Would we still be talking about the Oscar-winning “Fargo” — originally released 20 years ago on March 8, 1996 — if Joel and Ethan Coen had stuck with their original plan to call it “Brainerd”?
When I interviewed the brothers in New York City back in 1996, Ethan said “Brainerd” was their intended title — it makes sense, since nearly the whole movie takes place either there or in Minneapolis — but they were forced to change it because “when we would tell people the title, nobody would believe it was a real place.”
The tragicomedy, which the Coens often described as ” ‘In Cold Blood’ as re-imagined by Erma Bombeck,’ ” is about a Minneapolis man who engineers the kidnapping of his own wife, as well as the bickering thugs who execute the kidnapping and the deceptively sly Brainerd cop who gets to the bottom of the crime.
“Fargo” won Oscars for its screenplay and for actress Frances McDormand, who plays policewoman Marge Gunderson. But, during the shoot, location assistant Stuart Skrien did not see any of that coming.
“We were able to watch dailies (screenings of the previous day’s footage), so you got a sense of the movie,” says Skrien, still a location manager/scout for his own Skrien Locations. “Reading the script, initially, I didn’t think much of it, but when you saw the actors working and things started to come together, it seemed like, ‘Oh, yeah. This is going to be interesting.’ ”
Skrien, who lives in West St. Paul, worked throughout the shoot, but his big coup was finding King of Clubs, the now-defunct Minneapolis bar that appears in the film’s opening scene (although it was shot in Minneapolis, the scene takes place in Fargo).
“I was kind of hitting all the regular spots, but I finally ran into that old bar on Central Avenue,” says Skrien, who returned later with the Coens. “They really liked the red carpeting that went up the walls on that place. That’s what struck them. And it was also a good opportunity because they wanted to do an exterior shot of the place and, by shooting from across the street, you could cover the whole cityscape.”
Skrien’s main memory of “Fargo” is the film’s great migration north. Skrien said the Coens wanted lots of the snow they remembered from winters growing up in St. Louis Park and, much like this year, Minnesota did not ante up in 1995. So the production shifted to the Grand Rapids area and, then, even farther north to Hallock, Minn., and the northeast corner of North Dakota.
“We ended up chasing the snow almost all the way up to Canada,” Skrien says. “That was kind of fun shooting up there. One of the things that happened because of the weather was (location manager) Bob Graf got a call at 3 in the morning. We had a base camp in the corner of one of the beet fields up in North Dakota and the snow had really started to melt and it was flooding terribly because it wasn’t freezing overnight. The water flowed into this one spot, so we had to rescue all these vehicles parked into what was turning into a lake.”
One of the most vividly remembered locations in the film, albeit one not found by Skrien, was in northern Washington County: the Square Lake cabin where the notorious woodchipper scenes at the end of the movie were filmed.
“The Coens were looking for something specific — a pretty modest-looking cabin that looked remote. Square Lake looks like it could be in the middle of nowhere because the one piece of private property at the time was on the north side of the lake and there are not many buildings, but it’s only 30 minutes from town,” Skrien says. “And there was a big red barn in the background. They liked that a lot.”
The cabin is no longer there, having been moved to Wisconsin. Many of the other locations are no longer visitable, either. You also can’t drop in at Gustafson’s Olds (really Wally McCarthy Oldsmobile). Or the Carlton Celebrity Room, which was already gone when the film was shot, with Chanhassen Dinner Theatres subbing in. Or the St. Louis Park Embers restaurant where Jerry has a meeting with his father-in-law as traffic on Interstate 394 zips back and forth in the window behind them. That location sticks in Skrien’s mind because of the visitors who were there that day.
“Joel and Ethan’s parents (Edward and Rena Coen) came out to the set because they lived close by. They hung out at Embers with us all day,” recalls Skrien, whose own apartment almost ended up making an appearance in “Fargo.”
“They were maybe going to try to find a warehouse space for one of the characters, so they came to my place,” Skrien says.
While his apartment didn’t make the filmmakers’ final cut, Skrien says the brothers are keepers.
“Those guys were wonderful. It was a real treat to work with them. You almost felt like you were working on a student film. They’d put their jeans on and get right to work. They’re super-organized, they’re great communicators, and they welcome your collaboration and ideas,” Skrien says.
