Before we go any further, I have to eulogize the elephant in the room: my trusty Pioneer dual-sided Laserdisc-slash-CD player. I’ve had her for years now and she is a shining testament to the durability of 80s technology: this shit was built to last.
And she has lasted. She is heavy and unwieldy and unless we have her own separate station set up beside the TV then she rests on top of my wife’s ten-year-old IKEA entertainment unit. Two years ago I forgot that the lid was ejected and I walked into it, dislocating the arm from the unit. It was easily fixed by snapping it back in but she hasn’t worked the same ever since. Now she takes almost two full cycles before she can eject the door; CDs get stuck inside her and require surgical removal; and there is an ever-increasing chance that one day she will lose the use of her tongue completely and never be able to speak again. But she has persevered regardless! And no matter how much longer she may last, her contributions to my cinematic endeavors cannot be overstated enough.
Until then I need to keep an eye out for another player just in case she dies before I manage to get through the rest of the collection. Can you believe that people are selling these things for a hundred bucks on Craigslist? I got lucky: the first one I ever bought, before the one I have now, was a single-sided unit (meaning you had to get up in the middle of a movie and manually flip the disc over the watch the rest; you don’t have to do that with the player I have now, presumably because it has two lasers: one on the top and one on the bottom) for 20 bucks. The guy also wanted to sell me his Yanni concert disc for 20 bucks. Quick suggestion: just give me the fucking Yanni disc. Don’t ask me if I want it. Just include it. What are you going to do with a Yanni concert Laserdisc now that you don’t have a player? Are you going to mount it and hang it in your living room? Does it bring you joy? And folks wonder why their attics fill up. Only hipsters and 31-year-old film school dropouts have any interest in Laserdiscs anymore. Do us, and yourselves, a favor and sell your shit cheap. You’ll be glad for the space, and we’ll be glad for starting the whole cycle over again by spending our hard-earned millennial money on useless garbage!
Now that I’ve spent all that time iconizng my player, what about the movie itself? Well it’s alright, innit? Coen Brothers movies require that you submit to their whims so your mileage could go either way. Most of us have seen Fargo. I think we can all agree that Fargo was their watershed moment, although it wasn’t the first time the Brothers were acclaimed for their originality. Now they have made a career out of it. I don’t even know how the two of them work together: I would smother my sister in her sleep if I had to co-write anything with her. Pillow over face, knee in chest. Your typical Coen Brothers movie falls into one of two categories: real-world procedurals or comedies. There is some cross-stitching but for the most part there is a clear divide, with one distinct binding element. Their comedies (Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, O Brother) often have fantastical elements, and their grounded dramas (Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men, Barton Fink) seem to exist in a bubble where you reach to empathize with the characters despite their being on a different plane. The Coens love working off-the-map in worlds similar-to but unlike our own. The Hudsucker Proxy is a comedy, but it is also a drama; a romance; and a fantasy picture, telling a fictional story about the creation of the hula-hoop through that overwrought lens of the “everyman in extraordinary circumstances”. In this case, Tim Robbins’ Norville Barnes is an idealist with big dreams but no experience, who struggles to find work in the December leading up to New Years Eve 1959 (a-ha! Finally! A movie that takes place in December without mentioning Peal Harbor or displaying any Christmas decorations!). As luck would have it, the faceless-and-ominous Hudsucker Industries (with their clock tower-adorned high rise channeling the Tyrell Corporation from Blade Runner, jutting out of the mid-century New York skyline) are looking for a patsy to pose as interim CEO to drive the stock price of the company down so their board can buy back cheap controlling interest. Along the way, our hapless hero meets a journalist played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who lies to win his affections and write a damning article only to fall in love with him and his genuineness: something you can’t say the old and withered Men In Suits who want to own the company have.
In their archetypal reverie, the Coens give us non-sequiturs meant for cheap laughs (a suicide attempt thwarted by plexiglass); Bill Cobbs doing the Sam Elliott-thing from Big Lebowski as the Magical Negro who lives in the clock tower; fourth-wall breaking (another suicide attempt thwarted by stopping time); a general lack of sympathy for its one-note villains; and a doomed protagonist who is only saved by giving up the fortune the plot has accustomed him to. In fact, Hudsucker in many ways feels like the organic stepping-stone to Big Lebowski (the other being Barton Fink and its machinations on capitalism), including the aforementioned spiritual narrator; dream sequences and miniature work; and the rapport of its characters. Their productions are always professional and the acting is always great (here Jason Leigh is the highlight with her fast-talking, enunciated 1920’s cadence, but she is joined by a bevy of bit parts filled by recognizable character actors including Paul Newman as your chief baddie; Cobbs; the late John Mahoney as the resident J J Jameson; and Bruce Campbell as Leigh’s co-anchor and foil). I also appreciated their aesthetic details, including a mail room that is ripped straight out of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil; a giant crossword-building board in the newspaper offices; and the Caligula reference in the opening titles with the giant Hudsucker “H” logo and Khachaturian’s Adagio for Spartacus & Phrygia prominently on the soundtrack. Now THERE is a movie I would write a Take on: Caligula! If only Penthouse would get around to finishing the Director’s Cut. And the Coens always have excellent details in their production design. They have a reputation for a reason.
But, there is a “but”. Despite the sheen and polish we have come to expect from Coen movies, Hudsucker didn’t take me that extra mile. Sure it’s weird and engaging and my wife and I sat quietly and watched the whole time without going on our phones, but it’s weirdness is too consistent. It has panache without enough punch. Barton Fink is a good example of the opposite end of the scale: that film was your Hollywood polemical, which turned into a horror movie in the last 15-minutes. While of all people I can appreciate the spontaneity (especially when one has the audacity to do ANYTHING in the last 15-minutes), it was out of place and put a Biblical bookmark where there didn’t need to be one. Hollywood is evil, we get it. I don’t need to be cudgelled by a baby-eating demon that looks like John Goodman. Hudsucker has the opposite problem: it maintains its oddness the whole time without going above-and-beyond. I wish I could articulate my point clearer. Say, for instance, I made a movie. A REALLY GOOD MOVIE. Like, you’re watching the whole time and there isn’t anything off-putting about it and you’re really getting into it and you want to know what happens, and in the last 10-minutes just as the characters are about to finally reveal the film’s secrets it cuts to me in an armchair laughing at the camera while the credits roll. It’s a bit of a fuck you, isn’t it? Barton Fink was a fuck you. Hudsucker doesn’t want to tell you to fuck off. It wants to hold your hand the whole time through its self-imposed majesty and as a result the effect is the same for the whole picture as it would be for the last 15-minutes if they crammed all their metaphorical bullshit in then. Does that clear it up? Don’t get me wrong: it’s still worth watching for some of its whimsy. And it still falls on the upper-end of the middle ground of Coen Brothers movies. But I was left feeling meh and you may too. Rest assured it was a stepping-stone to the better movies they were getting around to making.
//jf 3.14.20
theory of a daskeman 