Week 7 – Fargo

What makes Fargo an Independent Film? Bill: So violence in Tarantino’s films makes a good transition to the second film this week, which is Fargo, which obviously also includes a lot of violence. But, backtracking just a bit, like Reservoir Dogs, Fargo was kind of an example of independent American cinema of a kind. Can you talk about what makes Fargo an “independent film” at least in its time, 96?

Jon: Well, even less than Reservoir Dogs, Fargo is not an independent film.

Bill: It’s not an independent film. We shouldn’t even say that.

Jon: I mean, Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs for a company called Live Entertainment, which actually went out of business pretty soon, basically over a murder – the guy who ran Live was killed by his children and eventually Live went out of business. So it really was kind of an independent film, I suppose. Tarantino’s later films certainly were not; they were made for Miramax that was, at the time, owned by Disney. The Cohen Brothers, really, since the very earliest haven’t been “independent filmmakers” in that they do have their films distributed by studios, but there’s an independent spirit to them. They’re films that aren’t about robots and superheroes and hobbits. Nothing against hobbits, but yeah.

What makes an “Independent Film” Independent? Bill: So it’s not financial independence at all, it’s not distribution independence, it’s maybe just some sort of s- , I don’t like the word s-

Jon: And even the independent companies are boutique companies. Focus, which is an “independent company” is owned by Universal.

Bill: All these independent companies are really subsidiaries. I guess; is that the word?

Jon: I guess Lionsgate is still sort of an independent company, but it’s all sort of relative. You know, the real independent “independent cinemas” that kind of stuff that’s like Un Pimino –

Bill: Jon Jost, you should look up Jon Jost – one man crew.

Jon: Well, those are kind of thought of as “experimentals” because they’re so far out of the main stream. And certainly true independence is, again, you know, one of my students with five of his friends going out, shooting a video and then putting it on Vimeo or putting it on YouTube or something. That’s closer to independence. So, that said, we tend to look at the Cohen Brothers as independent filmmakers because they seem to be making a kind of movie that the studios don’t make anymore. And there are a handful of directors that fall in to this. I mean, you inevitably hear Tarantino brought in here, but, again, it’s kind of hard to argue that he is. Someone like Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant who’s film, Elephant, which really is a kind of independent film, or certainly is an independent film which we’ll see later. So the term is used awfully loosely and it’s probably just used for, well, it’s not a blockbuster, it’s not trying to be a blockbuster, it’s actually trying to tell a story.

Bill: It probably tells us a lot about the current climate of studio filmmaking, which is more money and fewer films, but if there’s a film that isn’t aspiring to make $100 million dollars or more…

Jon: They’re very hard to make. There’s a lot of dynamics in contemporary – well, we’re doing this conversation in 2013 – in American Cinema. Now it’s HBO and Showtime that are shooting those kinds of things. You know, they’re shooting relationship stories, they’re shooting films that are about people. I’m getting to the point, I’ve been teaching American Cinema for a long time and, obviously, I’ve been seeing films for almost 60 years, I actually am kind of weary of films that are so dependent on special effects. I could be happy never seeing another film with a robot…

Bill: Or avatar.

Jon: You don’t like those hobbits, do you.

Bill: Avatar, not hobbits! Not hobbits.

Jon: Oh. Yeah. So I now tend to gravitate to seeing movies about people, but I’m very much in the minority, obviously. And I think one of the things we see in independent film is that there are actually people in it who have problems that people have. I’m not worries about, about, I don’t know, a ring that’s going to lead to disaster in my universe. I’m worried about how do I pay for my kid’s college – more banal issues. I think the Cohen Brothers are scaling things down in a lot of ways; they’re not making things about big issues, but really making things about – well, in their case, in a lot of cases –

Bill: Human drama.

Jon: Human drama, yeah, exactly. And maybe that’s what we think of as independent film. And also they’re financed at a slightly lower budget, but definitely at a level that certainly sustains that kind of filmmaking.

Bill: So I have another indie film checklist, and some of these I’ve been sort of marking off as we’ve covered them, but the Holy Grail…

Jon: Well, the holy grail of all American filmmakers is independence, but it just means something different to everyone. I thought it was really interesting when I was doing research on Coppola and, you know, he’s had a long standing relationship with George Lucas, who is such a different character, such a different kind of filmmaker, and such a different player in the new Hollywood. And both of them say the same things when they’re young, you know, “Hollywood makes terrible movies! I want out of Hollywood!” And they both, in a way, found a way out. Lucas founded Lucas Film and Industrial Light Magic and he stations them in Northern California so he’s away from Hollywood, physically away from Hollywood. Coppola tries to create Zoetrope Studios in the early 80’s, an actual studio in Hollywood, he sort of tries to fight the system in various ways. Spielberg has talked about being an “independent filmmaker” and no one things – God, Spielberg is about the least independent. But what he wants is independence. So I do think that independence is sort of the Holy Grail. It’s what filmmakers through the studio system and now through the post-studio era really want.

“You Take the Money, You Lose Control” Bill: But you want your film to be seen too, so it’s a catch-22. This quote has probably been explained in the process of this, but, “You take the money, you lose control.”

Jon: Yeah, I think there’s this misnomer that independent filmmakers – well, I don’t know if it’s misnomered, but this idea that if you’re an independent filmmaker and you’ve got a couple of rich investors, you generally don’t have to answer to much of anyone. If you’re working for the studio, the studio is doing all this market research, they’re doing test screenings. You know, you may like your ending, but if a bunch of people in some mall Peoria, Illinois don’t, guess what ending is going to be in your movie? So this thing about “You take the money, you lose control” the more money that’s at stake, the less likely you’re going to have the final cut.

Bill: You’d better cast the actor or actress that they want you to cast if they’re fronting you the money.

Jon: See, all these kinds of things. And the less money that’s at stake… and that’s why you see some directors and even some actors do that. You know, Steven Soderbergh is very famous for shooting films like the Oceans 11 series – big, blockbusters, lots of stars, very expensive, obviously studio-researched, market tested.

Bill: And a remake on top of that.

Jon: Yeah, he made two, right? The Oceans 13, and then Erin Brockovich was obviously a very much mainstream film, and then he shoots Traffic, which is downright experimental, or even more, something like Full Frontal, or…

Bill: He did that Sasha Grey porn-style movie.

Jon: Yeah, what was that…

Bill: The Girlfriend Experience.

Jon: Girlfriend Experience. Which he shot himself on a digital camera. So he’s one of those guys that takes the money sometimes. Gus Van Sant, who we’ll see next week, you know, he’ll shoot something like Goodwill Hunting, which is a pretty – it’s a feel-good, mainstream movie, and then he’ll make something like Elephant, the film we’ll see, or Paranoid Park, shot with a handheld camera. A handheld camera you could buy retail at Costco, nobody who is a professional actor on the streets of Portland at the skate park on Burnside; because he can control that film. Or Elephant because he can make the film exactly the way he wants because the budget is so insignificant and the box office goals are sort of humble.

Platforming Bill: Can you tell us what platforming is? Jon: Yeah, it’s one of the things that helps us define the difference between a mainstream and independent film. Platforming is literally building a platform under a film. So, how do you release the film? Most studio films today are given what’s called the “saturation release” and that’s exactly what it sounds like; you saturate the marketplace. The average studio blockbuster is released to between 3,500 and 4,000 screens all at once, right away. Now, there are reasons for this. There’s that sort of hunger for seeing the film right away, that first weekend, that wanes fairly quickly. Also, most of these films, a lot of these films, aren’t very good; so you want to get everybody into the theater to see it before everybody knows that it’s not very good. And you want to create an event, you know? It’s an event if we’re in this small town and we can see this film the same day as people in New York are. It creates this event where – I’m trying to think of the last film that did this here, where, you know, the midnight show…

Bill: Batman, probably like –

Jon: Oh, the most recent Batman.

Bill: Or The Hobbit.

Jon: The Hobbit is a good example. You know, where it’ll be Thursday night at midnight, 12:01 so it’s officially Friday – Friday release, the opening day. And there’ll be people in line a day in advance. You know, you’re trying to create this. And independent films are generally platformed in an opposite way. They open small, to select theaters, often art theaters, and they hope to build word of mouth through good critical response, maybe getting into Jon Stewart or Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel, some hip show.

Bill: Or even like a film festival circuit where if you win a major award, then suddenly somebody picks it up and…

Jon: Exactly. But it’s still platform slowly and then build out.

Bill: Like Little Miss Sunshine I think is a good example of that.

Jon: Little Miss Sunshine is a good example of it. Even something like Paranormal Activity is like that, where it started really small and they expertly platformed it. So it’s like building a platform under it. And the industries, they call it platforming. Now, what’s interesting, and this goes back to the very beginning of the term, Godfather, when it came out, saturation release was something you only used when a movie sucked, and Godfather didn’t suck and Paramout knew that, so it was released in what was called a “showcase release” which was – it was only on seven screens in its opening week, so the lines were ridiculous. And what they did was they basically made it impossible to see the movie.

Bill: Which made you want to see it all the more.

Jon: Yeah, so it turned out to be pretty – no one does that anymore. So when we talk about platforming, it’s how the film was sort of built through release, and one way to recognize an independent film is that, wow, it’s not in every theater. But, then, you know, Sex, Lies, and Videotape is another one where it starts really small, but finds its way into mainstream theaters and gets a real following. There’s always one or two films maybe per year where you find that it’s true, that it’s sort of a surprise, the film sort of…

Bill: Maybe even something like Beasts of the Southern Wild a little bit. It wasn’t a huge financial success, but it started small and…

Jon: The assumption was that no one was going to see it, so almost anyone seeing it was better than what they expected. But, again, they can’t saturation release a movie like that, so they build it slowly. The irony is that a movie like that is in release longer. You know, The Hobbit is in release and out – it sort of explodes on the scene, it goes up like a rocket, down like a stick; and these other films build slowly.

Positioning Bill: Could you kind of quickly – this is related to platforming, but different – can you talk about positioning?

Jon: Yeah. Positioning is like political – you’re dealing with your film like a political candidate. So you’re trying to create a message about your film. And it’s like all these little tag lines about it. You know, if you analyze posters you can see what they’re trying, you know, why should you go to the movie? It’s right there on the poster. But it’s also your position in the marketplace, so if you have a certain kind of movie, you know, sort of talking about this a minute ago – you have adds on Jon Stewart on South Park, you know, that’s the audience you’re going for. Or, you know, if you’re going for a different audience, you have The Good Wife or a whole different audience, then, you know, it’s during American Idol, you know. You can see that having an ad in those three things would define your film in very different ways. You also position it – you have the movie stars, the stars of the film appear on various talk shows, and they all, if you actually pay attention, they’re like political candidates; they’re saying the things they’re supposed to say. In fact, in some cases, they’re saying things like “I can’t talk about the movie.” But they’re all saying, “I can’t talk about the movie.” So it creates this thing that, oh, the movie is so fantastic; they can’t talk about the movie. And that’s positioning; you’re creating a message and then you’re positioning it in the marketplace. There are people that, all they do in marketing is that they make sure – so you’ll see the actress in Vogue. Now, she’ll mention the movie once in the article, but the actress is in Vogue, you’ll see her in Vogue. So it’s not only Entertainment Weekly where of course it’s about the movie, and it’s – but it’s just – the actor or the actress suddenly becomes ubiquitous - is on US and We and whatever those magazines are – People…

Bill: They go on Letterman and they have to show a clip from the film that they acted in.

Jon: And then they kind of laugh and say it was cool, a great experience, they loved everybody.

Bill: Well, that’s contractual.

Jon: You bet it’s contractual. The studio has basically done this research that if they stay on-message – and it’s like a political campaign; you do not want your candidate to wander off-message. You don’t want your movie to be defined by anybody but you. Bill: Two questions specific to Fargo to wrap up today’s – this week’s – lesson. So you’re a big fan of Fargo, which is Jerry Lundegaard going to –

Jon: Could you do your - ?

Bill: Yeah, I don’t want to get in to that, Jerry Lundegaard.

Jon: That’s really good! I like that.

Scene from Fargo Bill: It’s alright. But it’s the scene where he goes to meet the two for-hire criminals. You’re a fan of that scene – why?

Jon: Yeah, yeah. Again, this maybe goes to the idea of independent cinema and that I’m getting tired of stuff blowing up all the time. It’s a dialogue scene, a simple dialogue scene. Guy walks into a bar, he’s late, he has a plan that makes no sense at all, and they end up doing it anyway. That’s basically what happens. But the scene hooks you into the film in a different way. Most – you know, Lethal Weapon, you know, girl on a roof, falls off the roof, smashes into the car – what hooks you into the film? You want to see more people fall off of things or crash into things. It’s prepared you for what you’re going to see. This film prepares you in a different way, because we’re going to watch a story for a change. We’re going to watch a movie with a story. And in it, he – first of all, he’s late –

Bill: He thinks he’s on time, because, but the other guys have been there for a whole hour.

Jon: I know. And there’s bottles, so obviously they’ve been drinking the whole time, so that tells you something about the characters. One of the guys doesn’t speak at all; he has one line of dialogue in the whole scene. The other guy never shuts up. And they’re mad at him almost like for being impolite, but they’re kidnappers! So it gives you this sort of, again, this pastiche – just turning to the side of the film noire tilt. And then he’s talking to them about – he’s talking to them about the pub, but he’s really talking about his father-in-law. And at one point, the Steve Buscemi character says to him, “Well, why don’t you just ask him for money?” and he says, “I’m not going to get into that now.” And you’re sitting there watching the movie, well, I hope you do get into it because it’s obviously why I’m watching. So you watch the whole movie to see that. So I think it’s a scene that accomplishes a lot. I know it’s one of the scenes that we have a clip from and a little voiceover, and I think if you’re an aspiring screenwriter, that clip is an object lesson in how to write scenes.

Bill: Great economy.

Jon: Yeah.

The Significance of Marge in Fargo Bill: This final question you’ve touched on a bit, so I’m going to adlib a little bit. What about the character of Marge? What is her significance in this film? Because she’s a very unique character. Jon: Well, she’s a unique and complex character. She’s married to one of the producers of the film, so that’s interesting. It’s typical, again, this pastiche is turning things. The hero, or the cop hero, is not a rugged male individualist; it’s a kind of sweet, pregnant, down to earth, who is also the most competent character of all – including the bad guys – of all in the film. Maybe the only competent character. And her husband is this strange sort of teddy bear of a – he’s a house husband, except they have no kids yet – who has his, like, worms and his flies and – yeah, she’s a really fascinating character. I know they get a kick out of her, and I know they also get a kick of the guy hitting on her later in the film where she meets a guy, I guess from high school or something, and he hits on her, and she’s sort of flattered, but it’s totally not going to happen. So it’s a wonderfully oddball hero to the film.

Conclusion Bill: Well, we’ll wrap up there. Make sure to do the Kleinhans reading and the Perren reading, and we will see you next week.