FARGO (1996) - Raising Fargo Part Two

so,

Alright. Alright, so we just tackled Raising Arizona. Doing a Coen Brothers double feature here.

So let me give, let me give the audience first the specs. Yeah. I always start with the specs of each movie. Sure. 1996, we're directed by Joel Cohen, written by Joel and Ethan Cohen. Running time, one hour, thirty eight minutes. Another short one. It had a budget of 7 million. It was released on April 5th, 1996, and it made 24 million at the box office. Are you seeing the similarities with raising Arizona? Yeah. Raising Arizona had a 6 million budget and made 22 million.

This one had a 7 million budget and made 24 million.

So I'm not sure how a box office mojo got their numbers or if they only included certain months or whatever, but I don't know. This one, however, in contrast to Raising Arizona, Fargo garnered seven Oscar nominations and won two of them. Best Actress, Frances McDormand, and Best Original Screenplay for The Coens.

It's all the really good movies Somewhere along the line it switched to where your popcorn film was the one that made all the money But the oscars went to the lower films the smaller films, right far fargo was one of them and that's our it stars francis mcdormand as marge gunderson You William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard. Every time I say his name, I have to say it. Jerry Lundegaard. Lundegaard. Steve Buscemi as Karl Showalter. Piers Stormare as Gare Grimsrud.

And Harv Presnell as Wade Gustafson. Alright, tell

me. What is your history with this movie?

Portage, Portage, and and they, we would be there all weekend and we would start it like Tuesday, right, and we would go and we would smoke cigars and we would

It had just hit video earlier and I was still in Chicago. I was going to school at Columbia college, Chicago, and me and my roommates at the time, Hughs was my buddy, hughs who I often talk about. He was one of my roommates. We rented it when it hit video and we couldn't stop laughing. Like it was such, like even the little things, like, like the guy that he's trying to swindle during the car deal with the true coat, the guy's like, you lied to me, Mr. Lundegaard, you're a bold faced liar.

And he goes, you're up. Fucking liar! Like, even like, seeing a guy struggle to get the word fucking out, cause he obviously doesn't swear often, like, even little things like that were hilarious, and we would just, it was one of those scenes where we'd rewind it and watch it again.

And I brought it home with me and that's, that's where your story picks up. So, so I had a little bit of a precursor. I was the, I was the catalyst. I was the problem. I brought the crashing into the old world. I brought the movie that terrified Jessie's. So it's great. That's great. All right, log me.

Minnesota car salesman Jerry Lundergard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchman's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson. That was written roughly.

Of course I have to do side notes on this one because the Coen's always throw me for a loop. You can't just do a simple Blake Snyder beat sheet with the Coen brothers. Um, All right. So let's just start with who the fuck's story is it? Based on the logline, we're assuming it's Jerry's story. Right? Yeah. Based on how the entire first act is all on Jerry and Marge doesn't even show up until act two.

We're going to break down the beats for both Jerry and Marge. That's my surprise for you. That's my gift for you today, sir. And all of you listeners, we're going to break down the beats for both Jerry and Marge and see how they intersect each other. Perfect example of know the rules before you break them. Nobody does it fucking better than the Coen's, right? I mean, they follow the rules. They follow the tools, they follow the beats. They just do it in an unconventional and unique way.

And it's hard to really dig in. But before we do that, I have to discuss first the flat art character. Okay. For you, beginning writers, a flat art character is where the lead doesn't really learn a lesson on the journey we do as an audience and maybe the world around them changes. Or at least the world is somehow viewed differently by them. Mm hmm, but they themselves generally stay the same. The best example of this has always been Superman, right?

Superman's always the same in every movie, every comic, every TV show, everything. Whatever it is, he's righteous. He's good. He never lies. He doesn't change the stories around him that, you know, create all these characters and, and the world and evil and bad guys. His view of the world might change, but he himself doesn't. He has the same concepts at the beginning that he has at the end. Right, right. He'll go on adventures to save humanity from evil.

By and large, he doesn't change on a darker scale. I know I've talked about this on previous podcasts as well. Paul Schrader characters often have the flat arc, but not so much in a righteous or good way. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, Ali Fox in The Mosquito Coast particularly Wade Whitehouse in Affliction. These are all Paul Schrader scripts. They certainly change the people around them.

Uh, Just knowing these guys is the journey and everybody around them learns their goals, but they themselves stay the same. They never really learn the lesson. All four of those characters I just mentioned have the same belief system at the end of the film as they had at the beginning. The audience and the supporting characters, on the other hand, are the ones who actually learn the lesson. You know, about them. They actually learned something.

And the reason I mentioned this is because investigation stories, the cops and robbers, the cop trying to investigate the criminal thing, what Blake Snyder calls the why done it in his story patterns, those very often have a flat arc protagonist because their tactics of investigation, their belief system that never changes. The interesting thing about Fargo is that Marge, if we treat her, that she is the lead. Even though she's introduced late, she is the investigating officer.

She seems to have a flat arc as far as her investigating. She's the same cop at the end as she is at the beginning. But ultimately she does learn a very valuable lesson that we set up with the theme and oddly enough, it will bring. Immeasurable worth to a scene later in the film that everyone I've ever talked to always says that this one scene, quote unquote, has nothing to do with the movie.

If you were to make this two hour film and it ends with Jerry's sort of like incarceration and trial. Yeah, maybe he breaks down on the stand and realizes, Oh, I should never have done this. I love my wife. I was too blinded by money, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You could come up with a spiritual goal for Jerry. But in the film that we are presented, he has a flat arc.

The theme is brief, but And barely noticeable with a single line of dialogue, but the concept of appreciating what you have is at play here. If any dialogue supports this, it's mostly six minutes in, when upon, upon hearing about the plan that they've been hired for, even the bad guys are trying to talk Jerry out of it.

Like, they are even sa But but Jerry? doesn't appreciate what he has. Yeah. He is more greedy than anything. Ironically Marge is not in this scene. But her theme is the same and I'll get to that after. All right, set

up. In this section, we learn more about Jerry But the interesting thing is that the Coens, what the Coens do here They break, they understand, yet they break yet another fundamental rule, particularly in cop case movies We don't really know what Jerry needs the money for. Like in most movies, there's a motivation For the criminal

So really, which, what money is he after and why, why does he need the money?

Oddly enough though, in a Blake Snyder, save the cat kind of way, we are drawn to actually root for Jerry at the beginning because when he gets home, he gets pushed around by his father in law, Wade Gustafson in his own house, old man, Wade, the rich owner of the dealership of which Jerry is executive sales manager. By the way, whenever I hear that. I have to say it the way Jerry says it. I'm executive sales manager, you know? Anyway, so whenever I, I've had people come into my store.

And say, yes, I am the district sales manager of whatever, whatever they're trying to push on me. And I always hear Jerry Lundegaard in my head. I would know I'm executive sales manager. Anyway,

And I was like, you know what, fuck it, from here on out, call me Jerome. So I just, I changed my name to Jerome, roughly around 2005. No, I don't want to say changed my name, my name's always been Jerome, I just never went by Jerome, I always just went by Jerry. In 2005, I switched it. So I was still Jerry long after Fargo.

I think it was a Nike commercial or maybe it was a beer commercial. I don't know where the guy's name is Michael Jordan, but every time he goes somewhere, they think it's the Michael Jordan and they're always so disappointed. Right. He goes to the restaurant. He's like, yeah, I have reservations for Michael Jordan. And they're all like. Aw, man.

I want to say Jamie did sorry, Jimmy, if I, if I got that wrong, don't, don't persecute me. But, but the idea is that these save the cat elements from Blake Snyder, right? They're the things that you would root for the character for, and he has one. It's where, and it's where he's kind of like the underdog, right? And the old man's emasculating him. So that makes us want to root for Jerry, right? So obviously Wade is the alpha in this relationship. Right?

He's, and when he's trying to convince Wade of this parking lot deal, he says this could really, he says, this is a quote, This could really work out for, well for me, Gene and Scotty. The old man sort of looks at him and says, Gene and Scotty never have to worry. Yeah. What a fucking dick, dude. So the old man's basically saying, My, my daughter, And my grandson will always be set for life. You, on the other hand, you fuckwad, you're lucky I even allowed you to marry my daughter, right?

Like, so, so obviously we root for Jerry on that aspect alone, which again argues the point that he's the main character, but he's not! Well, at least he doesn't become one, he is now. But anyway, all right, so that's how the Coens keep fucking juggling that act. Also, the Coens use what's known as in media res, which in Latin is into the middle of things. That's what that means in Latin.

And it's a screenwriting term, it's a screenwriting technique, where when you start a story, you're already in the middle of it. Like, again, when this movie opens, He's already meeting with Carl and Grimsrud, right? So he's already contacted Shep. He's already got the plan. He already has the car he's going to give them. He, you know, all that already happened off screen. We didn't even see any of that happen.

So we started when this movie's already began, you could argue that Star Wars episode four, a new hope in and of itself is in media res, right? Because we're starting in the middle of the Skywalker saga, right?

Right, so, okay, so Fargo, Fargo starts in Media Res, the car delivery, this is where the opening is kind of shady, because the car delivery could be considered the inciting incident, or in a completely different movie it could be the fun and game sequence of Act 2, if we had shown, if Fargo started with him coming up with this plan, and he's thinking about it, and he's concocting it, and he contacts Shep and everything, the second he arrives at the bar, That might be the beginning of act two,

right? But in this movie, it starts the movie, right? So for our purposes, Since we're trying to use Blake Snyder's beat sheet we're gonna put it as act one set up and let's see if Jerry can push himself into act two despite starting in media res. So the best place to figure this out might be, hello, my four point push. Alright, ready? Inciting incident, 17 minutes in, Gene is kidnapped. This is the first hint to everyone other than Jerry. is happening, right?

Because let's just assume for a second you don't know Jerry Lundegaard's in on it, right? Her getting kidnapped. That's the first crashing in that something has happened to this family, right? That's the inciting incident. We don't, you know, again, if you're a neighbor or a family member, you don't know Jerry's in on it yet. Right. Right? So inciting incident. Catalyst, 24 minutes in, Jerry comes home and sees that Gene is gone. Here's why this is different from the inciting incident.

It's real now, right? Up until this moment, he didn't know if those guys would ever show up, right? It could be he delivered them a brand new car in Fargo, North Dakota, and they just stole it, right? They just took it and left and said, this guy's fucking nuts. We're not listening to this guy's plan. We're leaving. We're taking this car he brought us and we're just leaving. He doesn't know that it's ever, that they're ever going to show when, where, how he doesn't know any of that.

When he comes in and sees that Jean was gone and the house was toward a shit, he knows now that it's real, right? That's your catalyst. Debate begins. He has time to consider his next move. He could truly chicken out. He could, he could be like a fuck. I didn't mean for this to happen. I don't want anything to happen to Jean. Okay. Ah, fuck it, the deal's off. I'm gonna call the cops, or I'll call Carl, or I'll call whoever and say forget it, forget it, the deal's off. Right?

Like, he could, but he doesn't. He then plans to make this official by calling his father in law, Wade, to get him involved on getting the ball rolling and the bail money, which, by the way, Is a great phone sequence. I mentioned on the silence of the lamb episode. Yeah. Remember when Hector takes off his flesh mask, the very next scene is the payphone dropping. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't even hear the conversation. You don't need to hear the conversation.

You just see the phone dropping and our dealer running down the hallway to tell Jody Foster that Lecter has escaped. Right. Same concept here. We don't need to see the phone call. We just need to see Jerry's preparation for the phone call. Where he's, oh, oh, Wade, oh, it's so bad, oh, Gene, oh, my wife, like he's coming up with all kinds of things, he's preparing for the phone call. I'll tell you what, there's another one here that I forgot to make a note of. It happens in Terms of Endearment.

I don't know how well you remember that movie, but you know that in that movie at some point Deborah Winger gets cancer, right? There's a scene where she's in the hospital, she was just in there for tests, and their doctor comes in. And she, and he goes I'm sorry, but it's a malignancy. And she says it at the same time, it's almost like a jinx moment, like they both say malignancy. And then she goes, say it again, and he goes, malignancy.

The very next shot is Shirley MacLaine's character hanging the phone up. And she's freaking out and she grabs the housekeeper and she's like, we got a problem. Our daughter was sick and she's got a cyst and it's, you know what I mean? Like they, it's that, that shot starts with her hanging up the phone. We don't need to see the phone call of Debra Winger calling her mother.

In fact, the scene ends where he's all riled up, ready, he's got the story he wants to tell, and he's ready to let it go after he dials the number, and then he goes, Oh Wade Gufsuson, please. He forgot that he has to deal with the secretary first. So the secretary has to pass him through before he can begin his story. And that's where that scene ends. So, okay. That was my debate.

Break into two at the 29 minute mark, Grimsrud kills three people in Brainerd, including a state trooper. Why is this the final push? Why is this the break into two that is needed? It's because without it, Marge never gets involved. Right? If there's no murders, there's no telling if the cops would ever get involved with this case. The plan was perfect. Without cops, right? Without cops, it's perfect. Without killing, it's perfect. But Grimsred kills three people, including a state trooper.

Now it's a problem. Now we're in act two, right? That's the propelling moment.

That's, I paused before saying spiritual goal, because we know Jerry's flat arc, he's not going to learn a goddamn thing. Marge is about seven months pregnant and gets the call that wakes her up from her sleeping with Norm, her husband, laying next to her. This is important. I wanna. really nail this. And to do that, I need another beer. Hang on, hang on. Yes. For those of you that listened to the raising Arizona episode, you know I started with a very hard whiskey.

I'm now taking it easy and taking it easy to me is drinking beer. All right. Okay. If we beat sheet Marge at this point, Right? As perhaps the new lead.

It's business It's work related and thus it's non threatening to their marriage So the need quote unquote need of showing his wedding ring I make this point because it will come counterpoint later. In any case, this strengthens the theme of appreciating what you have. This was Jerry Lundegaard's original theme and it's now carrying over to Marge. Especially since Norm wakes up. He's willing to get up for his pregnant wife and make her breakfast. And she's like, babe, you can sleep.

I got to get up. I got to go. I got to go to work. You can stay sleeping. It's early. And he's like, you got to eat a breakfast, Margie. You know, it clears the throat. Great norm moment. By the way, I love norm in this movie. We're going to get the norm later, but. That's his opening. That's her opening image with him is that he's willing to get up and make her breakfast. Appreciate what you have. Fun and games. Now we're in Jerry's act 2 mirror flip of act 1.

And ironically, Jerry's fun and games? Is the four point push for Marge in her beat sheet the inciting incident for her is getting the call The catalyst is she sees the dead bodies and realized the magnitude of what just hit this peaceful town of Brainerd The debate is questioning her partner on his course of investigating. I don't think I agree with your police work there loop, right?

And the break into two is getting The lead at the lakeside club where the two guys checked in and left the license plate blank, where she says, Oh, that's a good lead. You know, that's her break into two. Why is all this necessary? It doesn't necessarily have to be Marge. She could easily call the FBI and say, I realize, you know, obviously murder's a state charge, but she doesn't know where these people are from. Yeah. Right. She's like, I might need some help on this.

This is a small little peaceful town and we've got three murders. And one of them is a state trooper. At the very least, if you don't want to call the FBI, you would call the state, right? You would call the state federal marshal.

This is her act two. And now we're going to see where Jerry and Marge sort of catch up to each other on their beat sheets. Wade's not happy about the arrangement where Jerry's in charge. And here's where we have a little bit more sin here. We always talk about, you know there's sin with these characters, particularly in this film. We already know Jerry's sin. Wade's is about to come out. You know, that he hates parting with money.

He, he, in fact, even when his own daughter is kidnapped, he wants to offer half the ransom when they're sitting there at the coffee. I said, well, maybe we should offer half. Well, what? This is your daughter. He wants to offer half. So that's his sin. He doesn't like parting with money either. He's just as greedy as fucking Jerry. It appears that almost everyone in this story carries their own sin.

Whether it's Jerry, or Shep, or Carl, or Grimsrud, or Wade, even his side piece, Stan, his accountant guy, even Marge has her sin, and we'll get to that in a minute. But before we get to that, I figure, after watching this movie several times, particularly for this podcast, the only innocent people in this film are Gene and Scotty, oddly enough, the two people Wade said at the beginning were the only two that would quote, Never have to worry. And Norm. That's it.

Gene, Scotty, and Norm are the only innocent people in this entire story. Everybody else has their sin, including Marge, and we're going to get to that in a moment.

At the 47 minute mark, Marge hits her midpoint scene. Remember, she didn't start her beats until 32 minutes in. So naturally her story is going to be a little bit shorter, but at the 47 minutes. She has descriptions of the perpetrators from eyewitness contacts, the two girls that were having sex with Carl in Grimsrud at the Lakeside Club.

This is her false victory because she finds she finds out that she has to go to the Twin Cities that takes her out of her jurisdiction and yet she doesn't involve the state and she doesn't involve the FBI. Now again, the FBI, that's a bit of a stretch. You're not really going to contact the FBI unless it's out of state, right? She doesn't know yet. That this all started in North Dakota.

As far as she knows, this is all Minnesota, but from Brainerd down to the Twin Cities, she's a Brainerd Sheriff. You know what I mean? Like at this point, at least contact the state, right? This is out of my jurisdiction now. Nope. He doesn't

care. She's going midpoint scene in Jerry's timeline at the 50 minute mark. Carl now wants the full 80, 000. If Jerry had plans to get his hands on the full million, this shouldn't be a problem for anyone that is listening, but doesn't, hasn't seen the movie. Jerry Jerry's con is. At least for the kidnappers, he said, I kidnapped my wife. Are you guys kidnapped my wife, my father in law who's real well off. I'm going to say the ransom is 80, 000. I give you guys 40 and I keep the other 40.

That's the plan. But in reality, he's telling his father in law that the ransom is a million dollars. So he gives 40 to the criminals and he's keeping all the rest for himself. So when Carl calls and says I want the full 80, Jerry freaks out! He's like, oh no, come on, that's not the deal here. Dude, if your plan was to get a million dollars out of this, who gives a fuck? Like, who cares about another four now I get he's probably putting on a show, but still, it shouldn't be a problem.

But the greed is the main aspect that's at play here. The greed is everywhere. Killing him, right? So he protests, he argues also in the same scene, he gets another call from the GMAC.

They want their fucking money. So he's pissed now, right? Like, like, God, even they are onto me. And by the way, it's, it's so funny that, that there's this mentality about people in Minnesota that they're nice people. They're so nice, right? They're so nice. And they are, they are. It's not just a stereotype. I've been to Minnesota several times, mostly for football games, Viking fans.

People like I was walking down the street and a Carl and a Kelvin Johnson jersey when I went to a mission, a Lions Vikings game, right? They were the nicest people. Oh, excuse me. Oh, pardon me. You know, as you're walking through, like cutting through the crowd, they, they are, it's not just stereotype. They're very, very nice people. The point of that is, is like, This GMAC guy? And the nicest way possible, he tells him that he's fucked. Right?

If you don't give me those VIN numbers by noon tomorrow, I'm gonna have to turn this over to our legal department. My, my patience is at an end. Like, is that the nicest way possible to tell somebody you're going to fucking put them up for life if they don't fucking reduce these VIN vehicles, these VIN numbers on these cars. Anyway. All right.

So normally the midpoint scene is a false victory where the protagonist achieves a tangible goal and the flip side after that is, you know, the bad guy's closing in, which culminates in the all is lost, but the flip if you were to do this. False victory at the midpoint. If you were to do a false defeat instead, then the all is lost is a false victory, right? Like they're opposites, right? Usually the midpoint is a false victory and the all is lost is a false defeat.

So that's the midpoint scene of his story and it's a defeat. It's a false defeat, but it's a defeat. Bad guys closing in. For Marge, this starts right after the midpoint scene. So, at the 49 minute mark, she gets a late night call from Mike and Akita. It's 11pm at night. An old high school friend calls. This represents possible danger to a relationship.

Which is why this time, if you notice, Norm, still asleep, rolls over again and puts his arm around Marge, and this time he's wearing his wedding ring. It's a stark contrast from the earlier time that they were woken up from a phone call. For Jerry, the bad guy's closing in is now Wade wants to take over. At the 54 minute mark, Damn it Jerry, you're not selling me a damn car! Right? If Wade takes over, there's no way Jerry gets his money. Right? No way.

At the 59 minute mark, the A and B stories collide as Marge and Jerry meet for the first time. She crashes into his world with a little Q& A, for. He stumbles on his answers. He comes off as not believable yet. Marge is none the wiser at this point. She's just simply doing her due diligence. She's asking him questions. He's giving shady answers, but she's just like, okay. One hour, one minute in Marge has a drink with Mike and Akita.

This is the scene that everybody I've ever talked to says, yeah, it's so good. That scene has nothing to do with the movie. Like, why did they even put it in? Like, they should have cut that out. Right? It's the scene that gets the most criticism. However, I believe it's the most important scene of the film. This directly relates to the theme of appreciate what you have. It's a very subtle sin for Marge. But it's there. There's no evidence that Marge even told Norm about this drink.

She's all dressed up. It's at a fucking hotel. Right? There's certainly some curiosity of impropriety. Mike turns her off quick because he turns out to be a psychopath and he kind of pressures her a little bit too much and But she still showed up. Right? She still showed up, she went, hair done up, makeup done up, in a dress, and she never told Norm about it. That's her sin.

She was thinking for a moment, I'm a seven month pregnant woman, and what do all, and my wife went through the same thing too. What do most pregnant women tell you? It's the time they feel most unattractive. Right? This is her feeling wanted by somebody else. Okay.

All is lost for Jerry. Remember this is the reverse of the midpoint. So his midpoint was a false defeat. This one would be a false victory. Wade takes off with the money though. Jerry follows. And when he gets there, he sees that Wade is killed at the one hour, 12 minute mark. This is a false victory because for him, he's like the one guy that stood in the way of him getting his money is dead. All he has to do is pop the trunk, throw him in it.

However, it's false because he doesn't know how he's going to get the money from Carl, right? Like, he's like, well, one guy's out of the way. That's good. But how do I get the cash? I don't know how to get the cash now. For Marge, her all is lost is a false defeat. That's why she's preparing to leave the Twin Cities the next morning. She has no answers on her case. She got nowhere with her investigating. She met with Shep. She met with Jerry. Both interviews got nowhere. Her case is cold.

She also talks to an old girlfriend on the phone who tells her that that Mike Enigita guy is a stalker and he's crazy. She dodged a bullet there, but that strengthened the theme. Appreciate what you have. Dark Night of the Soul, Jerry decides to go to bed and try to forget everything that happened. Meanwhile, as part of Marge's Dark Night of the Soul, a trooper questions another witness in a driveway about a possible location of the little guy, which is Carl.

And by the way, that driveway says, Might be dad's favorite scene of the whole movie Dad Fucking loves when the trooper goes to that guy's driveway, and he doesn't have a shovel he's sweeping The slush off his driveway with a broom And then he tells him, and the way he describes Steve Buscemi's character, Oh, he was kind of funny looking. You know, in kind of a general kind of way. And, and, and the way he just describes how he talked, like, I'm going crazy out there at the lake.

And then he calls me a jerk. And he doesn't use the word jerk, you know what I mean? And it's like, the whole, the whole scene is dad's fault. He laughs the entire time that scene is happening. And then at the end, they're like, Yep, looks like it's gonna snow again! And they both put their heads up and look at the sky. Anyway. Fuck it, dad loves it. Anyway, so, alright, break into three. For Jerry, knowing he has no money, He retries the GMAC smudging the VIN numbers again.

You see him like wearing the lead down on that pencil. And he's still trying to rub fudge numbers on the VIN number. Like he's going back to that. He's like, fuck. I don't know what's going on with the kidnapping. My father in law is in my trunk as we speak. A dead rotting corpse. I don't know. I'm gonna try the GMAC thing again.

So he's he's redoing the VIN numbers Marge her break into three is that she has an epiphany when she's driving and she's like I'm gonna go ask Jerry one more time And I'm gonna go see Jerry Lundegaard one more time and see if I can ask him, you know A couple things about her case. She's taking one last dis effort right now She's leaving the Twin Cities with no with nothing a cold case. No answers. She thought well, I'll go ask Jerry I'll go talk to Jerry one more time Alright, here we go. Ready?

Jerry jumps into his five point finale. Number one, gathering the team. Jerry is interrupted by Marge. She wants answers. Execution of the plan. Jerry stonewalls her and becomes noticeably uncooperative. High tower surprise. Marge says, Mr. Lundegaard, can I speak with Mr. Gustafson? That's a big bad one, right? Cause he knows that Mr. Gustafson is currently rotting in this trunk. So they dig down deep as he says, Mr. Ah, well, hell, I'll do a lot counting for you then.

You know, that's his way of trying to stave her off. She's like, what, right now? He's like, Ah, what the Christ! Is that damned important to ya? You know, he's gonna go do a lot count of the cars. Execution of the new plan, he flees. He just takes off. He leaves. He knows he's fucked. He's gone.

Between Jerry and Marge's finales, Carl has a finale of his own, where he finds that Gene was killed, he comes home, sees that Gene's laying on the floor dead, which, by the way, to Jessie's point, When that scene came about, we laughed. Here's poor Jean, one of the innocent people that filmed. She's laying dead on the floor. She's laying dead on the floor and Carl goes, what happened to her?

And, and, and Grimsrud goes, ah, she was streaking about or whatever, you know, like she was making noise. Yeah. She started making noise so he killed her. And we're laughing. We're all like laughing at his response. And poor Jessie's is like, oh my god, these people. So, so then Carl tries to square up with the Grimsrud. You know, here, I got the full 80, 000, 40 for you, 40 for me. They argue about who's going to get the car. And because of it, as he leaves Grimmsrud. Kills him with an axe.

Which is another point where we started laughing, I might add. Marge's five point finale. Gathering the team. She's, she interviews Jerry who flees off. Stan rats out the plan to the cops. Remember when she's in the car and they're like, Oh, this is Gustafson's accountant, Stan. He's finally gone to the cops. He's saying Gustafson is missing and so is Gene. So he finally rats out the whole plan. He wasn't supposed to. Execution of the plan, Marge drives around Moose Lake with the latest info.

High tower surprise, Marge sees the Tan Sierra parked outside the lake house. Dig down deep, instead of waiting for backup or calling more cops, Marge decides to take matters into her own hands and deal with it herself. Execution of the new plan, Marge sees the wood chipper incident and steps in again. Another incident where we are all in the living room laughing.

In the screenplay, which isn't in the film at all, but in the actual screenplay when Jerry Lundegaard first shows up at the bar, It's a hotel bar, I think. Or he checks into a motel as Mr. Anderson. Right? And, and she's like, okay, Mr. Anderson. And then he goes to the bar. To meet the two guys at the end when he's being arrested in that motel, they're like, Mr. Anderson. And he's all who? So he checked into that motel also as Mr. Anderson. Yeah. Okay, closing image.

A flip to the opening image is that, again, this snowy cold mist drives up from the cars, only this time it's driven up not from a car toting the TN Sierra. Now it's a bunch of cop cars and an ambulance. Then he immediately cuts to Marge and Norm comfortably in a warm bed. He announces that he got the three cent stamp. He didn't win the big one. The Hauptmann's won the big one. Their, their what was it? Their their, whatever painting they made won the, the 29 cent. He just got the three cent.

Right. But she is appreciative of him. She encourages him. Norm, that's fantastic, right? She tells him, like, people need the three cent stamp whenever they're stuck with the old ones, right? And then she says, and this closes out the move, movie, talking about the theme of appreciate what you have. Heck Norm, you know, we're doing pretty good. And he says seven more months, or no, he goes two more months because she's seven months pregnant.

He puts his hand on her belly and he goes two more months, two more months. And that's how it ends. Happy, content, appreciative. Marge has gone through her little sin. And has appreciated her spiritual goal.

The Coen's played on that, right? They played on that for just a little bit. Like what if an old high school friend called and wants to have a drink? You know what I mean? She gets dressed up. She gets dialed up all that stuff. Everybody that says that that scene has nothing to do with the movie. They need to watch it again.

So what went wrong? That's my, that's my title of this next segment. Let's pretend for a moment that we are the perpetrators and hindsight is 20 20. I have one, two, three, four, I have seven things that went wrong that they didn't have to go wrong. Number one, The fact that Greed enticed Carl and Grimsrud to want a brand new car out of the deal. That's the first problem. What if they just said, Alright, we'll do this deal. You pay us 40, you keep 40. And I'll just use my truck. Right?

If they don't want a brand new car out of it, there's never any connection to Jerry Lundegaard. It never gets back to the fact that the, they were driving a stolen brand new car in a dealership with a guy where the phone call was made, right? Like, that's what she says. The perpetrators were driving a stolen car and they called somebody who works here. So that's a coincidence, right? Right.

If they never said, give us a new car, they just said, well, we'll do it for 40 grand, we'll take my truck. Nobody ever said that. It has any connection to Jerry. Number two, why not decide ahead of time who's gonna get the fucking car? Right? Like at the end, it becomes an argument which leads Grimmsrd to kill Carl with an axe and stick him in a wood chipper. Why wouldn't they decide at the head of time and say, okay, we're getting a brand new car out of this, which one of us is getting it?

You know what I mean? And they could say right then, well, you know, if he pays us the 40, 000, one of us pays the other one for half. So, one of us will get 40, 000, or 20, 000, the other one will get, or 30, 000, the other one gets, say, the car and 10, 000. I'm talking 1990 money, you know? 000, I don't know how much a car cost back then, but whatever. You know, and if Carl can get his hands on all 80, 000.

Then one of us will get 40, 000 or, you know, I don't know, 70 The other one will get 10 or 20 thousand with a car. Like, why didn't they make that? My point is, why didn't they make that arrangement ahead of time?

As executive sales manager, couldn't he have set 10 cards aside and tell his sales people, don't sell these, these 10 cars. I'm putting them in the back of the lot. They're defective. Don't sell them. Why didn't he just tell the GMAC the VIN numbers of those 10 cars? Why did he have to make them up? Again, I don't know. I don't know.

Again, I might be ignorant of great schemes and scams, but I, I always thought like, why, why if you don't, my thing is, if you don't have to lie, why are you lying?

You get 50, 000, I'll take 30, 000 and the car. Knowing he's about to go pick up a satchel of a million bucks in it. Right? Like, why would you argue with him? It's a fucking million dollars out there and you're arguing over ten grand. Yep. Ugh, that part bothers me so much. Just let him have the fucking thing. Alright, number six. When Wade wants to offer half, if you're a jury, why not just accept that? And say, yeah, you know what? I'll get back to them and try.

The fact that he stonewalls them is what makes Wade want to take over.

Why didn't Jerry star six, nine, the phone as soon as Wade and Carl hung up. So. They're both on the phone, right? He, he's talking to Carl and Carl's like, all right, enough fucking around. I want you to meet me at the top of this parking garage, whatever, blah, blah, blah. He named it and Wade's listening in, right? And then Wade hangs up before the phone calls even over. And he heads out the door with the money and Jerry's all pissed.

What if Jerry just picked up the phone and hit star six, nine, Carl couldn't have been more than five feet away from that phone. If the payphone starts ringing, he's likely to go back and answer it. And if it's Jerry, Jerry could say, Look, change of plans. We're gonna do it in two hours. Not one hour. Two hours. And we're gonna do it at some other location. Carl might be pissed, but he'd be like, Alright, fine. Okay. Then, he waits for his dad to come back. He waits for Wade to come back.

Or, he meets Wade there. At the first location. And says, Hey, they were watching. They were watching this whole time. They knew it was you instead of me and they kept gene. They're not coming. You got to give me the money. You got to let me do it. If I don't do it, they're not going to show. Right.

That's of course why, why those things didn't happen is to make the movie far better. All right.

I got some trivia here to end out this episode. The role of Carl Showalter was written specifically for Steve Buscemi. Grimsrud, who played, who's played by Peter Stormare has 18 lines of dialogue. 18. Carl Showalter. Who plays Buscemi, who's played by Buscemi has 150 lines of dialogue.

To themselves a very similar situation happens in the Coen's first movie blood simple in 1984 where a guy has to pick a shot dude off the ground in the middle of the freeway in the dead of night and Drag him to his car and lo and behold here come the headlights of an oncoming car a potential witness The dramatic elements of, oh my god, is he gonna make it in time, oh my god, is he gonna get the car, is he gonna get the body out of the way before the, the witnesses come, all that is the exact

same. It's almost shot the exact same, the way they pick up the body and he's pulling him. Like he's dragging him. Yeah. It's almost identical. When I watched Blood Simple, I was like, my God, that scene is straight from Fargo. But then I was like, wait a minute, this one came out first. So the Fargo scene is straight from this. Wow. I had to get my timelines set up. That's all I got. What do you got for Fargo?

We couldn't tell any of them's goals or anything. That's how poorly it can be done. The Coens do it to where your leads, you might not be able to figure out who the damn lead is, but they all have their own stories going on. They all have their own beat sheets and it all works. And it makes for a great film. I mean, obviously this film won best original screenplay.

And uh, we, the last five minutes of this show dropped Jerome. Jerome has lost us. Hold on. I'm telling the audience what's going on because I'm keeping this part in.