'Fargo' 30 years later: How it put Minnesota on the map, for good and bad
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One of the most iconic scenes in 20th-century American cinema unfolds in the movie “Fargo,” where a villain loads a human foot into a wood chipper as a pregnant cop arrives to arrest him.
Actor Peter Stormare played the villain, Gaear Grimsrud, and will be on hand Tuesday night for the film's 30th anniversary screening at the Fargo Theater.
“I can't wait, and I've never seen the movie,” he said. “So now I can see the movie and see what made it so good.”
That’s right: Stormare has seen clips from the movie but never seen “Fargo” all the way through.
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“That's a good thing about human beings. We don't like to look at ourselves, and we don't like to listen to ourselves on tape,” he said.
Stormare and the Coen brothers
Stormare landed the role of Gaear Grimsrud after acting at The Public Theater in New York City alongside Frances McDormand, he said. McDormand is married to Joel Coen, who directed “Fargo” with his brother, Ethan.
Stormare said the brothers wanted to cast him as Grimsrud after seeing his performance in New York.
“They asked me, also, ‘Can you get a beard?’ [Grimsrud] had a beard that was also blonde. So they dyed my hair and my beard blonde, platinum blonde. And I met them in Soho, and they started laughing and said, ‘You look like Kenny Rogers on methamphetamine.’”
Stormare complained that his look was causing too many people to stop and stare at him, and he asked to ditch either the beard or the hairstyle.
“And they said, ‘No, you're right. Just have the hair.’”
Grimsrud is a violent man whose presence is menacing, as he is a man of few words.
“That was what made him special, because he didn't speak much,” Stormare said. “But when he spoke, he sort of spoke in his own language.”
To perform Grimsrud, Stormare said he channeled Clint Eastwood’s performances from movies like “Dirty Harry” and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”
“His daring approach to acting, no one had done before. He was a groundbreaking trendsetter, for me, who knew that silence speaks louder than words,” Stormare said.
Stormare’s character may have been mostly silent, but the rest of the cast had lots to say in the film — and their accents scream Minnesotan.
Minnesota accents and other stereotypes
Ethan and Joel Coen grew up in the Twin Cities, and the accents and speech patterns of their characters had to match their vision.
The end result was exaggerated accents, with characters frequently exclaiming “Oh geez,” “You betcha” and “Oh ya” along with other stereotypical Minnesota-isms.
To nail down the accent, the Coen brothers reached out to a friend of theirs who was a reporter in Minnesota, according to Todd Melby, author of “A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere,” a book about the making of “Fargo.”
Melby also works as an editor for MPR News.
“Joel and Ethan said to him, ‘Our next project takes place in Minnesota. So we want to find someone who's got that accent. Do you think you could do interviews with people, and that way, we would have several people to choose from who are real Minnesotans, who sound like they're from Minnesota?’” said Melby.
Melby said the Coen brothers also played up the weather. Characters wade through deep snow, and the sun rarely appears.
“It wasn't just that people were insulted because of the accent; their weather was also insulted. Like, it made the weather look really, really bad,” Melby said.
He adds that the Minnesota stereotypes in “Fargo” rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. But the film had an undeniable impact on the state.
“‘Fargo’ put Minnesota on the map nationally. Before that, Minnesota culture — the snow, the accents — had never been portrayed on the big screen,” he said.
Now, 30 years later, the region has embraced the film. The Fargo Theatre has a wooden statue of Marge Gunderson, and tourists can check out the famous wood chipper featured at the end of the film. The Fargo-Moorhead visitors center has both the original and a replica, which tourists take advantage of for photo ops.
“Some people put their babies in the chipper as a joke. Other people, if they have a tiny little dog, will put their tiny little dog in the chipper. They also have a fake leg you can put in,” Melby said.
Tuesday night, though, the hottest place in town will be inside the Fargo Theatre.
Emily Beck, the theater’s executive director, said the venue had to close during the pandemic. Attendance hasn’t gotten to what it used to be. She hopes that this showing of the movie will help rebuild interest in the theater, which is celebrating its own 100th anniversary.
“I hope that this brings some people in, maybe for their first cinematic experience, but primarily people who haven't been to a movie theater for a while,” Beck said. “And I hope they sit down, have a fantastic time and they're reminded of how precious and unique that experience is.”
The movie begins at 7 p.m. with a Q&A session with Stormare shortly after. It’ll be the first in the Fargo Theatre’s new centennial film series, which will screen a film from each decade since the theatre opened.
