Fargo note

[jwgh]

I've been going on a bit of a Coen brothers kick recently; in the past week or so I've watched 'Miller's Crossing', 'The Hudsucker Proxy', and 'Fargo'. (To round it off I should watch 'Blood Simple' again sometime soon; after that I'll have exhausted all of the Coen brothers movies I own.)

After I watched Fargo again I was thinking about how the movie is intentionally vague as to exactly what Jerry Lundegaard needs money for. I think that I've heard the Coens say in an interview that they always figured he was caught up in some kind of pyramid scheme, which makes sense, but I like to think that Jerry might have been the victim of a 419-type scam (variants of which existed as far back as the 1920s, apparently).

Comments

[cgoldfish.livejournal.com]

oh man, i love miller's crossing.

"You ain't got a license to kill bookies and today I ain't sellin'. So take your flunky and dangle."

great quote.

also - some of their newer stuff isn't as bad as it looked originally, ie, intolerable cruelty.

i'm still on the fence about the newest movie, as i scare easily.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the heck out of Intolerable Cruelty. George Clooney's sidekick ought to be in more movies.

[pjamesharvey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Intolerable Cruelty is a whole load of fun! Clooney is wonderful in it, maybe more so than in O Brother, Where Are Thou?

[jwgh]

I should really netflix all of their movies that I don't own and watch them all again. (I think one or two of their new ones I haven't seen yet, but not from lack of interest.)

[jwgh]

After that I can go on a Terry Gilliam kick.

[cgoldfish.livejournal.com]

oh! and ladykillers. don't forget ladykillers!

[cpr94.livejournal.com]

A good call, except avoid Tideland at all costs. Pay to avoid seeing it. Unless you like watching horrendous dysfunctional squalor and insanity, that is.

[reverendluke.livejournal.com]

I deduce from this post that you do not own, or have not seen, "The Big Lebowski." Remedy this situation immediately.

[smashingstars.livejournal.com]

I agree with the good reverend. You must see "The Big Lebowski" post haste.

[jwgh]

Have seen many times, but have not yet purchased.

[reverendluke.livejournal.com]

Far out.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I think Barton Fink is my favorite, and Miller's Crossing is a close second, but I'm greatly looking forward to their upcoming (Nov 21 in the US) "No Country for Old Men," based on Cormac McCarthy's novel.

Also, I always thought that Jerry Lundergaard was just skimming to make ends meet at home, living above his means because his wife's family had money and he wanted to keep her in a certain lifestyle. That, or he was already into the property deal he proposes to his father-in-law and was over his head.

Coincidentally, I was thinking of ol' Jerry yesterday as I pondered the car-buying experience in general, and it made me think of him upselling TruCoat! and blurring the fax to GMAC.

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

With "Miller's Crossing" I get the added attraction of recognizing the locations in New Orleans and seeing some friends as extras. Pryotechniques shot a block from where I used to live.

Trivia: the police uniforms really dated to the 1920s-- not as police uniforms, but as police uniform costumes left over from a Buster Keaton silent where Keaton was chased down the street by a horde of policemen.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

how the movie is intentionally vague as to exactly what Jerry Lundegaard needs money for.

This reassures me, because I've heard someone commenting on that scene in terms that imply that the nature of the scam he's caught up in is completely obvious (without actually describing it), and it never was to me. A pyramid or 419 would do nicely, I suppose.

I don't remember

[notr.livejournal.com]

being at all confused by it. Jerry didn't seem to me to need anyone to scam him to lose money. Any individual, that is. He just seemed to me like one of the millions of nobodies suckered by promises of effort-free wealth from real estate trading, and the parking lot scheme came across as just the latest in an ever-escalating series of stupid investments.

Or maybe my take on it is just conditioned by a decade of living with a brother-in-law who expects an inherited, run-down house to support him, all the while hearing tales of his mother's real estate exploits while she moved in and out of welfare housing.

Re: I don't remember

[jwgh]

I didn't think there actually was a parking lot deal -- I thought that it was a fake scheme to get money out of his father-in-law -- but maybe there was.

It seemed like over the course of maybe a month he went from needing $350,000 to needing a million bucks. It seems like that should buy you a lot of real estate in Minnesota, but I suppose it depends what's on it.