going to take this one again?
[15:16] I'll take it again, the break in when she's just sat watching
[15:20] that terrible programme of like, well, we're going to make hassle
[15:24] death legs. Just just like, oh, if you got
[15:27] an empty chicken that's got empty eggs and serving.
[15:29] If you listen to that fucking dialogue from that show, it's
[15:32] just terrible. It's off when just just
[15:34] knitting, having a great time. And he just he walks up the
[15:38] steps and looks through the window and she doesn't she
[15:42] doesn't react at all. She's still just kind of like,
[15:45] what the fuck? Full face mask, crowbar, looking
[15:49] through the window, and she doesn't react until he actually
[15:52] smashes. He smashes it and then you just
[15:55] think, oh, Jesus Christ. But I mean, Kristen Rudd, who's
[15:59] who plays Gene is fantastic in this sequence.
[16:01] And she's just amazing because it's just when it starts to
[16:04] spiral out of control, you think, oh, you've just got to
[16:07] kidnap his wife. That sounds fairly
[16:08] straightforward, but she makes it, makes it anything but
[16:11] straightforward and just running, kicking like as you
[16:14] would do. And it's when the corn you kind
[16:16] of go, is this a true story? Did this actually happen?
[16:19] And they bring that reality to it?
[16:20] You know, it's like, would if you were sat down and someone
[16:23] was looking through your window, would you actually just freeze
[16:25] and just be like, what? What until they did something
[16:28] like you don't know D until you're in that situation.
[16:31] It seems outrageous, but at the same time, like really viable.
[16:35] Like you completely buy into that whole thing.
[16:37] And I think she's fantastic. I think when they just break in,
[16:40] you realize that they're not as good as to say they are.
[16:42] Jerry doesn't know what he's doing.
[16:44] She's kicking up a stink and like where it's an absolute
[16:48] asshole and you just think this is just going to get much worse
[16:52] and I cannot wait for how bad this is going to be.
[16:54] It's just great. What a great setup.
[16:56] It is amazing. I love the moment where she runs
[16:58] up into the bathroom. Yeah.
[17:00] I mean, she should have just ran out the front door instead.
[17:02] Of course. Yeah, it's open.
[17:04] Yeah, it's been busted open, but she's shrieking and she's trying
[17:08] to call the police and the phone gets yanked out of her hand.
[17:10] That's a great moment, that. It is a great moment, despite
[17:13] the comedy in this scene. It's quite terrifying.
[17:15] Yeah, it is. Yeah.
[17:17] And she makes a smart move, opens the window but hides
[17:19] behind the shower curtain. Classic, classic move.
[17:22] And it's quite tense. It puts me in mind of the shower
[17:24] scene in Psycho, and I'm sure there's a nod there.
[17:26] And it plays out like a scene from a horror movie.
[17:29] There's a silence. There's a slight hint of ominous
[17:31] score as Kia is looking in the mirror behind him.
[17:35] And then she bursts out and it is it's a jump scare.
[17:38] And I'm sure that the corns are playing with that horror movie
[17:40] motif when Gene runs off because she looks like a ghost because
[17:43] with the white shower curtain around her.
[17:46] But then obviously all the tension goes out.
[17:47] The scene when she starts bumping into things it's.
[17:49] Falling down the stairs. Falling down the stairs, yeah.
[17:54] But then, yeah, when she jumps out, it's great.
[17:55] But it leads to one of the best, one of the best visual moments.
[17:58] Like this film's got all the way through.
[18:00] When Jerry comes home and looks at the the hooks and they've
[18:03] just got them little rips on them from the shower curtain,
[18:05] you just go there It is. Visual, visual storytelling.
[18:08] Yeah. Great, Very good.
[18:10] Joe Cohen said that once Jean's kidnapped, she ceases to be a
[18:13] person. Jerry doesn't think of the
[18:15] consequences of his actions, and Carl doesn't even know her name
[18:18] when he's on the phone. Who the fuck is Jean?
[18:22] My wife. My wife.
[18:23] Yeah, yeah, she's fine. And on top of that, the
[18:27] character was no longer played by Christian Rd.
[18:29] Rd. A double studying for her when
[18:30] she's got the bag overhead. Christian Rd.
[18:32] Rd. Unfortunately, yes.
[18:34] Rd. Rd.
[18:35] So good the name that twice. A couscous the foods are nice
[18:39] and in the twice. Then you go from this and you
[18:44] pick up again with Jerry and Wade again falling through on
[18:47] that deal. And it's a scene I find it very
[18:49] uncomfortable to watch because it just falls apart for Jerry so
[18:52] badly. But it's also very, very funny.
[18:55] And you see as soon as he walks in that office, they've got no
[18:58] interest whatsoever in him as a person, let alone investing in
[19:02] him. They just want the deal.
[19:03] And again, it's another scene tells you how little respect
[19:06] Wade house for Sunlab because if you watch again, the don't even
[19:08] pull out a chair for him. The noise coming, the no,
[19:11] they've got this meeting with him and they don't even have a
[19:13] seat at the desk forum, which is quite symbolic.
[19:15] They're all facing away on the the chair.
[19:16] He has to sit on the arm of the chair, Yeah.
[19:18] That's it exactly. It's it's really awkward.
[19:20] He's just looking around awkwardly.
[19:22] He doesn't even like pull the chair out for himself.
[19:24] He just purchase on the end like really awkwardly.
[19:27] And even though we've already seen so far what he said,
[19:30] emotion still got a lot of sympathy for Jerry here.
[19:33] But having said that, he's also an idiot because thinking they
[19:36] would actually give him that huge amount of money for like
[19:39] very little payback for them. And even when he realizes he's
[19:42] been ambushed by them and he's just going to get find his face,
[19:44] He just doesn't have any kind of whip or ability to think on his
[19:47] feet and bargain with them. The best he can do is he stands
[19:50] and he looks down and he goes. I guarantee you you're only back
[19:53] with interest. Which?
[19:55] I. Want to talk about your fucking
[19:57] word? Not a bad Jerry.
[19:59] We're not a bad Jerry, not a bad Jerry.
[20:02] You know, no actual figure, no bargaining power, nothing to say
[20:06] for himself. He's just an absolute whipping
[20:08] boy. The.
[20:09] Tragedy though of this scene is that he has it, he gets the
[20:12] finders for you at the start and then as the scene plays out he
[20:16] ends up with fuck all that, just take it off.
[20:19] I'll just take it off then. We're just going to run on with
[20:21] this instead of the view. Is that OK?
[20:23] Yeah, so self, I mean, he enters that room so happy, so confident
[20:27] in himself, and he just slings out a broken man.
[20:29] And that leads up to what is one of my very, very favorite shots
[20:33] probably of all time. And it's that off head crane
[20:35] shot where he's a Trojan through that icy car park back to his
[20:39] car. It's the only car there.
[20:41] And the shot is just loneliness in an image, isn't it?
[20:44] Just defeat in the image and he can't even win against the
[20:47] elements trying to like chip the ice off his windshield.
[20:49] He can't even do that, Jerry. He's just belittled by everyone
[20:53] from his father-in-law to the weather.
[20:54] Just everyone is beaten Jerry in this film.
[20:56] Yeah, the weather is kicking his ass.
[20:58] It is. There were supposed to be much
[21:01] more cars in the parking lot in that overhead shop, Matt, But
[21:04] deacons took one look down and said to Joel, it's such a great
[21:08] graphic without the cars, just the snow.
[21:10] And it's a really, I mean, it's a really striking image.
[21:12] I think it's quite disoriented. And when you see Jerry come into
[21:15] view, it's unexpected. It doesn't look real.
[21:18] It looks like a picture of some sort, Yeah.
[21:21] There's like them plant pots on, there's up, but they are plant
[21:23] pots and you've got them. Looks like.
[21:25] Around and they're all dead anyway and they're just
[21:27] pointless but they're all kind of regimented and it makes sense
[21:30] and he walks up the bottom left of the frame comes in that's.
[21:34] Just so good. Yeah, it's, it's just.
[21:37] Sort of like insignificant against everything isn't.
[21:39] Yeah, exactly. It's significant, like
[21:42] everything is. The building for the office
[21:44] scene. He was chosen because of the big
[21:46] windows and the view through them.
[21:48] When it came to shooting the scene, it was the one day that
[21:50] there was a Blizzard in Minnesota, which is why you can
[21:53] pretty much see nothing but whiteness.
[21:55] Yeah, we'll talk about the weather as we as we get into the
[21:58] conversation. That played havoc with the
[22:00] production. So it's all looking real good
[22:03] for Jerry. So far.
[22:05] His master plan seems to be working, despite his parking lot
[22:08] plans being canned by Weird. That's a lot, the director.
[22:17] Despite Joe being credited as director on the film, we're
[22:20] talking about the corns as a collective here, really.
[22:22] They both direct and produce the film.
[22:25] Yeah, it's the third outing on the show.
[22:27] We've already talked about No Country in The Big Lebowski,
[22:31] Matt, as it's your first time talking about them when you take
[22:34] us away first. Oh yeah.
[22:40] Oh yeah. Really good.
[22:42] Firstly I just love the visuals here, the atmosphere the get
[22:44] from this unrelent and bleak wintry landscape.
[22:48] I think it's fantastic. I love that opening, Joey's car,
[22:50] just sneaking through that snore, that one bit of colour,
[22:53] just find incredible thing. Oh, that's fantastic.
[22:56] Looks amazing. But overall I find the direction
[22:59] very, very comforting because I think the corns, they've always
[23:02] known what works for them and they've also been happy to make
[23:05] films by their rules. They're not really wary if other
[23:07] people get it or not, They just want to make stuff that makes
[23:10] them happy. So if that amuses them, but this
[23:12] is the film, it feels like they've cracked it and the half
[23:15] taken it to the next level where they've made a film that still
[23:18] works just for them, but actually they've made it really
[23:20] accessible for everyone else. And that's because they're just
[23:23] so confident with everything that the Dewey saw, everything
[23:26] that this film does from that disclaimer at the beginning that
[23:30] this is a true story and it isn't.
[23:32] But I think they just find that amusing to put that in there.
[23:35] Yeah, of course. The fact that our main
[23:37] protagonist doesn't turn up until half an hour into it.
[23:40] The fact that the money, the Mcguffin, just gets completely
[23:43] forgotten about. It's never discovered, no one
[23:45] actually really cares about it. The way it goes from violence to
[23:48] comedy and back against, so now it's within the same scene.
[23:50] The way it just switches tones, it's all just handled with this
[23:53] real assurance that the know what every single scene is
[23:56] designed to do in the know absolutely where they're taking
[23:59] this film. And I actually found it quite
[24:03] difficult to pin down what's great about the direction
[24:05] because it's not a visually inventive or particularly
[24:09] amazing film to look at in a lot of ways.
[24:11] But it's just that everything else about it is so unique.
[24:15] It's just them and this is their world that they create.
[24:18] And it's one way, I think Wesley said the beginning.
[24:19] It's like the hold your hand in the guide you into this world
[24:22] very carefully, like it's going to be OK and it's going to work
[24:25] out fine here. And it's got the one thing in
[24:28] this film that they do get criticized for is lacking in
[24:30] other films, which is heart. You know, I do read criticism
[24:34] where people say the very unsympathetic to the characters
[24:37] in other films, which absolutely isn't the case here.
[24:39] It's not sentimental, it's not a film that's going to make anyone
[24:42] cry, it's not Spielberg. But it's got genuine warmth and
[24:46] affection for March and innocent characters in here, which just
[24:50] brings a lot to it. And I think the last thing I'd
[24:53] say about them directing this is that the corns are now their own
[24:56] adjective on the. Because how many times have you
[24:58] seen the film described as corn esque?
[25:01] Yeah. And every time I see your film
[25:02] described as that, I know instantly what I'm going to get.
[25:04] Right. OK.
[25:05] It's going to be offbeat. It's going to be a mixture of
[25:07] violence, crime, black comedy, strange characters, quirky
[25:10] names, all this. And I think that description
[25:12] comes from this film in particular being this one
[25:15] cemented what corn esque is. And The thing is, you watch one
[25:18] of those other films, it's never as good as Fargo because it
[25:21] doesn't have the corns behind it.
[25:23] This is them. This is everything that they
[25:25] are. And I think it's them at their
[25:26] most accessible. Yeah, it like you might.
[25:29] I was thinking like, I don't really know what to say about
[25:31] the direction from the corns big other than like, yeah, it's
[25:35] amazing because it always is from.
[25:36] So simple as well. There's no fields to it, it
[25:39] doesn't need them. That may be as a result of,
[25:42] like, you come to expect a certain level from the corns and
[25:44] you always get that. But if this was any other
[25:47] double, the majority of any other directors will be going
[25:49] banging on about how amazing it is.
[25:51] Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen a
[25:53] more blinding theme of darkness and light in a film.
[25:56] Even in the most like, remote and unassuming small town in
[25:59] America, there's a bleak darkness to this place which is
[26:02] offset by that pure white of the snow.
[26:04] And that, for me, reflects Marge.
[26:06] It's kind of her theme almost in and around the film.
[26:09] And Despite that deep darkness of the core of the film, it's
[26:12] often hilarious. And they've got such an acute
[26:15] understanding of tone and where to insert these blackly comic
[26:18] moments in a film where everyone dies or goes to jail.
[26:24] Funny. Doesn't sound like it should be
[26:25] on the agenda, but it is a hilarious film.
[26:29] And I also think they've got such an uncanny act of capturing
[26:31] the nuances of individuals, no matter how small a part they
[26:35] play in the overall story. The hookers are really
[26:37] memorable, as is Mike. Yeah, Mike's brilliant.
[26:41] Mike's absolutely amazing. They're incredible, like really,
[26:45] really adapted getting to the heart of the minutiae of small
[26:49] town America, the people who live on like the outskirts of
[26:51] society or acceptability, and they do that in all their films.
[26:55] Fargo is no different. Margin norms relationship
[26:57] doesn't appear to be a usual 2.4 children type family, but it
[27:01] works for them and it's the centre point of the film.
[27:04] And stylistically and thematically it's amazing as
[27:07] well. They place Jerry in his office
[27:09] with a window behind him for a couple of reasons.
[27:11] The blind server is a metaphor for him being behind bars.
[27:14] His fate's already been decided before he even starts.
[27:19] But also to show the cars going back and forth.
[27:20] They want to impose in the audience the various cars coming
[27:23] in and out of town and what secrets could be held within
[27:26] those cars like they are in Carl and Gears.
[27:29] Yeah, yeah. Which you get really
[27:31] subconsciously as well. It really works on that level.
[27:34] Definitely does. Yeah.
[27:36] I think that the direction itself, which I might go into a
[27:38] little bit more on the cinematography because of the
[27:41] way it's framed, the framing in this film, the way this is shot,
[27:44] the way you use A2 shot against a single, the way you use a
[27:47] close up against a mid, the way the camera doesn't really move
[27:50] unless it absolutely has to. I think that's all testament to
[27:53] them. And I think you can see that
[27:55] they wanted to make this film. I mean, if you watch any of the
[27:57] films are quite similar to this. I mean, if you watch like The
[28:00] Pledge directed by Sean Penn, John John Nicholson, and if you
[28:03] watch Insomnia or if you watch anything based in that kind of
[28:06] desolate landscape, that can't help but get lost in that.
[28:09] The film makers just get lost in that gloom and that grimness.
[28:13] Whereas the corns, like you said, like add this element of
[28:16] humor, which shouldn't really work, but it definitely does.
[28:20] And it keeps you on that level where you like it's accessible
[28:23] and it works and you keep moving along with the story.
[28:26] And it is a road movie essentially.
[28:28] It's a kidnap movie. It's what they've done, they've
[28:30] done before. But it just is so original in
[28:34] the writing, in the way that North Dakota's, you know,
[28:37] depicted the way it's just as houses overtly niceness that
[28:41] they take the piss out of, but also.
[28:44] Yeah. There's a lot of perfection with
[28:46] that. Celebrate it.
[28:47] They don't, it's funny, but it's it is celebrated and it is
[28:51] wonderful. It's kind of a place where even
[28:53] if you finish watching it and you've seen somebody get shot in
[28:56] the head and then put in a wood chipper, it's still a place you
[28:58] want to go to. And that's a testament of the
[29:01] coins, I think, and a testament of their direction and their
[29:04] short choice. And I think they're the way they
[29:06] work with deacons here is is unbelievable.
[29:09] And I think just the way that they work with actors, every
[29:12] single performance in this film is memorable.
[29:16] It is even the guy getting the true court when he's like,
[29:18] you're a, you're a liar. You're a fucking liar.
[29:23] He hates swearing, doesn't he? He hates swearing.
[29:26] He's so. Angry, but you just remember
[29:28] that guy. You remember the guy, you know
[29:30] the the parking attendant, you kind of remember all of these
[29:32] people that just should be throw away.
[29:34] In any of the film, there'll be throw it, but they've have this
[29:37] kind of like almost like a monument.
[29:39] When you see them on the screen, they're kind of like chiseled
[29:41] into the screen and you remember the faces, you remember the
[29:43] performances. And that's testament to how good
[29:47] the Coen brothers are directing films.
[29:49] It's fucking brilliant. It's like the two prostitutes.
[29:51] I've never seen prostitutes in this film like this.
[29:54] Like normally the scene is like like CD individuals or like
[29:58] they're just really happy and wasn't circumcised.
[30:03] Go bears. Yeah, yeah.
[30:06] Excited. The go bears thing, just the the
[30:08] so happy and just normal people. I think that's great.
[30:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[30:14] Full of back and forth. Yeah, yeah.
[30:19] Yeah, when they're nodding in unison, yeah.
[30:21] She's not like she's not judging them for what they do.
[30:24] She's just no. She's not totally.
[30:26] On the level like it's fine, What you do is fine.
[30:28] I just want you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[30:32] Fantastic to claim that the film was based on a true story, while
[30:36] almost 100% fabricated, does kind of put you in position of
[30:39] the feat firmly placed in the real world kind of thing as
[30:42] opposed to the The Flights of Fantasy and some of the other
[30:45] films like Hudsucker Proxy and The Big Lebowski as well.
[30:49] There are a few inspirations for the true story thing.
[30:51] One was the story of a lawyer called Eugene Thompson who hired
[30:55] a hitman to kill his wife, and that hitman hired another hitman
[30:59] to do the deed right And after she got shot, she got away and
[31:03] everybody involved got their comeuppance.
[31:05] Another inspiration was the murder of a flight attendant
[31:08] named Hella Crafts whose estranged husband murdered her
[31:11] and fed her through a wood chipper.
[31:13] So it is certain the seeds of truth in the.
[31:16] Yeah, the the kind of piece stuff together.
[31:19] Joel said in its general structure, the film is based on
[31:23] a real event, but the details of the story and the characters are
[31:25] fictional. We're not interested in making a
[31:27] documentary film and we did no research about the nature of the
[31:30] murders, of the events that connected them.
[31:32] But in Warren View is that we had found our inspiration from a
[31:35] real story. We were preparing them not to
[31:37] view the film like an ordinary thriller.
[31:40] Yeah, yeah, I suppose it just. If you see that, I'll read that.
[31:43] You kind of approach a film in a different way, don't you, if you
[31:46] see a disclaimer like that at the start?
[31:47] I take Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well.
[31:49] It's. Kind of, yeah, Yeah.
[31:51] Exactly. Has that impact?
[31:52] Yeah. All of the cast were under the
[31:55] impression that the story was real until three weeks into the
[31:58] shoot of the light of them all. Just for three weeks.
[32:04] We mentioned it in our new Country for Old Men podcast.
[32:06] The corns like to insert references to the work of
[32:09] Stanley Kubrick in their films, and there are a few here as
[32:12] well. Carl mentions the old in and out
[32:16] and not the Kirk Orange, and mentions that when he's watching
[32:18] José Feliciano with another prostitute, the song These boots
[32:24] are made for walk and players on the radio.
[32:26] That's another Full Metal Jacket, and also the shining
[32:30] gears framed like kind of like Jack Nicholson when he breaks
[32:33] the bathroom door down. Yes, yeah.
[32:35] And she goes to get out the window, which is how Wendy gets
[32:37] out. Exactly.
[32:39] Yeah, but she. Goes behind the shower curtain
[32:40] so it's kind of the Shining and Psycho in the same.
[32:43] Kind of breath, which is great. Amazing.
[32:45] So yeah, Fargo, another home run by Joel and Ethan.
[32:49] No. No doubt we're talking about the
[32:57] three leads in the cast of Fargo, starting, of course, with
[33:00] Frances Mcdorm. But as Marge Gunderson, Westie,
[33:03] what are your thoughts on Mcdormand's performances?
[33:05] Marge. She is adorable.
[33:09] She's a dream board. She is wonderful and just one of
[33:13] my favorite characters I think I've ever seen, but I don't want
[33:17] to see any more of her. I think the coins give you
[33:19] exactly the right amount anymore and it would kind of spill over.
[33:24] It's just the perfect performance.
[33:28] It's just so lovable, which is so intelligent.
[33:31] She's got the higher ground all of the time.
[33:33] She wears the pants in the relationship.
[33:35] She's just the most intelligent person in the film and I love
[33:37] that. And she's just the funniest and
[33:40] the most like open hearted and really caring person at the same
[33:44] time. And you don't really get that
[33:45] with characters nowadays. You don't get someone who's
[33:47] really open because they normally get punished for that.
[33:50] You don't get people who are normally like really emotional
[33:52] and open to people and just have time for people that at the same
[33:54] time be intelligent because they've got to be one or the
[33:56] other, you know, weathered by the job.
[33:59] And this is who I am and I'm a police officer and fuck you,
[34:03] Norm, you know what I mean? But she's not like that.
[34:05] Just like, you know, probably need to jump.
[34:06] It's fucking so adorable. And he's great.
[34:10] And their relationships just so wonderful.
[34:12] It's one of the best relationships I think I've ever
[34:14] seen captured on film. Just that's just what you want,
[34:17] even though it's in a tiny little house and they haven't
[34:19] got much, but they just love each other.
[34:21] They're happy and. They're so content that it's
[34:25] just beautifully realized and beautifully shot because every
[34:28] single scene with them two and it's a two shot.
[34:30] They don't ever get singles and Norm never gets a single.
[34:33] They always get two shots. They're always together.
[34:37] I think there's just little beautiful nuances by McDonald
[34:40] all the way through this film that make just really, really
[34:43] accessible as a character and really, really lovable as a
[34:46] character. And I can't imagine anyone else
[34:48] doing this or pulling this off to this degree where it's just
[34:51] so intricately done but looks so simple and it's just brilliant.
[34:55] It's just brilliant, just amazing.
[34:57] Am I just such a striking character in the Dormant?
[34:59] I think is just in her element here.
[35:01] I mean she uses her exterior advantage as well.
[35:05] She's all cutesy poo when she first talks to Jerry, makes out
[35:08] like she buys his story, shoots him a little wink and says I'll
[35:11] let you get back to your paperwork.
[35:13] Fantastic. Lovely.
[35:16] He's fleeing the interview. He's fleeing the interview.
[35:20] And this likely puts Jerry at ease and and you think probably
[35:24] thinks that he fooled the cops because he thinks he's a master
[35:26] operator. But she's a lot smarter than she
[35:28] makes out to be. Yeah.
[35:29] And throughout all the darkness in the film, all the lies, all
[35:32] the deceit by pretty much all of the other characters in the
[35:34] film, there's a lot on Mcdormand shoulders to be the only real
[35:37] force of good in the main cast. Yeah.
[35:41] She's the moral conscience of the film and I love that moment
[35:43] at the end when she's got gear in the in the back of the car
[35:46] and she just can't fathom his actions.
[35:48] It's. Amazing.
[35:49] Oh, she says. There's more to life than a bit
[35:51] of money. Don't you know that?
[35:52] Yeah, yeah. It's plain and simple, right and
[35:55] wrong. He, he doesn't know that and she
[35:57] doesn't understand what will motivate somebody to do all the
[35:59] bad deeds that he's done. And it's that.
[36:02] Innocence is played amazingly well by Mcdormand, but repeat
[36:05] viewings I think show there's a lot more to the surface than
[36:08] March. Yeah.
[36:10] It's such a such a great performance and also her and
[36:13] Norm are either always eating or lying down, sometimes doing both
[36:17] at the same time of. Course.
[36:19] You've got hobbies all over me. When she confronts gear at the
[36:24] end, which is like police, and then points at a star and a hat,
[36:28] that little moment where she's just like dickhead, like the
[36:33] whole uniform on which is like pointing at the start, just that
[36:35] little moment. Absolutely love it.
[36:38] Yeah, it's great. Matt, what do you think about
[36:40] Mcdormand here? Well, she's such a super lady,
[36:42] isn't she? And I'm so lonely.
[36:46] Super so lonely. Incredible performance is
[36:54] particularly considering you're 30 minutes in the film for you
[36:57] even made her. Yeah, but she's got such a warm,
[36:59] motherly presence to it. Like obviously helped by the
[37:02] fact that she's heavily pregnant.
[37:03] But you look at it and 1st you think she should be like running
[37:07] a bakery and like making treat to everyone.
[37:09] She shouldn't be a police officer caught up in this like
[37:12] brutal crime. Yeah, the great thing is as well
[37:14] as that, that pregnancies never played upon.
[37:16] It's never this dark, somber tone of like, she could lose the
[37:20] child, do you know what I mean? They never think about it.
[37:22] Anyone else would have done that, would have like kind of
[37:24] capitalized on that emotion, but it just builds the character.
[37:27] Yeah, it's great church. And like I said, it's never like
[37:30] exploitative and watch has got issues.
[37:33] Got this like super sunny, super polite disposition, always
[37:38] looking to believe the best in people.
[37:39] But she's so good at dealing with everyone who she comes into
[37:43] contact with because she's so clever, which is very deceptive.
[37:47] So when she questioned Shep, she goes a little bit easy on him
[37:50] because she knows he's had trouble with the law before.
[37:52] So she just uses that easy going charm to win him over.
[37:56] And then you get that hugely awkward dinner with Mike
[37:59] Yanagita when he tries to sit next to it and she just goes,
[38:02] no, why don't you sit over that? I prefer that.
[38:05] But then she can say. That she says Why?
[38:08] Yeah. It's just like someone have to
[38:09] turn me neck. Yeah.
[38:10] Just an excuse for it, yeah. Don't have to turn my neck.
[38:14] She's super nice about that. Or I love how this film ends
[38:17] with her and Norman bed together.
[38:19] And he's disappointed that that picture he's been doing, it's
[38:22] only been used on the three cent stamp.
[38:23] And even then, she's like, whenever they raise the postage,
[38:26] people need the little stamps. She just knows what to say in
[38:30] every given situation to everyone.
[38:33] But Despite that good nature, she's nobody's fool.
[38:36] You see that second interview with Cherry when he snaps it
[38:38] there and you see the light just goes on behind dry and she gets
[38:41] that steely, torn voice. Sir, you have no call to get
[38:44] snippy with me. Yeah, she knows then and there.
[38:47] I do my job something. Yeah, my job.
[38:50] And she's also really funny in that scene when Cherry flees and
[38:54] drives away. Like her reaction is bringing it
[38:56] off for Pete's sake. He's fleeing the interview.
[38:58] He's fleeing the interview like. I only got an outside line on
[39:01] this. Still so polite in her
[39:04] exasperation. Even then she doesn't swear.
[39:07] She's just a fantastic character and I honestly think the hands
[39:10] of another actress, she could have been a bit too quirky.
[39:13] She could have come across not quite as smart as Mcdormand
[39:16] makes her. She could have come across
[39:18] somebody who just stumbles through the film on look.
[39:20] But Mcdormand, I think it's just just amazed and she makes it so
[39:24] real, gives us so much death and it's just such an enjoyable,
[39:29] funny, effective performance. I just absolutely love it a bits
[39:32] and this. When starting out as an actress,
[39:34] Mcdormand lived in New York and was roommates with Holly Hunter,
[39:37] who told her that there were two weird guys in town casting for
[39:40] the debut film. Mcdormand went along and wound
[39:43] up being cast in Blood Simple, and obviously she would marry
[39:45] Joel Corn soon afterwards as well.
[39:48] She was the actress that the Corns wanted for Marge.
[39:50] Obviously. Joel asked her and John Carroll
[39:52] Lynch, who plays Norm, her husband, to come up with a back
[39:55] story for their characters. They decided that Marge and Norm
[39:59] met and fell in love while they were working on the police force
[40:02] together, and when they got married, they decided that one
[40:04] of them should quit. Marge was better at her job, so
[40:07] Norm took a paint and as a hobby, which is, I mean,
[40:10] obviously going to be better at her job than Norm.
[40:13] Norm's great, I'll fix you some eggs.
[40:16] McDonald wasn't pregnant at the time.
[40:17] Instead, she wore a pregnancy pillow.
[40:20] It was filled with bird seed to give weight and silicone breasts
[40:24] as well. She left the suit in a trailer
[40:26] overnight and it froze, and when she was shooting the next day,
[40:29] one of the breasts exploded. Should.
[40:34] Have left that in. To prepare for the part, she
[40:38] spent time with a pregnant copper in Saint Paul, a city in
[40:41] Minnesota. She learned how to shoot a gun
[40:43] and based the characterisation of Marge on her sister, who was
[40:46] a Christian minister, and about Marge, Macdorman said.
[40:50] When I started working on it, I realised it was one of the best
[40:52] gifts that I've ever been given. Very nice.
[40:56] Yeah, yeah, but she does she gifts back from getting a.
[41:00] Gift. Oh, lovely, very nice.
[41:02] It's a gift within a gift. It's fantastic. 2 Gifts A gift
[41:05] that keeps on giving the. Gift that gives on given Yeah.
[41:07] Take Inception. So we're now moving into our
[41:12] first question from one of our Patreon supporters I mentioned
[41:15] at the top that will answer questions on the shore.
[41:18] So he comes our first one from George Anderson.
[41:21] Hello, George. Hello, George.
[41:22] Hi, George. He's back.
[41:25] George asks where does ATRM rank Marge Gunderson amongst the
[41:29] badass female roles in cinema? And he's got a secondary
[41:33] question. Secondary question on this one.
[41:35] Sub question. Sub question, he said wouldn't
[41:41] pair in her with Clarice Stalin to solve a crime.
[41:43] Made for an awesome film. So Wes, did you want to take
[41:48] that first? In my opinion of badass female
[41:53] characters, I would put a definitely up there.
[41:55] I'll put Marge Gunnison up there, I'll put Ellen Ripley up
[41:57] there. Clarice has got to be up there
[42:00] and I'd put the Bride up there from Kill Bill one and two and
[42:04] Mildred Hayes from Three Billboards, which is again
[42:08] Mcdormand. So she's she's got 2 spots in
[42:10] the top five. They are fucking badass
[42:12] performances, which is great. She's great and almost famous as
[42:15] well. It's really badass and that
[42:16] don't do drugs. Really brilliant performance in
[42:21] that. I mean, just which has opened
[42:22] the door and it is wide open now for people just to walk through,
[42:25] especially younger actresses to just grapple on to that
[42:28] confidence and use it and walk with it.
[42:31] And I think she's just laid the path and more people need to
[42:33] walk. Well for the first part of
[42:36] George's question, I never really would consider March this
[42:39] way because she is quite unassuming in a certain respect
[42:43] and that's down to the right and location which influences the
[42:46] personality of mine. To be honest, I don't think I
[42:48] would put her up there as bad ass roles, female or male.
[42:53] I instantly think of aliens and there are two in there that you
[42:55] mentioned. Ripley's one of them.
[42:56] Vasquez. The next mean cat.
[43:00] Vasquez, let's rock. Harder than any of the blokes on
[43:03] that. 100% I would have Vasquez with me over any of them fucking
[43:08] people. No, no doubt.
[43:09] Definitely. I mean, both Ripley and Vasquez
[43:13] handle heavy artillery. They're up against this
[43:15] seemingly unbeatable, unknowable force.
[43:18] Marge is up to that in a certain degree, but it's still human.
[43:21] It's still known, and she can still use that smart.
[43:25] I would throw people like, you know, Sarah Connor from, well,
[43:27] T1 and T2 and the Bride, like you said, Westie, but I wouldn't
[43:32] throw Marge in there. She's good at her job, at a job
[43:35] that's more commonly viewed in movies as a man's role or a male
[43:40] role. And I do also think that to say
[43:43] that Marge is a badass is to undercut the character, the
[43:46] performance by Mcdormand and the right and by the corns.
[43:48] I think she's more than that. It's a string to a ball.
[43:51] She can't be a. String to a ball?
[43:52] Absolutely, and she must be a bad more for to single handedly
[43:56] take care of Guerre at the end, yeah?
[43:58] Yeah, get him out of the car, Yeah.
[44:00] Yeah, exactly. Matt, what about you?
[44:03] Yeah, very much in agreement, obviously.
[44:04] Yeah, you've got the likes of Ripley, Sarah Connor, Fury, also
[44:07] Clarice, but they are all very different to March made for
[44:12] sort. None of them do what they do
[44:13] while seven months pregnant, you know.
[44:15] I mean, that's to say, you know, she's she's she's carried a huge
[44:18] load there. She's going to wait.
[44:20] And carrying quite a load there. Carrying quite a load there.
[44:24] Take a seat. And what I like about March is
[44:28] that she really retains all that femininity throughout the film,
[44:31] but in a very realistic way. She doesn't have to do, you
[44:35] know, like if you think Ripley in the first Alien, you know,
[44:38] she has to strip down to, you know, basically kind of like
[44:40] underwear at the end to get into the suit, which is a bit of
[44:42] urgent. Doesn't really look great at
[44:44] that scene these days. Same as Sarah Connor and
[44:47] somebody just has to beef up to look like a man in terms of
[44:50] Marge doesn't have to do any of that.
[44:52] Marge is just a woman and that's good enough, which is kind of
[44:56] what you guys are saying. So, yeah, in terms of what
[44:59] you're just saying, yeah, I would have up there.
[45:00] But I think just to call a badass, I don't think it gets to
[45:03] the heart of what Marge is as a character, really.
[45:05] I think she is more than that, as you're saying, Luke.
[45:08] And then the sub question, wouldn't it be great to see it
[45:10] teamed with with Chris? I think it would be really good
[45:13] for Clarice. You know, Clarice is a very,
[45:15] very intense woman in those films.
[45:17] And I think she would benefit from spending some time with
[45:19] Marge. Just, you know, someone who has
[45:21] something other than the job going on in life.
[45:24] Yeah, very nice. It'd be lovely if she turns
[45:26] around. It's just like at the end of the
[45:28] film, she's like, have the lamb stopped screaming yet?
[45:30] She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fix it.
[45:35] Pairing her up with Clarice, Interesting idea.
[45:38] I mean that would be amazing. I often have these these
[45:41] thoughts of like it would be amazing if this character and
[45:43] this character would got together and that certainly
[45:45] would be one of them. But in an alternative reality.
[45:48] This got me thinking. I'd love to see Marge in the
[45:51] place of Ed Tom Bell in No Country for All Men she make of
[45:55] and Don't you Go. That would be amazing.
[45:57] Yeah, that'd be great. Although it'd be fair that both
[46:00] of these films end pretty much exactly the same, just with them
[46:04] kind of like that together back at home.
[46:07] Here we'll go. Left.
[46:09] To win, it kind of just cuts out.
[46:10] But yeah, I think I think she would have been magic.
[46:13] I'd love to see a ball and with the guys and Lebowski.
[46:16] Fucking amazing. Just walking in, like still
[46:19] pregnant. Hey guys, how's it going?
[46:22] This isn't a bowling ball in here, you know.
[46:29] Great. Talking to Jesus.
[46:30] I should have been amazed. Put her in any Coen Brothers
[46:32] film and she works. Yeah.
[46:34] Just fucking brilliant. Fantastic.
[46:37] Great question, George. Thank you very much.
[46:39] Yes, thank you man. Thanks, George.
[46:40] We stop at Pancakes house. What?
[46:43] Are you nuts? We have pancakes for breakfast.
[46:46] I kind of go to a place where I can get a shot and a beer and
[46:48] steak. Maybe not more fucking pancakes.
[46:50] Come on. We're moving over to our second
[46:53] character now, Jerry Lundergaard, played by the ever
[46:56] dependable William H Macy. Ah, geez.
[46:59] Ah, geez, Max, what do you think about H Macy as Jerry
[47:02] Lundergaard? The heck do you mean?
[47:06] Heck, do you mean? Macy in this man, I mean, it's a
[47:11] bit of custom where the look of the character, even for you,
[47:14] there's a line of dialogue. You know everything you need to
[47:16] know about Jerry. You look at him and you go,
[47:19] there is a born loser. There is a man who was going to
[47:23] achieve nothing in life. You know, look up defeat in the
[47:26] dictionary and you'll find a picture of Jerry Linda Guard and
[47:28] it will probably be that really awesome photo he's got hanging
[47:31] up on the wall in the car dealership.
[47:33] Hands over. Yeah, it's probably going to be
[47:36] that photo I'm. Taking photos like that,
[47:38] honestly, it's painful. Fantastic, amazing photo.
[47:42] And we've already mentioned it. Right from the opening scene,
[47:44] he's getting it wrong. He's an hour late and he does
[47:47] not do a single thing right from then on in.
[47:49] He is a really sniveling, inept excuse of a man.
[47:53] But Despite that, and this is all down to mercy for a large
[47:57] part of the film, I've still got a sliver sympathy for Jerry.
[47:59] I mean, he has blood in his hands.
[48:01] Blood has been shed and he's responsible for about half a
[48:03] dozen deaths. Macy still gets me occasionally
[48:07] on his side like I am good at from the way it's deems in there
[48:10] takes that deal off his hands completely shares frustration.
[48:14] But it's all just in that fantastic performance.
[48:16] He gives really pathetic that look of self pity on his face
[48:21] when that first customers given him a hell about the true court.
[48:24] And he does look so sorry for himself.
[48:26] And I love the Byway tries to look at the wife and he like
[48:29] flashes at this like apologetic grin, but then just look
[48:32] straight down again. Yeah, sorry, but it's the fact
[48:38] that he sets this plot emotion, yet as soon as something
[48:42] unplanned happens, he completely falls apart and he can't deal
[48:46] with anything that comes his way when he thinks he's actually
[48:48] going to get this deal. So he goes to Shep to say you
[48:51] need to get in contact with Carl and Shep completely fobs him off
[48:54] and Joey just goes OK then it just walks where achieves
[48:58] nothing. Yeah.
[48:59] And obviously, the funniest bits of the film is when he goes
[49:01] completely to pieces under the slightest bit of questioning
[49:04] from March. But first interview, Aces
[49:06] rocking back and forth in this chair, not speaking, just that
[49:09] screen on his face, sweating because he doesn't know what to
[49:12] say. Absolutely hilariously.
[49:13] Yeah. I think it's phenomenal work for
[49:15] me. I see.
[49:16] And I know that he wanted the part so much.
[49:18] He told the corns if they didn't custom he would shoot their
[49:20] dogs. Really Jerry thing to say that?
[49:28] Yeah, fantastic, babe. The Blue Axe, I mean, what a
[49:35] performance from H Macy. He's outstanding.
[49:39] Jerry makes out like he's this nice guy, but he's stiffen
[49:42] people all over town for that true court thing.
[49:46] And deep down, he's just not the person he's projecting himself
[49:49] to be. And that guy calls him out on
[49:51] it. He's a bald faced liar.
[49:53] And this is later confirmed with the scene, the serial numbers
[49:55] conversation. Yeah, he's stiffen them.
[49:58] How many other people has he stiffed throughout the years?
[50:00] I'll fax it. I'll I'll send it.
[50:02] Oh, I'll. Shoot it right over.
[50:06] And I think again, it's repeat viewings that confirms that
[50:08] Jerry has been making bad decision after bad decision for
[50:11] years. And This is why he's he's got
[50:13] himself in far, far too deep. And he probably was once a good
[50:17] person, and now he's kind of doing, I think he's kind of
[50:20] doing an act of trying to be a good person from what he can
[50:23] remember from years gone by. Probably why he's so over the
[50:27] top Nice. Yeah.
[50:28] Yeah. To kind of hide his misgivings.
[50:29] He's so sickly sweet with it. I can see what you're saying
[50:32] about the deal with Weird Matt, but I don't I don't feel sorry
[50:36] for Jerry in the slightest. Yeah, yeah, it's fair enough.
[50:38] It's, it's borderline, isn't it? It is borderline.
[50:40] Totally get what? People don't, yeah, yeah, like
[50:42] say it's, I don't feel from at the end at all.
[50:45] No, just when it gets. A little heavy now and I'm like,
[50:47] ah yeah, that's quite get there. Could he?
[50:50] But he does. I mean he gets absolutely what
[50:52] he deserves. It's his lame ass deal and he
[50:55] doesn't stop once to think of the consequences or a
[50:58] contingency. Hell of the scene where Marge
[51:03] goes back to see him and and both actors are amazing here but
[51:07] the cracks are all over jury in this scene and Macy plays it
[51:10] amazing Marge is asking him again about the missing car and
[51:13] he says I would know I'm the executive sales manager.
[51:17] His voice begins to break all over the place, but he's still
[51:22] trying to maintain that veneer of honesty I'm cooperating.
[51:25] We're doing, we're doing all we can here.
[51:27] I'm working with you on this thing, but he's not been working
[51:31] with Marge at all on. This.
[51:33] It's just great because he's obviously flustered, he's been
[51:35] caught on the hop and seeing things that just don't make
[51:38] sense, that had just come into his head to try and be nice.
[51:41] Yeah. But what performance is great?
[51:43] Yeah, Wesley, what about you? See like see that true code like
[51:49] I really feel for the guy because I don't know why I
[51:53] shouldn't but I do. Yeah, yeah.
[51:56] Is that something to do with because it is H messy?
[51:58] Because it's messy. If it was anyone else, I could
[52:01] not buy into it. But he's just got this really
[52:03] likable quality and you just kind of want to sit with him and
[52:07] just like shake him a little bit and just be like wake up.
[52:10] What you do when he just gets further and further into this
[52:14] nightmare, and that's what the corns do so well is that just,
[52:17] it starts off simple and then it just explodes into a nightmare
[52:21] in the lines that he's got unpleasant, but the way he
[52:24] delivers them are it's accessible and you feel sorry
[52:28] for me, that stupid massive core to these stupid heart.
[52:31] And he's just crap. And everyone who speaks to him,
[52:35] he's got the back to him or the off screen.
[52:37] He's always in a single shot. He's always isolated, he's
[52:40] always by himself. You don't find out what he's
[52:42] been doing, but because of the license plates and because of
[52:45] where he works, obviously he's been embellishing cars and
[52:48] they're getting the money for them and then just letting them
[52:49] go and whatever else because you can get them.
[52:52] That Sierra, it's brand new and he's just taught it out.
[52:54] So that's one of the other cars which is basically been stealing
[52:57] cars and Wade owns that garage. So he's like he's he's in a debt
[53:02] of weird and we got that money back.
[53:03] And if it works, it will work. And at some point you think that
[53:07] when he goes back to talk to Shep at the start of the film
[53:09] where Wade's like bag up for the deal, he's like, come and talk
[53:12] about it, it's going to be fine. And he's like walking across and
[53:16] he speak to them guys, it's fine now.
[53:18] So I don't vouch for him. I don't vote.
[53:20] And you just think, oh, shit, this is this is out of torn.
[53:23] This is out of kilter. This is this feels like a stage
[53:26] actor who's just really, really knows what he's doing.
[53:29] Anyone else but Mercy, this film would have failed.
[53:32] I'm putting it out there. Anyone else with him, it would
[53:35] have. I can't imagine anyone else
[53:37] apart from Mercy being so despicable and so lovable at the
[53:42] same time, where you just kind of like, feel sorry for him, but
[53:44] you're like, oh, God, I don't want anything to do with him.
[53:46] I don't know anyone else who could have done that.
[53:47] He's great. Yeah.
[53:48] How funny is that saying where you realize he's rehearsing the
[53:51] speech to wait about Jeez, jeez, it's jeez.
[53:55] Wait, it's. It's my wife.
[53:58] It's Gene. Wait, it's Gene.
[54:01] And it's like normally, oh, wait.
[54:03] And then when he finally rings up, he gets to the reception.
[54:07] He's just like, wait, gonna please, doesn't get straight
[54:13] through. Unlike the rest of the cast,
[54:16] William H Macy wasn't the actor wanted for the role of Jerry
[54:18] Lundergaard. Bill Pullman turned down the
[54:21] role, and Richard Jenkins was being lined up for it.
[54:24] That is, until H Macy went to the extreme lengths to lobby for
[54:27] it that you mentioned. Matt.
[54:29] Yeah, Prior to this, he was cast to play in the part of the state
[54:33] trooper who Paul, Carl and gear over.
[54:36] And he read for Jerry twice and was certain that he was the
[54:38] right man for it. But the corns didn't, and they
[54:40] shoot out to New York to do auditions for the role.
[54:43] And H Macy followed them out there, crashed the auditions and
[54:47] told them that casting someone else would be a big mistake.
[54:49] It would screw up the whole film.
[54:51] True. And the clincher was I'll even
[54:54] kill your dog because Ethan had just got a new puppy.
[54:57] I'll kill that little fucker as well.
[54:59] Like John Wick? The character of Jerry was named
[55:04] after Minneapolis movie critic Bob Lundergaard.
[55:07] He was at an early screening of the film with the corns in
[55:09] attendance, and he approached them and told them that they'd
[55:11] be hearing from his lawyers in the morning.
[55:14] Nice H Macy brought a lot to the character.
[55:17] Unusual for a corn script because that is very much
[55:20] written and finished without any changes made during filming.
[55:24] It was his suggestion to have Jerry practice his speech to
[55:26] Wade before calling him like we just mentioned.
[55:28] And Jerry's doodling on his I Love Golf notepad, which is
[55:33] amazing. That came as a result of H Macy
[55:38] doodling in between takes. The corns thought it'd fit the
[55:41] character perfectly. But.
[55:43] What was scripted was Jerry's homes and ours.
[55:45] Throughout his sentences. His stutter and false starts
[55:48] were all written down pretty much word for word and sound for
[55:52] sound. Which is unbelievable,
[55:54] especially that opening sequence at the bottom.
[55:56] And he said, well, I, you know, this is personal.
[55:58] This is, you know, and he said carries on.
[56:00] Or something else brilliant. Great, because he tried to
[56:03] deviate, didn't he? But the corns were like no, no.
[56:06] You've got it wrong, yeah. Yeah.
[56:08] And it's. Yeah, yeah, I can help, really.
[56:14] The car dealership that Jerry works at was a difficult
[56:16] location to scout because the Corns wanted the players to look
[56:19] as bland as possible, and they dismissed a lot of locations for
[56:22] being too interesting. And that true court scene near
[56:25] the start was based on an experience Ethan had at a car
[56:27] dealership. He said it was.
[56:29] He'd written it almost verbatim. Wow.
[56:32] Stiffed on the true court, you. Fucking liar.
[56:38] On the character, Macy said. I like Jerry.
[56:40] He sets the plan, he's sure it'll work, and despite all the
[56:43] information of the country, he never deviates from it.
[56:46] Gotta love somebody that has that kind of faith.
[56:48] Or on the other hand, he's as dumb as a pile of rocks.
[56:52] I'll go with the other hand, yeah.
[56:54] Yeah, you've done this right. Yeah.
[56:56] It was the role that pretty much made H Macy in the industry,
[56:59] been a kind of invisible actor since the early 80s, and this
[57:01] catapulted his career, making him a hugely respected character
[57:05] actor. So on that, we've got our second
[57:06] question from one of our patrons.
[57:09] This time it is Brian Dolan on the mic.
[57:11] Hello, Brian. Hello, Brian.
[57:13] He says William H Macy is known as a fantastic character actor,
[57:17] performing crucial second tier memorable roles in all time
[57:20] classics. Who were some of the crew's top
[57:23] three favorite character actors? In no particular order, Westie,
[57:28] you go first on this one. My three favorite character
[57:31] actors, Gary Oldman, based on True Romance, Leon and even
[57:37] Hannibal. Terrible film.
[57:38] Incredible performance from old. Yeah, I don't think he's, I
[57:41] don't think he's, he's ever brought anything bad to the
[57:43] table. Paul Giamatti, who are really,
[57:46] really like Sideways is fantastic.
[57:49] It's kind of a secondary performance, but the, you know,
[57:52] man on the moon, that's definitely a secondary
[57:54] performance. He's wonderful in that and he's
[57:56] great in Planet the Apes, even though it's a terrible film.
[57:58] But like, he's very recognizable and it really, really brings
[58:01] everything to the role. Yeah, you're right.
[58:04] And John Casal, who is basically not the finest.
[58:07] He is the the character actors character, very actor of all.
[58:11] Time. He's only been in five films.
[58:13] Imagine that you've been in five films and five films.
[58:16] A Godfather One, Godfather Two, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer
[58:20] Hunter and The Conversation. I don't need to say anything
[58:23] else. All Best pitcher nominated as
[58:25] well, Yeah. Fantastic, fantastic out there.
[58:29] Yeah, he was brilliant. Them three for me are really,
[58:31] really top draw. Great shouts.
[58:34] What about you, Matt? Yep.
[58:35] I've gone for three that never really you never really see them
[58:39] headline anything that that's kind of how when Turbulent saw
[58:42] first one is Patricia Clarkson, who she is Elliot Ness's wife in
[58:47] the Untouchables. That was a date.
[58:49] She's also the woman who eyes out in The Cave and shutter
[58:52] island. She's only got 1 scene there.
[58:53] That's an incredible scene there with DiCaprio.
[58:55] She's and stuff like Dog veil, Far from Heaven, Good night and
[58:58] good luck. Gloss and real girl easier.
[59:00] Just a great, great actress. She's in everything, isn't.
[59:02] She's in everything. I'm always really happy to see
[59:04] Patricia Clarkson turn up so her.
[59:06] Secondly, I'm going for Stephen Root, who's in a lot of Corn
[59:09] Brothers films. Actually was a great no brother.
[59:13] He's the guy who hires Woody Harrelson.
[59:15] You know, country Ford man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[59:17] Also, the blind artisan get out. The guy who bids for Daniel
[59:21] Kalu. Yeah, Grand Dodge.
[59:22] Ball. Great and.
[59:24] Dodge ball. Great and office space.
[59:27] Yeah, he's great. And office space, Yeah.
[59:28] As as Milton office space, hilariously, yeah.
[59:30] I love Stephen Root also to see him have.
[59:32] You ever seen the TV show Barry with Bill Haider?
[59:34] He's fantastic. Oh, not seen that.
[59:36] Oh, not seen. That.
[59:39] Check it out. And then third one, I think this
[59:41] this free is the ultimate one because if you don't know who
[59:45] this is, Google him. And I guarantee when you see his
[59:48] picture, you'll go, Oh yeah. That guy, yeah.
[59:51] That guy, he is the definitive that guy, and it's Philip Baker
[59:54] Hall. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[59:55] Because here's a list of credits.
[59:57] Swordiac, Orwell, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Truman, Troll, The
[1:00:00] Insider, The Rock, Ghostbusters to Midnight Run.
[1:00:03] Just an astonishing career. And he is that guy.
[1:00:06] Oh, him. And he's always fantastic.
[1:00:08] Yeah. Totally agree.
[1:00:10] Yeah. These questions right up my
[1:00:12] alley. I've probably been formulating
[1:00:14] an answer to it for the last 10 years. 10 years.
[1:00:20] Well, before we started ATRM, maybe the this whole thing's
[1:00:23] being built to put us in a situation where somebody's maybe
[1:00:26] semi interested in my answer to this question.
[1:00:28] I've orchestrated the whole thing.
[1:00:32] Who's this question from? This is from Brian Dolan.
[1:00:35] Brian, did you get an e-mail from Luke asking you to ask this
[1:00:40] question? Because I think this shit all
[1:00:42] the time. Like if I could, if I could make
[1:00:43] a film, I'd bring all of these guys back.
[1:00:45] Yeah, yeah. I think about it all the time
[1:00:47] and I probably mentioned a lot of the over the last few years
[1:00:50] and I've got a short list, but I've narrowed it down to three.
[1:00:53] Thank God, OK. You'll know the first one.
[1:00:55] OK. Guzman.
[1:00:57] Guzman, Louise Guzman. Louise Yes, yeah.
[1:00:59] Amazing. I just can't get enough of them.
[1:01:02] Carly does wear the Limey traffic, the hardware.
[1:01:04] I love them in that guy needs to come back.
[1:01:07] He. Does.
[1:01:07] Yep, he does. Second one, Keith David,
[1:01:10] obviously. Keith David.
[1:01:11] Great. Thing.
[1:01:13] But he's a platoon. They live really funny and
[1:01:16] something about Mary. I love them in Men At Work.
[1:01:18] How to get the Franks about the beans, The beans about the
[1:01:21] frank? Is it the Franks are the beans?
[1:01:24] Just fucking. You, Ted.
[1:01:27] Fucking you, Ted. Brilliant.
[1:01:29] Yeah, he's great. And the third one is Michael
[1:01:33] Imperioli. Love him, Spider and Goodfellas.
[1:01:37] He's amazing as Christopher and The Sopranos, obviously, but if
[1:01:40] his name pops up in any credits, I'm happy with that.
[1:01:42] He's in Trees Lounge, got a really small but really
[1:01:45] memorable role. Like it's a sleazy porn owner in
[1:01:48] Summer of Sam, and he's recently in one night in Miami as well.
[1:01:52] Oh. He wants to.
[1:01:53] Great in trees lounge. Yeah.
[1:01:56] Totally forgot about that. He's brilliant now.
[1:01:58] It's grateful. So there's the three and I think
[1:02:01] 3 strong choices from all of us. Yeah, yeah.
[1:02:03] Yes, yeah, I thought you're going to sit and three strong
[1:02:05] choices from me. I was told you I thought you was
[1:02:09] going well. Matt, I'm totally bought that.
[1:02:11] Yeah. And three really strong choices
[1:02:15] from me. Which is why I went last last.
[1:02:17] Oh geez. Or just just keep it still back
[1:02:23] there, lady. You're also going to have to,
[1:02:25] you know, to shoot you. OK.
[1:02:28] OK, right. OK, OK, OK.
[1:02:30] OK. So our final cast member, we're
[1:02:33] moving over to Steve Buscemi as Carl Shawalter.
[1:02:37] I'm going to go first with Buscemi.
[1:02:38] Here we go. Here we go.
[1:02:41] There's no doubt in my mind that Carl is doomed from the gecko.
[1:02:44] Yeah. The coins tell you as much.
[1:02:46] When Shep says that he doesn't voucher him, Don't know him,
[1:02:48] don't voucher. Don't vouch for.
[1:02:50] Him and I. Love that he tries to play it
[1:02:52] all cool, very professional, but increasingly loses his cool
[1:02:56] after the roadside shooting and he gets louder and louder and
[1:02:59] more aggressive, more sweary, and when he goes to the car park
[1:03:03] at the airport and loses his mind when he has to pay a four
[1:03:05] pound $4.00 to get out. Yeah.
[1:03:08] Absolutely loses his mind, but he's nowhere near as smart as he
[1:03:11] makes out. Why didn't he just come up with
[1:03:13] an excuse for not using the parking lot?
[1:03:15] Fucking clip on tie. Yeah.
[1:03:20] Fucking big man, huh? Instead, he says that he's
[1:03:23] decided not to park now he's decided not to take the trip
[1:03:26] instead. It turns out, after mumbling
[1:03:28] through his words. Why didn't you just say I've had
[1:03:30] an important phone call, I have to go or something, anything of
[1:03:33] that nature. But just not coming up with
[1:03:35] anything just shows how stupid he is.
[1:03:37] Yeah, I mean, he's just got this really just semi generally, he's
[1:03:39] just got this really expressive face and he can tell a million
[1:03:43] stories through not seeing anything.
[1:03:45] And he's pretty much amazing at anything he's in.
[1:03:47] And. Two scenes that really stand out
[1:03:49] for me and the first is well, I'm going to say it.
[1:03:52] It's the where is pancakes house scene.
[1:03:55] Brilliant. It's amazing.
[1:03:58] Yeah. Ask where where's pancakes house
[1:04:00] and Carl is dumbfounded. Yeah, so we we had kitchen
[1:04:03] breakfast, pancakes for breakfast when it goes somewhere
[1:04:06] where we get a shot of be and maybe a steak.
[1:04:08] No more fucking pancakes. Can't believe it.
[1:04:14] I just think it's hilarious that Gay wants to have pancakes 2
[1:04:17] meals in a row. It's insane and he can't believe
[1:04:20] it. Carl's mind is blown.
[1:04:22] Yeah. And I'm sure we can all relate
[1:04:24] to this situation in the car a little later.
[1:04:26] We're in a position where we're trying to drum a conversation
[1:04:29] with somebody that we don't particularly know the person
[1:04:32] that well. And there's nothing coming back.
[1:04:33] And it's excruciating. And he tries to play it nice
[1:04:36] About the Sears building. You ever been to Minneapolis?
[1:04:39] But then he's just had enough say, whoa, Daddy, stand back,
[1:04:44] man, that's a geyser. And then he's still trying to be
[1:04:50] quiet. What continues talking.
[1:04:52] See how you like it. Just total fucking.
[1:04:54] Silence. Fucking silence.
[1:04:56] Do you like? That game smart guy.
[1:04:58] Total fucking silence. It's the bit where it's got too
[1:05:03] much from and he just goes would it kill you to say something
[1:05:06] like you can just you can feel the frustration it's been
[1:05:09] building and building. Would it kill you to say
[1:05:12] something? I did, and I love the scene when
[1:05:18] he opens up the briefcase. For a moment you think it's
[1:05:20] going to maybe be a ringer, like Big Lebowski stuff for the
[1:05:23] newspaper or the Whites. The whites.
[1:05:26] And then we find out that it is the $1 million when Carl was
[1:05:30] only expecting 80 grand. He can't believe his eyes.
[1:05:33] It's amazing with these, with that amazing wound on his face.
[1:05:37] Yeah, great. Brilliant.
[1:05:39] Love it. Matt, what do you think about
[1:05:41] Buscemi as Carl? One of those performances where
[1:05:44] you can tell a role is written specifically for certain actor,
[1:05:47] which this was because he just gives you everything you need
[1:05:49] from Carl. And I think it's written
[1:05:51] specifically for Buscemi because he does have that mortar mouth
[1:05:54] to him. He does have that ability to
[1:05:56] deliver dialogue really rapidly. And I think it's just a typical
[1:06:00] cornstroke to take him and stick him with another character who
[1:06:03] barely says a word. Because the other funny thing
[1:06:06] about Buscemi is great it being frustrated and funny at the same
[1:06:10] time. And call on a short fuse
[1:06:12] throughout this whole film. Frustrated to Joey for being
[1:06:15] late, frustrated at gear for not seeing anything.
[1:06:18] Frustrated that the TV doesn't work in the cabin.
[1:06:20] Gets really angry at that. Give me some ozone.
[1:06:23] Give me a fucking signal. The big device is the film after
[1:06:26] this and he constantly gets told to shut the fuck up.
[1:06:28] Yeah, lovely not. Yeah, fantastic stuff.
[1:06:33] Frustrated that parking lot attendant Princess and he pays
[1:06:35] the $4.00. Frustrated that way it turns up
[1:06:37] later and said a Joey with the money.
[1:06:39] Frustrated again with gear that he insists that the split the
[1:06:42] Sierra as well as the money. And the more frustrated he gets
[1:06:45] the funnier he gets. And he's also an active app for
[1:06:49] me. It's a weird thing, but the more
[1:06:51] physical punishment he gets. It's also funny like when when
[1:06:55] chef barges in on him and the prostitute having sex and starts
[1:06:57] whipping them all over without belt.
[1:07:00] Hilarious stuff like especially goes hey, smoke a fucking peace
[1:07:03] by like every time absolutely addicted that by and it's the
[1:07:17] same when you get shot in the face because that happens like
[1:07:20] not really near the end. See you're watching like quite a
[1:07:23] bit of the film after that trying to complete the deal,
[1:07:25] give gear his off the money and get the hell out of there.
[1:07:28] Although I deal with this like big spurt and wounds coming out
[1:07:31] of his jaw and it never you should.
[1:07:33] See the other guy. Brilliant.
[1:07:36] The other guy. Never stops being funny, as does
[1:07:40] the fact that he's constantly referred to as being funny
[1:07:43] looking, but in a really generic way.
[1:07:45] Nor can really decide what's funny looking about him.
[1:07:47] Yeah, I think he's he's fantastic.
[1:07:49] Like you say, look nowhere near as clever as he thinks he is.
[1:07:52] There's no need for him to try and bribe that state trooper,
[1:07:55] which kicks off the the killing spree, which gets the cops on
[1:07:58] the tail. And no need to have that
[1:08:01] argument with the parking lot attendant.
[1:08:02] That just makes him stand out even more.
[1:08:05] And then you find out later he's gone up to random people in bars
[1:08:08] asking where he can find a prostitute because he's going
[1:08:10] crazy up at the lake. So he's given away where he's
[1:08:12] hiding out, he's. Exactly.
[1:08:14] Going crazy up at the lake. Crazy, crazy up at the lake.
[1:08:18] And he when he gets somebody hanging out at the celeb lounge
[1:08:20] watching José Feliciano, he's an absolute idiot.
[1:08:24] That's so good. It's so funny.
[1:08:26] Hero business? What kind of business totally
[1:08:28] bodies with that question? Yeah.
[1:08:30] In and out, in and out. Yeah.
[1:08:33] He's amazing in this, though. What?
[1:08:35] Do you think of a Westie? What do I think of Buscemi?
[1:08:38] Name a bad Steve Buscemi performance.
[1:08:41] I'll wait. It can't impossible.
[1:08:43] He's been in some terrible films, but he's never been
[1:08:46] terrible. I've never, ever seen him bad.
[1:08:49] It's just the perfect rule for him, and he knows exactly what
[1:08:52] he's doing. He nails the comedy, he nails
[1:08:54] the velocity of the character. He nails the there's a real
[1:08:57] tension there. He nails that.
[1:08:59] You want to be involved in what he's doing and you shouldn't
[1:09:02] want to. He's a very likeable character,
[1:09:04] even though he's quite despicable, and I think that's
[1:09:07] his kind of genius in in the way that he brings that to every
[1:09:11] single role. He's a very natural actor for me
[1:09:14] and I think he really adds so much more than he should.
[1:09:18] And even when he's shot, he should be.
[1:09:20] When you see people shot, they're out the film.
[1:09:23] Normally that's it, they're done, they're out the film, he's
[1:09:25] in the film. When he's been shot, he's even
[1:09:27] better. When he's wounded and he pulls
[1:09:29] that thing off and he puts another bit on, it's like paper
[1:09:32] and like goes on there and he's like just open the fucking bar.
[1:09:35] It's just OK. Buscemi is up there with
[1:09:39] Mcdormand of let's just like brilliant.
[1:09:42] Absolute brilliance and absolute watchability.
[1:09:45] Fantastic performance. Yeah, incredible stuff.
[1:09:49] His character has got more than 150 lines of dialogue, in
[1:09:53] contrast to his near silent partner.
[1:09:55] Yeah, do you know how many lines he has?
[1:09:58] 17. Oh Matthew 1 off 16 I think 10
[1:10:02] times more lines than she just still there Fury.
[1:10:07] Is 15. I said you said, you said 17.
[1:10:09] All right. Yeah.
[1:10:10] Oh, Matt, you're one off. Oh, Wesley, you can fuck off.
[1:10:12] All right. Cheers.
[1:10:14] Wesley Yoga was shit. I didn't hear you were seen.
[1:10:17] To bounce yourself there, didn't you?
[1:10:18] You were both one off. OK, thanks very much.
[1:10:23] Another reference to other corn films.
[1:10:26] You mentioned Donnie been told to shut the fuck up in Big
[1:10:28] Lebowski. Brilliant.
[1:10:30] And we mentioned I have a No Country episode but the hard
[1:10:32] shell suitcase that he buries the money in.
[1:10:35] It's the same bag used for the ill gotten gains in No Country
[1:10:38] for All Men. Yeah.
[1:10:39] Yeah, all right. Lovely.
[1:10:41] Very nice. And on Peter Snowmare, he later
[1:10:44] formed a band called Blonde from Fargo.
[1:10:47] Nice, great, great. Name.
[1:10:53] So as usual for a corn film, the actors were perfectly cast, with
[1:10:57] the majority of performances career highs for all involved.
[1:11:01] Definitely. This episode of All the Right
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[1:13:36] The middle. Up to this point in the film,
[1:13:40] Jerry comes home to find Gene kidnapped and he makes a fake
[1:13:44] emotional phone called weird. The first thing that we're
[1:13:47] looking at here is a big one, an execution type deal involving a
[1:13:50] state trooper and some unfortunate passers by.
[1:13:53] And I want to start by talking about the opening of the scene
[1:13:57] with a cop car appearing in the rear view right at the start of
[1:14:00] the scene. It's absolutely hilarious when
[1:14:02] Gene's whimpering in the back and Gears had enough.
[1:14:07] It just shouts shut the fuck up, I'll throw him back in the
[1:14:10] trunk. You know he's absolutely fucking
[1:14:13] Fury. Shut the fuck up.
[1:14:15] He is the only person who'll be shoot should be saying those
[1:14:18] words that that actor. It's amazing.
[1:14:21] So much menace behind it. And Carl Carl's just having a
[1:14:25] will of a time since more than he's said all week and he's a
[1:14:30] nihilist. He's.
[1:14:30] A nihilist he loves. It when Carl tries to play it
[1:14:37] all cool, the tags, he's got to put the tags on the car and
[1:14:40] there's that line which is it's all in semis delivery where he
[1:14:43] says to Jean in the back, just keep it still back there, lady,
[1:14:48] or else we're going to have to, you know, shoot.
[1:14:50] You shoot. Yeah.
[1:15:01] His expression here is a joy, really good physical act on the
[1:15:04] way that he moves his face around, like I was saying in the
[1:15:07] last segment. And he says to Gear that he'll
[1:15:10] take care of it, and he does. And Gear doesn't believe one
[1:15:13] word of what he's saying, but he doesn't utter a word himself
[1:15:17] about that. It's all in the physical act in
[1:15:19] between the two. I think it's fantastic.
[1:15:21] Stuff, Yeah. I love it when they're finally
[1:15:25] pulled over and Basham, he's like, leave it to me, I'll sort
[1:15:27] this out. And the cop comes up.
[1:15:30] He does that really like license registration, just new cars,
[1:15:33] like, yeah, it's still got that smell and he just the whole
[1:15:35] sniff up. Brilliant.
[1:15:42] And it's just that brilliant the way you don't see the identity
[1:15:45] of the cop as well. I think it's fantastic.
[1:15:47] And that flashlight going on gear and it's just that he's
[1:15:49] just looking straight ahead, but you got that light on the side
[1:15:53] of his face where you should be turned into it.
[1:15:54] But he doesn't. He's just completely fixed in
[1:15:57] what he wants to do. And he knows you know exactly
[1:15:59] where this is going. You kind of as an audience go
[1:16:02] shit from that point. And then when he gives him the
[1:16:05] wallet license of registrations there and he's got like that
[1:16:07] fifty poke and I open it and said, what's this, Sir?
[1:16:09] It's my license registration. We've got that note popping out
[1:16:12] and he's just take that, forget about it.
[1:16:15] And you just think that's a brilliant piece of rice and put
[1:16:17] that back in your pocket. And it's just, it just ramps up
[1:16:22] this tension between them. And it's just so well played and
[1:16:25] so well shot because it's all kind of like single shots, but
[1:16:28] it builds and builds and builds and builds.
[1:16:31] And then when he actually gets shot, when gear gets that gun
[1:16:34] out of the glove box and he's like, bang and the blood spurts,
[1:16:38] you just go, what, what, what, what film is this?
[1:16:42] This is brutal. I didn't see this coming.
[1:16:45] And it's just, it's so unrelenting and it's so in your
[1:16:48] face. You kind of like stop a second,
[1:16:50] you kind of go, this could go anywhere, this phone could go
[1:16:53] anywhere and you're like, what? You're about what, 40 minutes
[1:16:56] in? The corns know exactly what
[1:16:59] they're doing and how impactful that is and how stupid that is
[1:17:03] from gear to have the blood all over the car.
[1:17:07] It's just it's stupidity. It's all stupidity, but he sits
[1:17:10] back in the seat as if he's just like solved the problem and then
[1:17:14] he tends to bruschem. He's like, you'll deal with
[1:17:16] this, but he's dealt with it worse than Bruschem.
[1:17:19] He did. This is brilliant.
[1:17:21] This is brilliantly played between the two actors.
[1:17:23] I think it's really brilliantly done.
[1:17:25] Buscemi is great, full compliance.
[1:17:28] Maybe we can take care of it here and bring it.
[1:17:37] Whoa, whoa, daddy. Daddy.
[1:17:43] Life imitating Artie. Yeah, well, to a certain degree
[1:17:46] anyway. After shooting this scene, the
[1:17:48] cast and crew decided to get some early morning pancakes.
[1:17:50] Whereas pancakes house, obviously.
[1:17:52] Obviously. And Busemi drove to the Pancakes
[1:17:54] House with Storm Airs as a passenger.
[1:17:56] He missed the turn for the restaurant, performed an illegal
[1:17:58] U-turn and wound up going the wrong way down a one way St. and
[1:18:01] was pulled over by the coppers. Like the film, Buscemi couldn't
[1:18:05] provide the car's registration because it was a rental, but
[1:18:09] that's where the similarities end.
[1:18:10] He managed to sweet talk his way out of getting a ticket, which
[1:18:13] just almost surprised he didn't know how we got out of it.
[1:18:17] DLR Players. I think the Cubs were just
[1:18:21] baffled by the whole story that Buscemi laid down for them, but
[1:18:23] both still Mayor and Buscemi were certain that it was a prank
[1:18:27] set up by the Corns. But it wasn't right.
[1:18:29] Imagine. Yeah, I think the change in torn
[1:18:33] he had so nimbly done because everything up to now was being
[1:18:36] just quite funny. It still got a little bit of
[1:18:38] seriousness underneath all, but it's been funny.
[1:18:41] But now once he kills that cop, it's very, very serious, and
[1:18:45] even more so when he goes after that unlucky couple who just
[1:18:48] happened to drive by in the expression.
[1:18:50] On that, he's driving. Yeah, but you're just look at
[1:18:57] Guerre and so far he's being this weird guy, barely says
[1:19:00] anything. So you don't know what he's
[1:19:02] about. You don't know why he's even
[1:19:03] involved in this because he's he's not bringing anything to
[1:19:05] it, really. But you see, actually he's so
[1:19:08] quick just being an action now, killing the cop, turning that
[1:19:11] car around and hunting them down.
[1:19:13] I think the camera works fantastic.
[1:19:14] All those slow down shots to show the car speeding along.
[1:19:18] Fantastic. It's in the dead of night, so
[1:19:20] there's no St. lights which are lit by the headlights in the
[1:19:22] car. And I love that shot where yeah,
[1:19:26] just pulls past the car. So it's all for turned and he
[1:19:28] because he he doesn't quite work out what's happened because the
[1:19:31] lights just go off. But then he pulls past and he
[1:19:33] sees us upturned, and it's in that.
[1:19:35] Field the red light. The red, well, the red light, I
[1:19:38] mean, this is where he realized that this guy is really bad news
[1:19:41] and he isn't the Comic Relief that you maybe thought he was
[1:19:43] because the red light. And it just gives him this real
[1:19:47] demonic look and he takes that guy running a way out just for
[1:19:50] one shot. But the bit that always gets me
[1:19:52] that I think is the most horrible bit in the film.
[1:19:55] So when he just looks in the Uptown car and you see the
[1:19:57] female passenger stuck in her seat and she can't get out and
[1:20:00] just. Calm as Anthony just kind of
[1:20:02] steps back and just takes one shot, takes her out and then.
[1:20:06] Cuts to black. Cut to black and that gunshot
[1:20:10] echoes for ages. That gunshot echoes because the
[1:20:13] whole film changes from here on in and all that read from the
[1:20:18] headlights, the fact that the male victim, he's ran a red
[1:20:20] cord, all contrasting to the snow round.
[1:20:22] Really. Chill and stuff, but do you know
[1:20:24] who plays the male victim or the guy who tries to run away?
[1:20:28] No. It's a guy called Jay Todd
[1:20:29] Anderson, who he was. He's a storyboard artist for the
[1:20:32] Corns and just got him in to do this role.
[1:20:35] But if you watch the credits, it's really strange because he's
[1:20:37] credited not as his name. He's credited, as you know, when
[1:20:40] Prince turned his name into a symbol.
[1:20:42] He's credited as that in the credits.
[1:20:45] It's really bizarre. Yeah.
[1:20:47] Well, he's a storyboard artist to just draw your name, yeah.
[1:20:50] The only link is is perhaps the fact that Prince was born in
[1:20:54] Minnesota like the corns were. Yeah, that Prince thing, it had
[1:20:58] certain pockets of people wondering if this actually was
[1:21:01] Prince who played the game. Which is.
[1:21:05] Pockets of people. Morons.
[1:21:08] People who don't like. Prince looks like yeah.
[1:21:11] But it is rumoured that Prince did want to play a small part in
[1:21:14] the film because he's from Minneapolis, but it didn't work
[1:21:17] out for whatever. Reason.
[1:21:18] Fucking great if he got shot in the back running in a bit of
[1:21:22] purple pocket. Would have to be purple, not red
[1:21:25] eye. Pardon my hand.
[1:21:33] You'd be wearing a Raspberry RIN or Doubt.
[1:21:36] Yeah, yeah, crushed in a little red Corvette.
[1:21:41] Got them in there. So José Feliciano.
[1:21:43] That would have been brilliant. That would have been perfect
[1:21:45] that. Would have been great, yeah.
[1:21:47] When Guerre speeds off to catch the onlookers, he says something
[1:21:52] in Swedish. The character is Swedish, he
[1:21:54] says. Yavlafita.
[1:21:57] Any idea what that translates to?
[1:21:59] Nope. Don't have a clue?
[1:22:00] It translates to and I can't really see it.
[1:22:04] FNC. All right.
[1:22:06] OK, yes, that one. Wow, yes, we'll beat that out.
[1:22:14] The word that you've never let me see yet on any episode.
[1:22:17] Keep putting it out. That's that's because you can't
[1:22:20] drop C bombs. It's not accepted.
[1:22:26] Halo, do you hear the one about the guy couldn't afford
[1:22:29] personalized plate, so he went and changed his name to J3L24-O
[1:22:33] Four. Yeah, that's a good one.
[1:22:36] For the next scene, we'll focus on our attention on the
[1:22:38] introduction of a heavily pregnant small town cop, Marge,
[1:22:42] son of a Gunderson. It was called the crime scene of
[1:22:45] the roadside shooting. Matt, do you want to start us
[1:22:47] off? Yeah, I'd love to, because what
[1:22:49] an amazing introduction March gets here.
[1:22:51] This heavily pregnant police officer really thick accent but
[1:22:55] not perturbed for second by watch his face with her and I
[1:22:58] think it's really interesting she gets to the crime scene Lou
[1:23:00] is already there he's gone nowhere near the corpses he
[1:23:04] doesn't want anything to do the by March straight in there
[1:23:06] here's. The second one.
[1:23:08] Yeah, she's thrilled to see that he's got a cup of coffee for her
[1:23:11] as well. Yeah, she's.
[1:23:14] Yeah, straight in there. And it's so it's this instant
[1:23:17] look at a character and you realize underneath this kind of
[1:23:20] vaguely comical exterior, smart as a whip, because as soon as
[1:23:23] she's there, she works out what's happened instantly.
[1:23:25] You know, the two corpses they related to the killing of the
[1:23:27] state trooper identifies the fact that there's two different
[1:23:30] killers because of the shoe sizes.
[1:23:32] So one of them stayed behind, the other one took off in the
[1:23:34] car, then came back to the other guy.
[1:23:36] Just fantastic. And the job just gets it like
[1:23:38] that straight away. Incredible.
[1:23:39] But in amongst that, you've got that really funny, very folksy
[1:23:43] dialogue, you know, calling it an execution type deal.
[1:23:47] Execution type deal and a sip of coffee.
[1:23:50] Brilliant. Looking at the shoe size and say
[1:23:52] and he looks like a big fella. He's a really, really like on
[1:23:58] cynical take and all the bloodshed and and not and even
[1:24:01] nature that just got never stop shining through.
[1:24:03] I love when she checks out the state troopers body and she's
[1:24:06] like, oh, he looks a nice enough guy to real shame.
[1:24:10] Just you know, that's his Marge all over.
[1:24:12] Just generally sorry for the guy.
[1:24:14] Yeah, so I've never seen a cop like March before in the film
[1:24:17] having morning sickness while looking at the bloody cops.
[1:24:20] You see something down there, Budgie Barf.
[1:24:29] Just a great introduction to the character.
[1:24:31] And the other thing I like about the scene is one of the very few
[1:24:34] times the corn slit and odd Lipstein, because when she
[1:24:37] supports the car, she kind of takes a stumble and a foot goes
[1:24:40] down in a hall Snow's covered. I love that she looks back in
[1:24:42] surprise. That was a genuine stumble by
[1:24:45] Mcdormand one which is why she looks back and the guy playing
[1:24:48] new goes. Watch your step, Margie.
[1:24:50] Yeah, I was improvised and the course left to dance I thought
[1:24:52] was really funny. Great.
[1:24:54] Yeah, that's a great piece of. Well, maybe not acting, but she
[1:24:57] looks around to see if Lou has actually seen a trip over.
[1:25:00] Yeah. Brilliant.
[1:25:01] Yeah, watch your step, Audrey. I love that Marge knows what
[1:25:06] happened by the the side of the road as soon as she gets there.
[1:25:10] This happened, this happened, then this happened shows just
[1:25:12] how smart she is and she obviously very good at her job.
[1:25:15] Like Jerry, she's not really what she seems, but on a
[1:25:18] different level. She appears a little simple and
[1:25:21] a little homely, which you know, she is.
[1:25:24] But she's got a smart brain and she's nobody's fool.
[1:25:26] Yeah, love that. Yeah.
[1:25:27] And that ties in with the moment in the car with Lou, who gets it
[1:25:31] all wrong with the dealer plates.
[1:25:33] DLR I'm not sure I agree 100% with your police work there Lou.
[1:25:39] Fantastic. Fucking brilliant.
[1:25:41] Yeah, 100% with your police work there, Lou.
[1:25:43] Oh, Lou. Oh yeah.
[1:25:46] Oh yeah, Lou's fucking crap, isn't he?
[1:25:48] He's terrible. Say, Lou, did you hear about the
[1:25:51] one about the guy who couldn't avoid personalized plates, so he
[1:25:54] went and changed his name to J3L24-O?
[1:25:56] Four. Yeah, that's a good one.
[1:26:00] That's a good one. Still doesn't get it.
[1:26:06] So not only is she the smartest out of her and norm, she's
[1:26:09] probably the best cop that they have on the force if lose
[1:26:11] anything to go by. Obviously.
[1:26:13] And it's just a nice little character moment, which gives us
[1:26:16] further insight into her as a person because she's she's
[1:26:20] saying Lou hasn't done the right thing.
[1:26:21] He isn't. He's not doing his job well, but
[1:26:23] she's kind of cushioned the blow with the job.
[1:26:24] Doesn't want him to feel bad about it.
[1:26:26] Exactly. Yeah.
[1:26:28] And also gives further insight into her as a copper of how
[1:26:31] smart that she really is. And she's on the ball.
[1:26:33] Love it. Yeah, brilliant.
[1:26:35] Fantastic. It goes from this incredible
[1:26:37] scene to another incredible scene where they're in the diner
[1:26:40] and you've got Macy sitting there with Weird and the lawyer,
[1:26:43] and they're all trying to, like, figure out what's going on,
[1:26:46] what's going to happen, what's going with the drop?
[1:26:48] Can this guy be trusted? And for me, this is Macy's best
[1:26:53] performance in the whole film. Just this sequence.
[1:26:56] It's very, very short, but it's very, very good.
[1:27:00] The way he's just, you know exactly what he's doing as an
[1:27:03] audience and you're watching it and you're just kind of like
[1:27:06] rubbing your temples, just being like, oh Jesus Christ, stop
[1:27:09] saying stuff. And then the the lawyers on his
[1:27:12] side. So he's kind of got this fire in
[1:27:15] his personality, but he's like, as long as this guy knows what
[1:27:18] I'm on about, then that's fine. But yeah, and he's like, oh, no
[1:27:21] way, Wade. Oh no way.
[1:27:22] He's like, we're going to bubble off of them.
[1:27:24] Like we'll give them like half a million.
[1:27:26] Oh, no way. Oh, oh, Oh no.
[1:27:27] But there we go. We've got to do this.
[1:27:29] We're playing the ball and we've got to do that and just step
[1:27:32] back and forth between them and he's right in the middle of the
[1:27:34] frame kind of cutting them all in is that way.
[1:27:36] You know, these guys, you know, like you said, they they're
[1:27:39] calling the shots. Yeah, I love.
[1:27:41] This horrible, like going on with it.
[1:27:45] He's got nothing to say for himself.
[1:27:46] He's just playing the role and you see him playing the role and
[1:27:50] you know exactly what's going on and Macy still sells it.
[1:27:52] It's so well performed where he's right in the middle of
[1:27:55] these two guys, but he's kind of like, no, no, no, you think he
[1:27:59] might get away with it. It's just.
[1:28:01] Wonderful. Definitely.
[1:28:02] At this point you just think, right, OK, he might have got the
[1:28:04] higher ground here. This might be working.
[1:28:07] Messy is just so intoxicatingly good, it being really cringe
[1:28:12] worthy, but like you kind of buy it, but you don't.
[1:28:15] You're on his side. That's what you would do if you
[1:28:17] were in that situation. Whether you like it or not,
[1:28:19] whether you admit it or not, if you were in that situation,
[1:28:22] that's how you would act. It's it's just a brilliant
[1:28:25] sequence. I love it.
[1:28:26] He kind of gets his first break, like you were saying, Wester.
[1:28:29] You think he might get away with it with Dan?
[1:28:31] Wade's lawyer says they're holding all the cards here, and
[1:28:34] then Jerry's all over that. And then he uses his words right
[1:28:38] back at him to strengthen his argument.
[1:28:40] Like you said, Jerry, they're calling the shots.
[1:28:42] Even says the Scotty later on, like a Stan he knows.
[1:28:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great.
[1:28:48] The point? It's not.
[1:28:51] It's hilarious when Wade's just grumbling and grunting at all
[1:28:53] the things that Jerry's saying. So with the kidnappers holding
[1:29:00] all the cards, Jerry's plan seems to be going smoothly, but
[1:29:04] the circumstances have changed. You Don to the crew.
[1:29:13] We're talking about the usual suspects in the crew when it
[1:29:15] comes to a corn film. Firstly, the brothers themselves
[1:29:18] and the writers of the film. Matt, the Corns screenplay for
[1:29:22] five or what do you think? I mean, just put this in every
[1:29:26] film skill ever. Just read it and that's all you
[1:29:29] need. Just.
[1:29:31] Learn from the control. There like Screenplay, Cohens,
[1:29:36] Fargo. No, I think for me it really
[1:29:44] sings in two ways. First of all, it's the setting
[1:29:46] and the characters. And I'm actually going to be
[1:29:48] really interested to see what our American listeners have to
[1:29:51] say about it because apparently there is this thing called
[1:29:54] Minnesota and ICE, which is where people from that state are
[1:29:57] super polite and famously helpful and easy gone and always
[1:30:02] try and look at the bright side of everything.
[1:30:03] And I think it just really tickled the corns to set this
[1:30:06] murderous plot against that setting.
[1:30:08] And it's fundamentally funny and it makes it fundamentally
[1:30:11] interesting. And also, we're kind of
[1:30:13] mentioned it already, but just great character writing.
[1:30:17] March is fantastic. Jerry is so memorable.
[1:30:20] Karl and Gere, this odd couple weird, the all standouts.
[1:30:24] And they give the film this real sense of character because the
[1:30:27] plot itself, yeah, you could argue we've seen it before and,
[1:30:31] you know, in a fair few different films.
[1:30:32] But just never like this. Never with this twist, never in
[1:30:35] this second release. Characters that the corns give
[1:30:37] us. And the second rate is the
[1:30:39] language. You can just tell that the corns
[1:30:42] love language so much, and they've got such a good ear for
[1:30:45] an accent, and they've got such a good ear for the way that
[1:30:48] people talk. That really makes you laugh,
[1:30:51] even though on the page it's not the joke written down, it's just
[1:30:55] how it comes across in the language.
[1:30:57] And they do this all the time. You see it with George Clooney
[1:30:59] and or brother with them just gone.
[1:31:01] George Clooney with that accent, right.
[1:31:03] OK, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
[1:31:05] It's going to be a mask for pomade all the time, and that's
[1:31:08] going to be really funny. And it is.
[1:31:09] Goddamn paedophilia. Exactly.
[1:31:12] Yeah, on the pace, that's not funny.
[1:31:14] But Clooney, that accent, it's hilarious.
[1:31:16] Yeah. And the reliance in this script
[1:31:19] that hilarious like that. You know the the quote that I
[1:31:22] opened with, I love that whole scene where that guy goes on
[1:31:25] about how he's seen Carl and he goes and then he calls me a jerk
[1:31:28] and says up the last guy who thought he was a jerk is dead
[1:31:31] now, so don't say nothing. And he says, what do you think
[1:31:33] about that? So I says, well, that don't
[1:31:36] sound like too good a deal for him then.
[1:31:38] And it's all in that accent. It's all in the rhythm.
[1:31:42] It's. All in the down of the lake.
[1:31:46] It's just such an understanding of how language sounds and how
[1:31:50] they can use that. And then like see the plot
[1:31:53] itself quite standard in a lot of ways, but the twist to give
[1:31:56] it the characters to setting everything else, you know, you,
[1:31:59] you just look at the script and you just learn from it.
[1:32:01] It's that good at. The heart of this film is
[1:32:04] there's something that's the heart of a lot of Cohen's work
[1:32:06] is that kind of idea of crime doesn't pay or money is the root
[1:32:10] of all evil kind of thing. March layers that out in a
[1:32:13] humbling speech to gear at the end in the car, another Cohen
[1:32:18] stable kidnapping. It's a plot point that crops
[1:32:20] have been a lot of their films, usually an unusual high amount,
[1:32:24] something that Joel said fascinates them.
[1:32:27] And I think there are a lot of elements that we are kept in the
[1:32:29] dark with in the writing. We never know what kind of
[1:32:32] trouble Jerry is in really. And we don't know how Guerre and
[1:32:35] Carl are associated. Ship vouchers for Guerre but not
[1:32:38] Carl. But this doesn't really matter
[1:32:40] because it's written so strongly that me personally, I have fill
[1:32:44] in the blanks. I assume that Carl and him don't
[1:32:47] know each other too well, and I assume that jury because he's
[1:32:50] such a close that he's made a number of bad business deals
[1:32:53] presumably to show weird that he's as smart as him.
[1:32:56] And it's all just gone badly wrong and it's all accumulated
[1:32:59] to this point. And the deal that we're watching
[1:33:02] in this film is just the most recent in a long line of fuck
[1:33:05] ups by Jerry. But the main thing in the
[1:33:07] screenplay that I want to talk about it is, is regarding the
[1:33:10] scene with Mike Yanagita, Marge's old school friend she
[1:33:14] meets for a drink in Twin Cities.
[1:33:16] I just love it. Just I mean, it was captive
[1:33:19] Vern. I rewatched this for the first
[1:33:20] time in a fair few years. This scene really stood out for
[1:33:23] me. And it's odd because it
[1:33:25] shouldn't, it shouldn't work and it shouldn't fit Steve Park.
[1:33:29] He's amazed in his mic. He's absolutely incredible,
[1:33:33] totally bought into his sadness and pain and feel sorry for him
[1:33:37] all the way through. And that is until the phone call
[1:33:40] that Marge gets where a friend confirms this kind of sinister
[1:33:43] little underbelly to Mike's cuddly exterior.
[1:33:46] And on 1st watch, it appears that the scene a total
[1:33:49] departure. Completely unnecessary, but it's
[1:33:51] kind of the trigger for Marge to think what if Mike was lying?
[1:33:54] Maybe Jerry's lying, he's telling some porpy pies as well,
[1:33:57] because she's going back from coming back home from Twin
[1:34:01] Cities. She's in the car, she does that
[1:34:02] expression, her face changes and then it cuts and she's in
[1:34:05] Jerry's office. Brilliant.
[1:34:09] And and that's the film for me, peeled back the surface of
[1:34:11] middle America, or middle anywhere for that matter.
[1:34:14] And things aren't necessarily as they're presented.
[1:34:17] And I think that's important. Presented not not as they seem,
[1:34:21] but as they're presented. People will only let you know
[1:34:23] what they want you to know. The same goes for Jerry, Carl,
[1:34:26] Shep and March, to a certain extent, that their exterior lies
[1:34:30] their real self. Yeah, definitely.
[1:34:32] But, yeah, just just amazing writing.
[1:34:34] Just, I mean, I can't fault it. Westie, what about you?
[1:34:37] Beautifully complicated, like I said at the start, as all Cohen
[1:34:40] brothers films are, take you somewhere, but you never feel
[1:34:43] confused by the end of it. It doesn't spin you out.
[1:34:46] It takes you that through that place, but you feel like
[1:34:48] rewarded at the end of it. And there was a great quote from
[1:34:52] Peter Stormy and I've watched a few behind the scenes
[1:34:55] featurettes and the whole pancakes house sequence.
[1:34:59] He basically said in the first take, let's go to the pancakes
[1:35:03] house, let's go to the pancakes house.
[1:35:05] And then Ethan had the headphones on.
[1:35:07] He was like Peter, what are you saying?
[1:35:09] He's like, we're going to the pancakes house.
[1:35:10] He's pancakes house. It's just pancakes house.
[1:35:15] It's not the pancake house, it's not the pancakes house, it's
[1:35:18] pancakes house. And he's like, I thought that
[1:35:21] was a table. And then Ethan said there's no
[1:35:23] tables in our scripts, which is fucking brilliant.
[1:35:30] Which sums up the writing. That's great.
[1:35:33] It's fucking excellent. He's like, he was like on the
[1:35:35] monitor and he's like, what you're saying is like the
[1:35:37] pancakes house. Nah, Nah.
[1:35:38] There's no tables in our scripts.
[1:35:40] Fucking excellent. And that is the Coen brothers.
[1:35:42] Everything is to the letter, to the number and done and
[1:35:45] delivered. They don't really live by anyone
[1:35:48] else's precursor. They live by their own
[1:35:51] precursor. And that's why I love the Coen
[1:35:53] brothers. And that's why I love this film
[1:35:56] specifically because this was the first one that did without
[1:35:59] giving a about what anyone else thought.
[1:36:02] They're just like, well, what sort of proxy is fucked?
[1:36:04] But it doesn't matter. Let's just let's just do this.
[1:36:06] And it was a massive success. That's a real message to anyone
[1:36:11] out there who's listening to this, who is a creative and just
[1:36:14] get out there and make what you want to make because it will
[1:36:18] work. If you do it with your.
[1:36:19] Heart and soul in the right place.
[1:36:22] Don't give a fuck when anyone thinks.
[1:36:23] Just get it done and get it made.
[1:36:25] And maybe, just maybe, it'll be as good as Fargo.
[1:36:30] Doubtful. Well, I was trying to big people
[1:36:34] up there. You're like, oh, but all
[1:36:35] yourself, it's going to be shit. Maybe I said maybe, and then
[1:36:38] just maybe it'll be as good as it might be.
[1:36:41] You never might be. You don't know what's coming.
[1:36:43] Yeah, real original voices to be celebrated.
[1:36:47] And that's just from the right. Years.
[1:36:49] That's just from the right, yeah.
[1:36:50] Exactly. The coins have the habit of
[1:36:52] working on a few scripts at a time, putting one down, coming
[1:36:54] back to it months later, and Fargo was no different.
[1:36:57] They got to a point where they didn't really know where to go
[1:36:59] with it, and Joel said it was put in a drawer.
[1:37:02] It sat there for probably four or five months.
[1:37:04] We didn't think about it and then we came back and finished
[1:37:06] it just like that. No problem, yeah.
[1:37:10] At the time it was finished, they had also finished the Big
[1:37:13] Lebowski script, and they were planning to go with Lebowski
[1:37:15] first. They wanted Jeff Bridges for the
[1:37:17] Dude, but he was busy, so they went with Fargo instead.
[1:37:20] And I think that's a really kind of interesting sliding doors
[1:37:24] moments for me because if Lebowski was not a hit, I mean,
[1:37:27] it's it's massive now. It's a big cult classic at the
[1:37:30] time. It bombed at the at the box
[1:37:32] office. All of the stuff did.
[1:37:34] Yeah, well, yeah. Well, they had they had a string
[1:37:36] of it raising Arizona made money and then then this.
[1:37:41] And I just wonder how their career would have panned out if
[1:37:43] they'd reverse the release of those films.
[1:37:45] I don't would we even would they have even been able to get
[1:37:48] financing for Fargo? I just don't know.
[1:37:50] I. Don't think so.
[1:37:51] But I mean, this gave them license to do whatever they want
[1:37:53] for the rest of their careers. Exactly.
[1:37:55] You mentioned it, Matt. One of the most striking things
[1:37:57] about the dialogue is in the film is the accent of the locals
[1:38:01] of Brain IT and the surrounding areas.
[1:38:03] Having grown up in Minnesota, Joel and Ethan were very
[1:38:05] familiar with that Minnesota nice accent that you mentioned.
[1:38:09] They described it as seeming exotic to other Americans, and
[1:38:12] other people around the world for that matter.
[1:38:15] And Joel said the story could have just as well taken place on
[1:38:17] the moon. New Yorkers have the general
[1:38:20] conception of Midwesterners, but they know nothing about the
[1:38:23] cultural pockets and these micro societies with their
[1:38:25] idiosyncrasies and peculiarities.
[1:38:28] It did seem completely fresh and it seemed as though it's it's
[1:38:31] made-up. When I first watched it, I
[1:38:33] thought you can't be this exaggerated, but it is.
[1:38:37] Some of the cast members were not aware of the idiosyncrasies
[1:38:40] of the accent and worked with the dialect coach Larissa.
[1:38:43] Now pronunciation. I don't know if I've got this
[1:38:46] right, but it's spelled K OK ERNOT Coconut.
[1:38:54] Is it coconut? Can you do it in a North Dakota
[1:38:57] accent? Coconut.
[1:39:00] Hey, this Miss Coconut, you doing OK?
[1:39:03] OK, great coconut. Coconut.
[1:39:05] I mean, that's unfortunate. She.
[1:39:07] For you. She stars as one of the
[1:39:11] prostitutes that Marge interviews in the bar as well.
[1:39:14] And she said this accent comes from a place of wanting people
[1:39:16] to agree with each other and get along.
[1:39:18] And Roger Deakins thought that the two girls in that scene were
[1:39:21] putting the accent on, but they obviously actually spoke by
[1:39:24] that. And that is so over the top,
[1:39:26] that accent, it does failures or to put that on because of the
[1:39:30] accent thing. The film received a bit of a
[1:39:31] backlash from people in the area.
[1:39:33] Jewel compounded this by saying Minnesota is like Siberia, but
[1:39:37] with family restaurants just like that.
[1:39:43] It's like the northeast of England, isn't it?
[1:39:44] It's exactly the same up here. If anyone's trying to do that,
[1:39:47] our accents, it's just like, oh, they're taking the piss.
[1:39:50] We're not. We're not.
[1:39:52] We really are that nice. We dumb it down for this as
[1:39:54] well. Yeah, we do.
[1:39:55] I you have no call to get snippy with me.
[1:39:58] I'm just doing my job here. I'm.
[1:40:02] I'm not, I'm not arguing here. I'm cooperating and there's no
[1:40:08] we're doing all we can. Next on our crew list is one of
[1:40:11] the best DPS still working today, The Master, Roger
[1:40:15] Deakins, Westie. Yes, over to you.
[1:40:18] The man isn't he? He's just.
[1:40:20] The great man. The great man.
[1:40:22] I mean, I've watched so many documentaries on this, well, so
[1:40:26] many as but a handful on YouTube, which are really great.
[1:40:29] And he did the podcast on the the Deacons podcast, if you want
[1:40:34] to check that out. You did a whole episode on this,
[1:40:37] on this film, which is fantastic.
[1:40:38] But again, I just think that this is one of them things where
[1:40:42] you have to portray a place where you're not from.
[1:40:46] And I think that's the best way to do it is have somebody from
[1:40:49] the outside come in and look at it and you get a completely
[1:40:52] fresh and completely new look. And I think the only thing you
[1:40:56] can compare that there was like Wim Wenders and Robbie Mueller
[1:40:58] when they made Paris, TX. And you get that view of America
[1:41:02] from people who aren't from America.
[1:41:04] But it's very it's very familiar and it works.
[1:41:07] And I think Deakins did exactly the same and wanted to make it
[1:41:11] very observational, which he does.
[1:41:12] And I think the cinematography in this film is a supporting
[1:41:15] actor. It is part of the plot and it
[1:41:19] works. And the stuff that's lit so
[1:41:21] beautifully that shouldn't really, it shouldn't weren't
[1:41:24] looking that good. Like when the they get pulled
[1:41:26] over and the the policeman's walking towards the common
[1:41:29] buscemi is just lit with that strip of light across.
[1:41:32] Oh yes, incredible. That's just.
[1:41:33] Why? But why not?
[1:41:37] It's just fantastic because you're getting that reflection
[1:41:38] from the mirror and he's always in the mirror and it works.
[1:41:41] And it's just the staging of this.
[1:41:43] It's the framing of this. The camera doesn't move.
[1:41:46] It's nothing. You can't really say that this
[1:41:48] is one of those really exuberant films cinematography wise.
[1:41:53] You kind of just go over this is just classic Deacons.
[1:41:55] Everything is just almost like a still photograph and everything
[1:41:58] happens within the frame and the stage.
[1:42:01] And it's really, really important if you look at how it
[1:42:03] builds the characters. I mean, like I said earlier,
[1:42:05] Jerry is always ignored and he's always in a single shot.
[1:42:09] There's he's always behind people or even when he's talking
[1:42:12] to Scott, he's got he's out of shot and he's by himself.
[1:42:15] He's always isolated, he's always lonely, doesn't know
[1:42:18] where he's going. But if you look at Marge, she's
[1:42:21] always together, you know, with Norm, she's always got that
[1:42:25] relationship. She's always in A2 shot when
[1:42:27] she's talking to someone, she's always with them and like the
[1:42:30] prostitutes are framed, they're framed in A2, she's framed in
[1:42:32] A1. And then you've got that kind of
[1:42:34] back and forth, even the over the shoulders of involved Marge.
[1:42:37] And it's just so beautifully done and so beautifully
[1:42:40] realised. And I think what a lot of people
[1:42:42] won't know about this is like Dickens had like 3 lights.
[1:42:46] He had three cinema or what he called cinema lights to light
[1:42:50] this whole film and used one of them.
[1:42:52] And the only scene that's lit is the break in sequence.
[1:42:56] And that was that was on a set. So he had to light that, but
[1:42:59] most of it was just practicals. But everything else is natural
[1:43:02] light. Watch this film again, knowing
[1:43:04] that it's all natural light. And then when they get the crime
[1:43:08] scene or when they get to the first murder scene, and you can
[1:43:11] see the exposure changing throughout the whole scene
[1:43:14] because it's just shot with what's there and the bounce from
[1:43:17] the snow. And it just uses it so well.
[1:43:19] And this was shot on film as well.
[1:43:20] This wasn't shot digital, so he knows what he's doing.
[1:43:23] He's judging the exposure through the eyepiece, and it
[1:43:25] really is an absolute lesson in like, just how to tell a story
[1:43:31] through visual narrative. There's a lot that he does here
[1:43:34] without any dialogue, and I think Deakins adds a lot more
[1:43:37] dialogue to this film than the Coens do.
[1:43:40] It's just beautifully done. Wow.
[1:43:44] Yeah, Well, well, beautiful. What?
[1:43:46] What Wesley said. Oh, you.
[1:43:50] Shit head, I knew you were going to do that.
[1:43:52] I knew you were going to let Wesley go 1st and then set me
[1:43:55] up. Oh well, what do I think about
[1:43:56] it? Look really good.
[1:43:59] You don't. Have to do that that noise.
[1:44:04] It's what I feel like. You're like such a fool.
[1:44:10] I mean, it is what was she said to me.
[1:44:13] I'm not supposed to add to that. I will read what I've put down
[1:44:20] and then it will be Audrey and Luke as to how bad it sounds in
[1:44:24] contrast. So what I think deacons is
[1:44:27] doing? Sorry mate, I'm so sorry.
[1:44:29] No, don't be. Luke should be sorry, no, I
[1:44:38] think what deacons of Sunni is very clever because this is a no
[1:44:42] country for man and it isn't true great where he basically
[1:44:45] had like free license to make those films as epic in this
[1:44:49] glorious in his wide screen as he can.
[1:44:51] The point that Fargo was that everything is happening in this
[1:44:54] really mundane, really humdrum, drab little town.
[1:44:58] And that must be a really difficult thing to say to a
[1:45:00] cinematographer. Don't make this look good, to be
[1:45:03] honest. Don't make this cinematic.
[1:45:06] Yeah. And yet it still works.
[1:45:08] Despite the fact you never lose a sense of how small and
[1:45:11] essentially boring this place is.
[1:45:13] The film itself never feels like it should just be ATV movie, you
[1:45:17] know, it's absolutely if only you should go and see in the big
[1:45:19] screen if you can. And I think Deakins deserves a
[1:45:21] lot of credit for that because he's taken something that is
[1:45:24] fundamentally quite small and somehow just really opened it
[1:45:28] up. Yeah, yeah.
[1:45:30] I mean the snore plays such a vital part in in the overall
[1:45:33] landscape and the feel of the film.
[1:45:35] And when you find out that it was largely fake, snore.
[1:45:38] And that makes Deakins job so much harder.
[1:45:41] Yeah. And there were loads of
[1:45:43] incredible shots in the film. We mentioned that overhead one
[1:45:46] in the parking lot. It's incredible.
[1:45:48] The shots of Carl Bury in the suitcase is another for me.
[1:45:52] He looks just like this little dot in his vast landscape.
[1:45:56] And there's a huge contrast between the whiteness of the
[1:45:58] snore next to his actions and his deep red bloodied face.
[1:46:02] Yeah, and that scene as well, He looks left and right and you see
[1:46:04] the fence posts of the same, just continuous, credible, like
[1:46:10] Vista of nothing. It's just brilliant.
[1:46:12] So what does he mark his territory with?
[1:46:14] Is it with the scraper? Yeah, yeah, that's just going to
[1:46:20] go. You're never going to get.
[1:46:22] It something around the pole in front of you.
[1:46:24] Like grab something and tie it on, yeah.
[1:46:27] It just seems to be a match made in heaven between the Corns and
[1:46:30] Deacon. He captures their vision like,
[1:46:32] obviously amazingly well. They've built up this incredible
[1:46:35] partnership together. The Corn said that they hardly
[1:46:38] ever looked through the viewfinder during film, and they
[1:46:41] put complete trust in Deakins's DP.
[1:46:43] Haven't worked with him twice before, and the film's just got
[1:46:46] such a unique and distinct look. It's just amazing stuff, and we
[1:46:50] mentioned it briefly at the start.
[1:46:52] The production complicated by a lack of snow.
[1:46:54] The expected the usual harsh winter in Minnesota, but it was
[1:46:57] the warmest and sunniest on record, bringing the lowest snow
[1:47:01] ever. What a bummer, and they kept on
[1:47:04] moving further north and further north to catch some snow to no
[1:47:07] avail. Macy said that they often had to
[1:47:10] drink tea before takes or his breath could be seen on camera.
[1:47:13] Right. And they got around this by
[1:47:15] trucking in snow from elsewhere or using fakes?
[1:47:17] No, on the corns. Deacon said that they're so In
[1:47:19] Sync that you could ask either one of them a question and you'd
[1:47:22] get the same answer from both. Amazing, I love that.
[1:47:28] And they're so economical, they're always bringing a film
[1:47:31] in on budget because the script's done beforehand.
[1:47:33] It's storyboard to death. And as a result, they only had
[1:47:36] to do 1 reshoot in the entire film, and that was the exterior
[1:47:40] of the bar at the start because they didn't think they'd look
[1:47:43] bleak enough for the first time. That's the only reason there's
[1:47:48] only one deleted scene from Fargo, a scene where Norm goes
[1:47:51] ice fishing. Everything else that they shot,
[1:47:53] they used in the final cut. Crazy.
[1:47:56] As we've come to expect from the coins, a water type script
[1:47:59] matched with some incredible visuals from frequent
[1:48:01] collaborator Roger Deakins. And not to dismiss the music
[1:48:04] Carter Burwell composed, the music in the film take an
[1:48:07] inspiration from Norwegian folk music, which thematically ties
[1:48:11] in perfectly with the history and the culture of the set.
[1:48:13] Yeah. It's a beautiful score, it's
[1:48:15] fantastic. Fantastic.
[1:48:20] The end. Before the third act, Marge gets
[1:48:26] information from the hookers that spend time with Carl and
[1:48:28] gear. Jerry gets a call from Carl
[1:48:30] saying that blood has been shed and the deal has changed.
[1:48:33] Marge travels down to Twin Cities, pays a visit to Jerry,
[1:48:36] and meets her old school buddy Mike.
[1:48:38] Shep takes out his anger on Carl and we're looking at the scene
[1:48:42] directly after that where weird makes the drop.
[1:48:44] Yeah, And I'm going to start us off here with Carl's phone
[1:48:47] called the jury. I mentioned earlier that Carl
[1:48:50] gets increasingly angry as the film goes on.
[1:48:52] And and that is exemplified by this phone call.
[1:48:55] And the reason that he gets more and more angry is that things
[1:48:58] just go from bad to worse from it just it just never goes
[1:49:02] right. He's not equipped to deal with
[1:49:03] contingency like Jerry. And the thing that tips him over
[1:49:07] the edge here is that he's been whipped about the place by Shep,
[1:49:12] just beaten to death and Shep, who before this seemed like a
[1:49:17] mild mannered man. Marge runs through his rap sheet
[1:49:21] earlier and it's kind of hard to believe that he could be capable
[1:49:23] of those things. But in this scene he shows just
[1:49:26] how much of A mean cat that he is, smashing everybody up, even
[1:49:30] kicks the hooker in the ass on our way out.
[1:49:34] Heavy foot. Slamming that guy back and forth
[1:49:39] again against the wall like one wall and the other.
[1:49:42] Incredible. And and you know, kind of what
[1:49:45] I've been saying here to be a broken record, but that's the a
[1:49:47] theme of the film for me crops up again appearances.
[1:49:50] A deceptive ship did not display this behavior in the scenes
[1:49:53] beforehand and didn't think he was capable of it.
[1:49:55] Yeah, but the phone called the Jerry.
[1:49:57] Carl's enraged and through fucking around, he's furious.
[1:50:02] Jerry tries to butt in and Carl says, don't you fucking butt me,
[1:50:05] Jerry. Some really nice word play going
[1:50:07] on in that sentence, if you maybe mix the words around a
[1:50:10] little bit. And the final thing that I want
[1:50:13] to mention here is that Carl says 30 minutes.
[1:50:16] We're going to wrap this thing up.
[1:50:17] From that point on, it's exactly 30 minutes to the end of the
[1:50:20] film. Brilliant.
[1:50:21] Amazing. Unnecessarily.
[1:50:25] Brilliant. Doesn't need to be in there.
[1:50:28] No. And you've got the running theme
[1:50:30] through this film as well, don't you?
[1:50:31] That apart from March, no one is as smart as a thing they are,
[1:50:35] and that includes Weird. You know, Weird is yet another
[1:50:38] idiot who doesn't realize that just because he's got the run of
[1:50:41] Brainerd, it doesn't make him equipped to deal with anything
[1:50:44] outside if town. Basically, he thinks he can take
[1:50:47] charge this whole situation because he can shout Jerry down.
[1:50:51] He lets his ego take over, doesn't he?
[1:50:52] Because he's always ruled the roost wherever he's gone, and he
[1:50:55] thinks he can do the same. He's going to take ridiculous
[1:50:58] pep talk he's given himself in the car when he says I'm going
[1:51:01] to make the drop. He takes the money.
[1:51:02] OK, Easy damn money. Where's my daddy?
[1:51:04] A God damn punk while he's checking the bullets in the gun.
[1:51:08] Absolutely ludicrous. You know, he has no idea what
[1:51:11] he's letting himself in for because he's this big man in a
[1:51:14] small town. He thinks everyone will bend do
[1:51:17] as well. And it's a scene.
[1:51:18] It's got this real like feeling of impending doom.
[1:51:21] You know this isn't going to work out well for Weird.
[1:51:24] That's heightened by the music as well, isn't it?
[1:51:26] Well, that's. It I was just going to say, the
[1:51:28] music we just mentioned, it's absolutely brilliant here in the
[1:51:31] sea. So it ends up being one of those
[1:51:38] scenes where it just treads that line between tragedy and comedy
[1:51:41] really well. Because I do understand where
[1:51:44] call is coming from to some extent.
[1:51:46] Because I'm so frustrated by the stupidity of these people.
[1:51:50] You know, I gave simple fucking instructions, what with you
[1:51:54] people, you're fucking imbeciles.
[1:51:57] And then you just had enough to shoot weird just out of pure
[1:52:00] frustration, which he doesn't need to do once.
[1:52:03] He could just wound him. Get the money.
[1:52:05] But not just out of frustration, just kill some.
[1:52:07] It's horrible, but that level of frustration does make it that
[1:52:11] little bit funny as well. He just can't believe his eyes
[1:52:14] when weird comes out of that. Yeah, who the fuck are you?
[1:52:18] What else can go wrong? Fantastic when he goes up to the
[1:52:25] the security guy and get me over the.
[1:52:27] Fucking girk. Amazing all the snow at the top
[1:52:33] of this park and that was digitally added.
[1:52:35] If you look close enough, you can see that there's no visible
[1:52:37] snow beyond the parking lot on any of the surrounding areas.
[1:52:41] Right. The bit in this whole sequence
[1:52:44] is Jerry turning up thinking he's going to save the day and
[1:52:48] realize he's too late and sees Weird dead on the floor.
[1:52:53] But again, this Hawks back the cinematography that was talking
[1:52:55] about this is how you do it without dialogue.
[1:52:58] That's how you stage a visual narrative without anyone saying
[1:53:01] anything. And you get that incredible shot
[1:53:03] of Jerry just pulling up the card, stops the sound kind of
[1:53:08] drains from it. And he looks, he sees the
[1:53:10] situation, and he just pops the boot and you say, like the trunk
[1:53:14] or whatever, You see the boots come up.
[1:53:16] And then he comes, He sees the barrier has been broken.
[1:53:20] Yeah. Oh, OK.
[1:53:22] And then as he drives past really slowly, the ticket, the
[1:53:24] guy gives out the tickets like he's dead.
[1:53:26] His foots in there. He say, oh, geez.
[1:53:28] And that's the only thing that's spoken is that, oh, geez.
[1:53:31] But you just kind of get that whole thing from that moment and
[1:53:35] just how well that's told visually and just how well
[1:53:38] that's just, it's almost like European cinema in a way.
[1:53:41] It's almost like it's miles away from Hollywood because it would
[1:53:45] normally have to say, Oh my God, wait and run over the body and
[1:53:48] try and get them. And then it's just this really
[1:53:50] slow, really subtle, really brilliantly played out sequence
[1:53:55] that I think is really ballsy from the corns to do.
[1:53:57] But at the same time, this highlights that this is the film
[1:54:01] that they just wanted to make for themselves and buy into it
[1:54:04] and you get it and it works. Oh, it works all right, you.
[1:54:10] Could have my truck I'm checking Sierra.
[1:54:14] We split that. How the fuck do you split a
[1:54:17] fucking car you gummy? What a fucking train floor.
[1:54:21] Following this scene, Carl buries the suitcase and Marge
[1:54:24] finds out the truth about Mike, which puts her back on the trail
[1:54:27] of Jerry, who gives her the slip.
[1:54:29] We're looking at the sequence that starts with calming and it
[1:54:32] back to the lake house and ends with the truth finally catching
[1:54:35] up with Jerry. And I'm going to set us off here
[1:54:39] talking about when Carl comes back to the cabin, it just
[1:54:42] bursts in. You should see the other guy
[1:54:46] talking, talking through his teeth.
[1:54:49] Hilarious. He sees Jean dead on the floor.
[1:54:53] Like what happened to her? He says.
[1:54:54] Gear says, ah, she started shrieking, you know.
[1:54:57] All right, all right, fine. No.
[1:54:59] As if that's a good enough answer.
[1:55:01] Yeah, but most children of all he's just left her there to rot
[1:55:04] while he watches TV and eats TV dinners.
[1:55:07] Doesn't even bother. Shit picture as well on the TV,
[1:55:09] shit picture and shit shit thing.
[1:55:12] He's watching. I got you.
[1:55:14] I'm pregnant with your baby. It's like really small.
[1:55:17] It's a big thing, and that's the type of person that we've been
[1:55:23] dealing with all along. He couldn't give a shit about
[1:55:25] his surroundings, human life. Which is why Carl has been
[1:55:29] doomed from the start. I have the sense that throughout
[1:55:31] all his silences, he has been thinking, I can't wait to get
[1:55:34] the money so I can just shut Carl up permanently.
[1:55:37] Yeah, but Carm, I'd have gotten a way if he wasn't determined to
[1:55:40] keep the Sierra. He could have bought 100 Sierras
[1:55:43] with the money he's got. Why didn't he just let him just
[1:55:45] take the truck? There are two vehicles that TV
[1:55:48] show that's playing on in the the TV there.
[1:55:51] It's a soap soap opera called Generations.
[1:55:53] It's an actual soap opera from the early 80s.
[1:55:57] Look closely. That actor in there is none
[1:55:59] other than Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead Frame.
[1:56:01] Oh. Really nice.
[1:56:04] He and Sam Raimi have been friends with the corn since the
[1:56:07] early 80s. I think they I think the corns
[1:56:09] helped edit the Evil Dead. Yes.
[1:56:12] Oh, really? He did, Yes.
[1:56:12] Yeah, and Sam Raimi was the reason or the inspiration for
[1:56:16] the investor trailer that they made for Blood Simple.
[1:56:19] Nice. It's it's it's shot like Evil
[1:56:21] Dead. Yeah, Incredible.
[1:56:24] If you haven't seen that, that's an amazing trailer.
[1:56:26] Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's really good.
[1:56:28] One thing I love about that bit though, Luke is when he puts the
[1:56:31] money down for Guerre and he just prods it with his fork, he
[1:56:34] just like moves it around. He said this TV dinner with,
[1:56:37] like, what's that? He's just cleavy.
[1:56:40] Just not by that point, yeah. Yeah, and he's just been sat
[1:56:45] there mindlessly while Carl's been out getting shot at, doing
[1:56:49] deals, getting busted up, going to see José Feliciano.
[1:56:52] He's just been stuck where? What's he been doing?
[1:56:55] Going crazy up at the lake, obviously.
[1:56:58] I remember the first time I watched the film, though, I was
[1:57:01] very confused by what comes after, which is when March sees
[1:57:04] the the ton, Sierra so approaches the cabin because as
[1:57:08] he's seen airport. I was trying to wake up.
[1:57:09] What's that sound? What am I heaving?
[1:57:11] What's that noise? And then you get that little
[1:57:14] glimpse in the cameras pushing in.
[1:57:15] I was like, what? What is that?
[1:57:17] Is that blood? Where's that blood coming from?
[1:57:19] That's like, all right, that right, OK.
[1:57:22] Carl is being fed into the wood chipper, right?
[1:57:24] OK. It's massed by the trees a
[1:57:26] little. Isn't it is massed by the trees
[1:57:27] and I was not expecting to see that, but okay, there we go.
[1:57:30] That's what's happening and. Just that foot with the sock
[1:57:33] off. It's ridiculous.
[1:57:35] I was going to say, is there a funniest side gag in a corns
[1:57:38] film than just the little foot bobbing away?
[1:57:41] Because it doesn't mean pushed down into the woodchuck yet.
[1:57:44] He's working on it. He's.
[1:57:45] Working on it. He's down there shotgun, but
[1:57:49] really funny. But it also gets really tense.
[1:57:51] And it seems I would have mentioned Chloe Stalin on
[1:57:54] George's question because this scene, and it's partly the
[1:57:57] music, it's partly the intensity that Mcdormand brings.
[1:58:00] So you put it does remind me if Clarice gone in a Buffalo Bill's
[1:58:03] basement, just that one female cop against this mad, brutal
[1:58:07] killer. And even though I know
[1:58:09] fundamentally I'm watching the film where nothing bad is going
[1:58:12] to happen to a pregnant woman, it's still really tense until
[1:58:15] she takes him down that that one shot.
[1:58:17] And I love how brave Marge is he.
[1:58:19] It doesn't wait for the backup, just sets a draw straight, takes
[1:58:23] him out. Fantastic.
[1:58:25] And the way it finishes this whole thing, that amazing speech
[1:58:28] gives in the car to gear, which you mentioned already, Luke, you
[1:58:31] know, here you are. And it's a beautiful day.
[1:58:34] I just don't understand it. I think that's amazing.
[1:58:37] Just a wonderful thing. It's like being told off by your
[1:58:39] mom, isn't it? I'm not angry, I'm just
[1:58:43] disappointed. It just sums up what I mean when
[1:58:47] I say this film has heart. Because despite evidence she's
[1:58:49] just seen, March is still this optimistic, positive person, you
[1:58:53] know, taken joy in the fact that it's a nice day.
[1:58:56] And it's such a contrast with the films you get in the genre
[1:58:58] where time and time again you see that the detective has to
[1:59:02] get underneath the skin of the killer and he has to think like
[1:59:05] them. And it ruins the life and it
[1:59:06] makes them cynical and it it destroys the home life.
[1:59:09] But not here, not not with March as such as disappointed, which
[1:59:13] is still March is still going to go home to Norm and they're
[1:59:15] going to have a nice evening in front of the box.
[1:59:17] It's really beautifully done. It is great.
[1:59:21] Puts me in mind kind of what you see there about Marge's words,
[1:59:24] like she just doesn't get it. Puts me in mind.
[1:59:27] I've had Tom Bell echoes of him in No Country for All Men.
[1:59:30] He didn't understand sugar at all.
[1:59:32] Yeah. Gear uses a piece of wood to jam
[1:59:35] Carl's leg into the wood chipper.
[1:59:37] It was suggested by Storm as a weapon to distract Marge when
[1:59:41] she pulls a gun. Quite, quite a smart move, but
[1:59:43] the main reason he suggested it was because he didn't want to
[1:59:46] lose his fingers in the blades, so he wanted some distance
[1:59:48] between. Makes sense?
[1:59:52] And for any Budden film makers out there, the ones that Westie
[1:59:55] talked about with the ideas, just do your own ideas.
[1:59:58] If you want to create your own movie.
[2:00:00] The corns recipe for fake blood is one large jug of antifreeze,
[2:00:05] 2 packs of red Kool-aid, 1 box of strawberry flavored jello,
[2:00:09] and 1:00. Entire garbage bag of butcher
[2:00:11] shop leftovers. There you go.
[2:00:14] Actually, just have the butcher shop leftovers.
[2:00:16] Yeah, just blitz that up. You'd be fine.
[2:00:22] Despite the film dividing opinion among Fargo natives,
[2:00:25] many of the props from the film are held in the Fargo Morehead
[2:00:28] Visitor Center. One of the premium props is the
[2:00:30] wood chipper that's in there. If you pay a visit, they'll also
[2:00:33] provide you with a fake leg and a bomber hat for photo
[2:00:36] opportunities. Oh, beautiful.
[2:00:37] Very nice. Let's go, let's go.
[2:00:40] Yeah, I love that. The sequence where the police
[2:00:43] turn up at Jerry's hotel room and he's just, it's just so
[2:00:50] fucking painful. Like any sequence that in any
[2:00:53] Cohen brothers film that has a hotel room immediately engaged,
[2:00:57] like no, he's fantastic in the hotel room here.
[2:01:00] And you decide you say, Yep, Yep, OK, good, fine.
[2:01:04] So you are break in. OK, we're getting.
[2:01:05] And it's just the definition of the character, isn't it?
[2:01:08] It just sums them up perfectly. How else can you paint this
[2:01:11] character out of the film in such a way where you when you
[2:01:14] want to get these commitments, but you just think, well, how
[2:01:16] can it be done in such a way where it's really belittling for
[2:01:18] the character but quite rewarding for the audience where
[2:01:21] you don't feel sorry for him because he's.
[2:01:23] Underpants. He's yeah, he's stripped almost
[2:01:26] bare and he's trying to climb out the window, much like Jean
[2:01:29] was when she was going to get kidnapped.
[2:01:31] You know, it was like her escape that's going to be try to be
[2:01:34] his. He's trying to just weasel his
[2:01:35] way out of it. And the way that he's caught in,
[2:01:38] the way that he just shrieks when he's brought back in, it's
[2:01:40] just. Embarrassing.
[2:01:41] It is embarrassing, but at the same time you kind of this that
[2:01:44] really dark thought in your head where you go, yeah, it's exactly
[2:01:48] what he fucking deserves. And the corns do it really,
[2:01:51] really well where you don't really celebrate it, but you do
[2:01:54] personally like in your subconsciously, like really
[2:01:56] celebrate that moment. And I think that's a great
[2:01:59] scene, really well shot, really well executed and a perfect
[2:02:03] commitments for that character. Yeah, very much.
[2:02:06] I also like the just absolute lack of thought and ingenuity.
[2:02:10] He's changed his name from Gunderson to Anderson.
[2:02:15] You can just tell. He's like on a flight.
[2:02:16] You can see that moment. Can't you wait?
[2:02:17] He's at the reception. He's like, it's Jerry Anderson.
[2:02:22] It seems just like just freewheeling it.
[2:02:25] You can see it. Great, so the film ends with
[2:02:29] Marge back in the bosom of a family and in bed with Norm 2
[2:02:33] moments. Two moments, 2 moments.
[2:02:38] Reception under wards. Fargo received its first
[2:02:43] official screening in the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
[2:02:46] It was nominated for The Palm Door but lost out to Secrets and
[2:02:49] Lies. Mike Lee Joel did win Best
[2:02:53] director, though. Good.
[2:02:54] Finally, audiences got on board The Corn Brothers, Wavelength,
[2:02:58] and Fargo was a commercial hit on a budget of $7,000,000 that
[2:03:02] returned 60 million worldwide. Not in the hundreds of millions
[2:03:06] that Independence Day, Twister and Mission Impossible earned
[2:03:09] that year, but still pretty bloody good for a small budget R
[2:03:12] rated indie flick. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[2:03:14] That no one expected to do anything.
[2:03:16] Exactly. Passive success for The Coins at
[2:03:18] Last, who had a run of three films that lost money at the box
[2:03:21] office. Yeah.
[2:03:23] Oh yeah, real good. Real good.
[2:03:25] Real good. Oh, yeah, real good.
[2:03:28] Naturally, it opened to rave reviews as well.
[2:03:30] Empire, 5 out of five. I mentioned it at the top.
[2:03:33] They said, put simply, fog with blood symbol with laughs and a
[2:03:36] heck of a lot of snow. It maintains the Corns Place
[2:03:38] among America's most important film makers.
[2:03:41] Excellent. Yeah.
[2:03:43] Nice. Entertainment Weekly said
[2:03:46] dizzyingly rich, witty and satisfying.
[2:03:48] On the negative side, Richard Callas from Time magazine said
[2:03:52] that after some superb Mannerist films, the Cohens are back in
[2:03:56] the deadpan realist territory of Blood Symbol, but without the
[2:03:59] cinematic a long. A long.
[2:04:02] A long. What's that mean?
[2:04:04] Like style. Just say style then.
[2:04:07] Well, yeah, use Ponzi words like that, you're going to get called
[2:04:09] out. Exactly.
[2:04:14] And finally, Roger Ebert. What do you think he thought
[2:04:17] about Fargo, fellas? 3 1/2.
[2:04:20] Isn't it one of his favorite films?
[2:04:22] I'm sure I've read that some. It's like one of his favorite
[2:04:24] every film, so I think you have the full 4.
[2:04:26] The Big Four. Matches Son of a Gunderson it
[2:04:28] is. It's four out of four.
[2:04:30] Yeah, lovely. Point .5 off for you Wester you
[2:04:33] that's. All right, that's all right.
[2:04:34] I'm not clutching for likes. He said that Fargo is one of the
[2:04:39] best films I've ever seen. You were right, man.
[2:04:42] In fact, his partner in crime, Gene Siskel, said that he But at
[2:04:45] the first screen in a Fargo leaned over and whispered.
[2:04:48] This is why we love movies. Yeah.
[2:04:51] Nice. Nice, Very nice.
[2:04:53] On the awards, get on top of the best director at the Cannes Film
[2:04:56] Festival, Fargo, one best director of Bafta's best actress
[2:05:00] and best original screen pray at the Oscars.
[2:05:02] It was also nominated for best editing of the Oscars.
[2:05:04] And we mentioned this. The editing was we mentioned
[2:05:06] this on previous episodes. The editing was credited to
[2:05:09] Roderick James, which is a pseudonym for the Brothers Corn
[2:05:12] themselves. Had Roderick won the film for
[2:05:16] editing, Albert Finney was going to pick up the award in disguise
[2:05:19] as quotes. A fusty old British cutter from
[2:05:22] Haywards Heath. Incredible.
[2:05:26] Unfortunately they lost out to Walt Walter Murch for the
[2:05:29] English Patient. Merch is a big name, but the
[2:05:33] English. Patient.
[2:05:34] It's not a big film. That's shit.
[2:05:36] Disappeared, hasn't it? I have to chew that one.
[2:05:39] Best picture it. Did.
[2:05:41] Since its release, there has been some negativity in 1997,
[2:05:44] Branded Mayer Bonnie Cumberland said about Fargo.
[2:05:47] It's a movie that people who don't have a seem to enjoy, but
[2:05:50] for us, it's a little bit of an embarrassment, really.
[2:05:55] And in his 2006 book Stand for Something, The Battle for
[2:05:59] America's Seoul, Ohio Governor John Kish spends a whole 3 pages
[2:06:04] seeing how much he hates the film.
[2:06:06] He was recommended it by an employee of Blockbuster, and he
[2:06:10] hated it so much that he went on a crusade to have Blockbuster
[2:06:13] remove it from their shelves. He failed.
[2:06:17] Yeah. Why he felt so passionately
[2:06:19] about it. I think he when he saw the wood
[2:06:21] chipper scene, he turned to his wife, apparently, and said, what
[2:06:24] the fuck are we watching here? I'm sure he just said what the
[2:06:26] heck are we watching here? What, He lasted that far?
[2:06:29] Yeah. Yeah.
[2:06:30] It's only them decided this wasn't for him.
[2:06:32] Yeah. Well, an idiot.
[2:06:35] Failed. Failed.
[2:06:36] Failing in life. That's what he's failing in
[2:06:38] Terrible. No wonder he was never
[2:06:40] president. Despite a few negatives, Fargo
[2:06:44] became one of only 5 films to be inducted in the National Film
[2:06:48] Registry's collection of films on the first year it was
[2:06:50] eligible. Films inducted are deemed
[2:06:52] culturally and historically valuable.
[2:06:55] The other four films are Rageable, Do the Right Thing,
[2:06:57] Goodfellas, and a favorite of yours, Matt, Toy Story.
[2:07:01] Oh lovely, what company to be in?
[2:07:04] Yeah, beautiful company. So aside from a few badly judged
[2:07:09] opinions, Fargo was a big hit with audiences, critics and on
[2:07:12] the award circuit, and paved the way for the coins to do whatever
[2:07:15] they liked in the years that followed.
[2:07:17] Yeah. Sequels and influence.
[2:07:24] No sequels for Fargo, no sequels for any COIN film, and that's
[2:07:28] unlikely to change. But the film's influence can be
[2:07:30] found across cinema in the years that followed, and in a couple
[2:07:33] of unusual places as well. In 2014, the documentary Kamiko
[2:07:39] the Treasure Hunter tells the story of Tokako Kanishi, who was
[2:07:42] found dead in a field in Minnesota.
[2:07:44] The legend went that she'd travelled from Japan to search
[2:07:47] for Carl's buried suitcase full of money, believing that the
[2:07:49] film was in fact a true story. The true story itself is more
[2:07:53] tragic. She travelled to Fargo to commit
[2:07:55] suicide in the hometown of her ex lover.
[2:07:58] Wow, right? Yes, tragic story.
[2:08:00] It's a fantastic documentary. Right, OK.
[2:08:03] ATV adaptation was made of Fargo in 1997, directed by Kathy Bates
[2:08:08] and starring a pre Sopranos fame, Edie Falco.
[2:08:12] A. Pilot episode was made with the
[2:08:14] executive back end of the corns, but it was not picked up.
[2:08:17] Undeterred, a second adaptation was made in 2014 and was much
[2:08:22] better received. It got rid of reviews, continues
[2:08:25] to do so with the fifth season on its way.
[2:08:28] Each season is self-contained, set in a different time period
[2:08:31] with different actors in and around the Minnesota area.
[2:08:35] Different actors include Billy Bob Thornton, Ewen McGregor,
[2:08:38] Kirsten Dunst, Chris Rock, Carrie Coon.
[2:08:40] A nice tie into the film sees Bruce Campbell star as Ronald
[2:08:43] Reagan in the second season. Yeah.
[2:08:45] It's a hit with audiences. Is it a hit with us?
[2:08:48] I've only seen half of the first season and some of the McGregor
[2:08:52] 1 and I really enjoyed it but never went back to it.
[2:08:54] Not a reflection on the show itself, more maybe a comment on
[2:08:57] my attention span. So could you enlighten us
[2:09:01] fellas? Matt, have you seen the TV show?
[2:09:03] What do you think? Yeah, I have.
[2:09:04] I've seen all Four Seasons and I've enjoyed them all to to
[2:09:08] different degrees. It's not a consistent series.
[2:09:11] I would say I think the first is easily the best, but I think
[2:09:15] what it does, it just captures the feel of the film despite the
[2:09:17] fact it is like it's set in different times and set around
[2:09:20] different areas. It just gets the feel of what
[2:09:24] Foggo is, just the kind of offbeat nature of the characters
[2:09:27] and the bizarre nature of the crimes, which always spiral out
[2:09:31] of control. So yeah, if you haven't seen
[2:09:33] them, I'll say they're all definitely worth checking out.
[2:09:35] First is definitely the best. I once with Billy Bob Thornton
[2:09:38] and Martin, yeah. But yeah, they're all really
[2:09:41] good. I'm excited to see what they
[2:09:42] lose, the fifth one. Very nice.
[2:09:44] What about you, Westie? Yeah, I've only seen the first
[2:09:46] two seasons. I think I kind of checked out
[2:09:48] when McGregor turned up. I couldn't keep up with that.
[2:09:51] I think the Billy Bob Thornton, like you said, Matt, the Big Bob
[2:09:54] Thornton and the Martin Freeman ones are really, really
[2:09:56] excellent. Martin Freeman players that that
[2:09:59] rule very similar to Mercy. He's got that kind of vibe and
[2:10:02] he's got that family and he's got that, you know, want to do
[2:10:05] the right thing, but I'm a fuck up.
[2:10:07] Then it really, it does work. It does.
[2:10:09] It does capture the tone, especially that.
[2:10:11] I mean, I really, really enjoyed the first season, but I'm not
[2:10:14] one for TV shows really to kind of go through season after
[2:10:18] season after season and stick with it.
[2:10:19] I'd rather just the film on, to be honest.
[2:10:23] So for me, that that one was was good.
[2:10:25] It was the sequel that I needed to Fargo.
[2:10:27] It felt like. It felt like it carried on,
[2:10:30] especially over the first season.
[2:10:32] So it sounds as though worthy of the name and the reputation.
[2:10:35] Definitely the first season, definitely, Definitely.
[2:10:38] Yeah, it's fantastic. So after a false start, the TV
[2:10:41] adaptation proved just as popular with audiences, critics
[2:10:44] and the award circuit. Yeah.
[2:10:49] All the right movies ranking. The final act of the podcast is
[2:10:54] to summarise our thoughts and score it out of 10.
[2:10:57] I'll go first. I think the film is, I mean,
[2:11:01] we've talked about it, it's outstanding performances, right?
[2:11:04] And direction, cinematography, the whole 9 yards, it's pretty
[2:11:07] much flawless. So it's tricky one for me
[2:11:10] personally, I prefer quite a few other films from the corns than
[2:11:13] this one. Maybe about five others, you
[2:11:16] know, give or take. And what I've been trying to do
[2:11:19] is score the films that we cover in context of other films, say
[2:11:21] for example, in the genre. But because there are not many
[2:11:25] films like Fargo, I'm comparing it against other films from the
[2:11:28] coins. So in that respect, even though
[2:11:32] it's pretty much flawless and I've got no complaints about it
[2:11:35] at all, it has to be a nine out of 10 because I prefer No
[2:11:39] Country, I prefer Big Lebowski, I prefer or Brother even blood
[2:11:44] symbol. So there you go.
[2:11:46] Stick that in your wood chipper, Wesley, what about you?
[2:11:53] Yeah. I mean, OK.
[2:11:57] Come to terms with that. For me, like you said, as as a
[2:12:01] flawless film and I came into this one late and when I did
[2:12:04] come into it, I thought that I'd completely missed a trick and I
[2:12:08] missed this masterpiece that was put together because they really
[2:12:12] needed to make something. I really wanted to make some.
[2:12:15] There's a real energy behind this film and it really makes
[2:12:19] sense to me and I will watch it at any point.
[2:12:22] If it's on, it's watched. If it's even watch.
[2:12:25] We'll put on. You stuck for something Fargo
[2:12:28] Brilliant from start to finish, engaging from start to finish.
[2:12:31] As as a film of character actors, it's flawless.
[2:12:36] As a film from a cinematography point of view, it's flawless.
[2:12:39] As a film from a writing point of view, it's flawless.
[2:12:42] Direction point of view, flawless.
[2:12:44] Roger Ebert was right and This is why I love movies.
[2:12:49] This film is up there with anything else that I will sit
[2:12:53] down and completely trust. It's very rare that I get a film
[2:12:57] that I can just go. I don't have to worry about how
[2:13:00] I'm going to feel. I'm going to feel good after
[2:13:01] watching this. And this is one of them films.
[2:13:04] And that's the way I'm ranking my kind of views from now on.
[2:13:07] It's like it's a very personal thing.
[2:13:09] It's like, how does it make you feel?
[2:13:10] Will you watch it at any time? Is it really consistently
[2:13:13] brilliant across the board of everything?
[2:13:16] Yeah, it is. And yeah, This is why I love
[2:13:18] movies. It's a 10 for me.
[2:13:20] Powerful. Very nice, Matt.
[2:13:24] Yeah, over to you. Oh yeah, It just slips down.
[2:13:29] So easy to watch this film. And I think, I think if you
[2:13:33] watch the corns corn films in order, you get this one and you
[2:13:37] just think, God, they've nailed it now it's their world.
[2:13:41] But maybe for the first time they've taken me completely into
[2:13:45] their world. It doesn't have the the weird
[2:13:48] abrasive edge or something like Blood Simple House or raise.
[2:13:51] And I was on and I do love those films, but there's also
[2:13:53] something in those that leaves me a little bit remote from
[2:13:56] what's going in. This one pulls me into the story
[2:14:00] and they've just judged everything so well.
[2:14:03] The nor not to push the violence too far to make it off Putin.
[2:14:07] The know how to make the violence shocking but also
[2:14:09] funny, but the also not don't restrain ourselves with the
[2:14:13] accents here. Really push that.
[2:14:15] Really push the nice angle here for once, because that's going
[2:14:18] to work. And for me, a great film isn't
[2:14:21] necessarily about reinventing a genre of being the most stylish
[2:14:25] film you'll ever see. It's about getting every
[2:14:27] decision right. And everything in Fargo is just
[2:14:30] right. Performances they get from
[2:14:32] everyone, the characters, the way the plot plays out, the
[2:14:35] dialogue. It might feel small scale on 1st
[2:14:38] watch, but it's a film that just makes you come back to it again
[2:14:41] and again and again. And I think that's quite a trick
[2:14:43] in for me. Luke, I kind of take what you're
[2:14:45] saying in how you judged against the corn films.
[2:14:48] For me, this would be up there with their very best.
[2:14:50] It would be in that conversation.
[2:14:52] So for me, I think to masterpiece and it is a tent for
[2:14:54] me as well, yeah. Very nice, wonderful.
[2:14:59] OK, big scores so far. Our 4th and final score comes
[2:15:03] from our very own patrons. Another benefit you get if you
[2:15:07] sign up to support us. I've got some comments first
[2:15:10] before I give you the big score, Kim Jackson said.
[2:15:14] Well, I've never looked at a wood chipper the same way since
[2:15:17] 10 out of 10. I've never seen one anyway,
[2:15:20] yeah. I've ever seen.
[2:15:23] Well, Kim's, Kim's American, I'm sure they are 10 Penny, Sandra
[2:15:28] Tang said. Wonderfully cast and stand out
[2:15:30] career performances from Macy, Mcdormand and Stormy.
[2:15:33] One of the corns finest. Agreed.
[2:15:36] Yeah, finally, Kelly Binash said.
[2:15:39] Well this film is a masterpiece and one of my all time
[2:15:41] favourites. It's the first movie I can
[2:15:44] remember watching where the pregnant lady did not go into
[2:15:47] labour. Yeah, yeah.
[2:15:49] That's a great point. Yeah, great point.
[2:15:51] She said it was lovely to have Marge be an excellent cop who
[2:15:54] happens to be expecting 11 out of 10.
[2:15:57] Oh, nice. It makes it more a number.
[2:15:59] It makes it more powerful than she's pregnant.
[2:16:01] Yeah. So with the Patreon scores
[2:16:04] combined, Fargo came out with a what do you think out of 10
[2:16:08] chaps out? Of ten 9.5.
[2:16:12] Very few people have anything against Fargo so I'd go 9.5 as
[2:16:15] well. 9.50 You missed out, fellas.
[2:16:19] It got an unexpected 10 out of 10, Yeah.
[2:16:22] Beautiful. Wonderful, wonderful people.
[2:16:25] Want to take yours back now for? Because that's mine.
[2:16:31] Oh, I don't like it as much as I like Blood Simple or or Brother.
[2:16:34] It's as good as that films. It's not better 9. 9 I mean,
[2:16:39] thank you for telling us what I should be rank in the film and
[2:16:42] using personal preference. Anytime.
[2:16:48] Big What's your personal preference on Fargo?
[2:16:51] Hang on, I'll just phone Wester. He'll tell you.
[2:16:55] I'll e-mail you. So with hours in the period
[2:16:58] scores combined, that gives Fargo a huge 39 out of 40.
[2:17:02] Beautiful. Superb stuff.
[2:17:05] Go to alltherightmovies.com/leaderboard
[2:17:07] to see where Fargo is on our leaderboard.
[2:17:10] It's certainly near the top messing with the big boys.
[2:17:13] Too right? So what should?
[2:17:15] What did Lebowski in our country get?
[2:17:17] Do you know off the top of your head?
[2:17:19] I can check. What did you give them on the
[2:17:22] top of your head? Was it less than a nine?
[2:17:23] Because then it goes back everything you've said.
[2:17:27] Well, I definitely give Lebowski A10.
[2:17:29] Oscars I listened about not so long ago.
[2:17:31] I think he's all gave a 10, didn't you?
[2:17:34] Pretty sure you did for No Country as well like you have.
[2:17:36] To. Yeah, I think I did.
[2:17:38] Yeah, Big Lebowski got a nine. No country got a nine as well.
[2:17:45] Yeah, surprising. And and that I'm not well,
[2:17:48] actually it's not surprising because I know that Fargo is
[2:17:51] beloved. Everybody loves it.
[2:17:53] It's it's it's a proper gateway to coins.
[2:17:57] As mentioned, you can sign up to be in All the Right Movies
[2:17:59] Patreon supported by visiting patreon.com/all the Right
[2:18:03] Movies. You get access to all of the
[2:18:05] podcasts that we produced, have a same what films that we cover
[2:18:07] in the score that they get financial support for Five star
[2:18:10] content. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.
[2:18:13] Oh yeah, sweet. Do it.
[2:18:15] Real sweet. Join us next time on all the
[2:18:18] right movies in two weeks. We're not messing around.
[2:18:20] We've been waiting for it for a while.
[2:18:22] We thought it was a million to one shot.
[2:18:24] It's rocky. Finally.
[2:18:29] Finally it's been on Paul after Paul after Paul and it
[2:18:32] embarrassed itself and now it's the heavyweight champion.
[2:18:35] Cleaned out the opposition the. Classic Rocky story.
[2:18:41] That's Matt Pi and myself on that one.
[2:18:44] About bloody time, Matt, right? Who really is the weirded all
[2:18:48] the 15th round? Picked himself up off the floor,
[2:18:51] finally got it in there. Lovely.
[2:18:55] Should be great that one to do. Can't wait for that actually.
[2:18:57] I mean, I mean, it's a miserable film, so I'm sure the.
[2:19:00] First one, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, really fucking miserable,
[2:19:03] but I'm sure we can inject some light into it.
[2:19:05] Yeah. Our next Patreon exclusive
[2:19:08] podcast is out next Friday. Join W, DPI and myself as we
[2:19:12] talk about the York Schwarzenegger as we cover
[2:19:15] Commando and True Lies. Bound to be another great
[2:19:17] podcast. Do you think we can go near 2
[2:19:20] hours without doing an ANI impression Westley?
[2:19:22] Absolutely not. We can't go 2 minutes without
[2:19:24] doing this. This is the first one.
[2:19:29] If this is the first ever double feature though, that I've got to
[2:19:31] say I'm not worried about because I don't have to watch
[2:19:34] the films. I've seen them that don't even
[2:19:37] have to watch them. Yeah, we'll be recording that
[2:19:39] soon and that is bound to be a winner.
[2:19:40] So if you like the sound of that and all the others that we've
[2:19:43] created over the last 2 1/2 near three years, then Patreon is
[2:19:48] where it's at. Get to the chopper.
[2:19:52] As mentioned on the last episode, we've got YouTube
[2:19:54] videos going up all the time. I talked to Curtis Stagers about
[2:19:57] five of his favorite films on A Life in Movies, so you can check
[2:20:00] that out now. It's available straight away.
[2:20:02] Some great choices from stagers. Yeah, great guy.
[2:20:05] And on the Cutting Room, another of our new YouTube videos, John,
[2:20:10] Westie and Matt have done a deep dive into The Batman.
[2:20:12] If you haven't seen that already, check it out and look
[2:20:15] out for the next episode on The Cutting Room where the three
[2:20:17] fellas, Matt, John and Westy themselves are talking about Ty
[2:20:20] West's brand new 70 set horror movie X.
[2:20:24] That's due out the day that this episode was released, 18th of
[2:20:27] March. So I expect that to go up on
[2:20:29] YouTube in a few days. I'm very jealous that you're
[2:20:32] doing that. That's straight up my alley.
[2:20:35] I've only seen the trailer once. I say OK, that looks
[2:20:37] interesting. I don't think I've seen a Ty W
[2:20:39] film before, so I don't know what to expect.
[2:20:41] And I think it's going to be interesting actually,
[2:20:42] considering I think we all knew what to expect from The Batman
[2:20:46] because you all knew Pattinson, we knew that Reeves, you, you
[2:20:49] know, all the different actors here.
[2:20:51] I don't know anything about it so.
[2:20:53] Yeah, a lot of going in blind here.
[2:20:55] You're. Going in blind.
[2:20:56] So from that sense I'm excited about.
[2:20:58] But yeah, it could turn out to be a big old dude.
[2:21:00] But we'll, we'll have fun with it if it is anyway.
[2:21:03] Yeah, that's the point of the cutting room, so.
[2:21:05] Exactly. Exactly.
[2:21:06] Yeah. Yeah, so TuneIn to that, it'll
[2:21:08] be out in a few days time as soon as we can get it up.
[2:21:11] Yeah, so very busy. And between all of that, we're
[2:21:15] on social media daily. You can check us out on Twitter
[2:21:18] where we are at, AT right movies, on Instagram where we
[2:21:22] are at all the under score, right movies, on our Facebook
[2:21:25] group, on TikTok. We're at all the right movies
[2:21:28] and our website, as always, is all the right movies.com ticking
[2:21:33] boxes left, right and centre can't get rid of us.
[2:21:35] We're everywhere. Everywhere.
[2:21:38] Don't know if that's good or bad thing.
[2:21:39] That's a great. Thing it's not for us to say, is
[2:21:41] it? What?
[2:21:43] Kind of this. Right.
[2:21:48] OK. Well, that is it.
[2:21:49] That is a wrap everybody. We're headed out for a shot of
[2:21:52] beer and maybe a stay. We'll see you in two weeks.
[2:21:55] Oh yeah, you want to smoke a pigs pipe?
[2:22:01] Thanks for listening guys. Leo.
[2:22:03] Thanks guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[2:22:26] Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.
[2:22:29] Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[2:22:31] Oh yeah, betcha yeah. Yeah.

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