Are you sure about that? I thought she was asking if there was anywhere good to eat and met with Mike specifically, not by chance as is kinda sorta implied in your post.
No, she had to go to the big city to go interview Jerry. She was recommended the Radisson while in Brainerd and asked there if it was reasonable. There’s even a scene of her checking into the hotel later on arrival. Then she meets Mike while she’s in town by arrangement. He compliments her on the place, and she shrugs and says: “It’s a Radisson,” which is a hotel chain, not a restaurant chain. They’re in the hotel restaurant, meeting there because it’s convenient.
And this is why I try not to post when I’m sleepy. If I manage to string together a coherent post, I still have to be able to figure out other people’s posts or the subject thereof.
Must not post while sleepy. :smack:
EDIT: All I have left to say is “Fuck you man, where’s Jerry?” 
That still didn’t sound quite right, so I looked it up, and the actual lines are:
“So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’tcha know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.”
Another thing I like about the film is all the little ways Grimsrud communicates his status as an ex-convict – or at least, I had the impression he was an ex-con – without coming out and saying he’d been in prison. Such as his obsession with “Pancakes House.” I understood that to mean he must have really, really missed pancakes while in the pen.
Like I say, he was funny-lookin’. More’n most people, even.
You’ve been whooshed. lieu’s line, “There’s more to life than a little evil, you know,” was in response to the question of how Marge would handle Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men.
As for the Radisson, here are the lines from the movie:
ObQuote:
Carl Showalter: So, uh, how long you work for the escort service?
Escort: I don’t know. A few months.
Carl: Find that work interesting, do you?
Escort: What are you talkin’ about?
The clip reminded me of how good this movie really is. Great acting by both Buscemi and Presnell in that parking lot scene.
Being Scandinavian myself, I also had to laugh a bit at the chair in the hallway that Jerry’s sitting on when he comes home. Scandinavians don’t wear shoes inside their houses and thusly older people are inclined to put chairs in the hallway, so you don’t have to bend down every time you take the shoes on or off.
Yah! Just a sec!
Whoa, daddy!
Carl Showalter: Hey, you’re there in 30 minutes, Jerry, or I find you, Jerry, and I shoot you and I shoot your fuckin’ wife and I shoot all your fuckin’ children and I shoot them all in the back of their little fuckin’ heads; you got it?
Jerry Lundegaard: Okay, now you stay away from Scotty, now.
I was delighted to see that before she was kidnapped, Jean was drinking out of a Red Wing coffee cup in the pattern called Pepe. Made in Red Wing, Minnesota, dontcha know.
Doh! I knew that.
I thought the whole point for why Jerry needed money was to get out from under the thumb of his father-in-law, and to be able to take care of his family like a real man. That’s why we have the pitiful car scam, parking lot scheme, and kidnap plot.
“So you were havin’ sex with the little guy…?”
I was amazed at the pretty wholesome farm girl hookers in Fargo. My husband, who spent some time in the northcentral US as a young man, regaled me with tales of what the strippers looked like.
A character who was isolated from Minnesota society, despite his efforts to fit in, was Asian, and IIRC the only non-Scandinavian in the film. Could be a coincidence, the whole scene could be just a throw-in, but would you really expect that from the Coens?
While Jerry was extrodinarily selfish having his wife kidnapped and put in danger like that, the household
seemed to funtion ok and seem rather normal. He picked up groceries on his way home, and was greeted with, “oh hey hun!” by Jean.
However, Jean seemed kinda nervous and uptight…caught between a sucessful, domineering father, and her looser husband.
I wonder what is it that made Jerry such a looser? Can’t keep a job (so father-in-law puts him to work?Gambling? Substance abuse? Cheater?
Fargo 2 could explore “the backstory” for us.
I had a roommate from Minnesota and he said the portrayal of the locals was frighteningly on-target. Jerry’s wife in particular behaved identically to his old neighbor.
D’oh! :smack:
That does sound familiar now that you mention it. But she was staying at the Radisson. So you mean back in Brainerd she asked about a lunch place and then decided to stay there based on that?
EDIT: This is a bit confusing now. Imdb says she checked into the Radisson:
**Marge Gunderson: [to Radisson hotel concierge] I’m doing really super there, thanks. I am Mrs. Gunderson. I have a reservation.
Hotel Clerk: Yep, you sure do, Mrs. Gunderson.
Marge Gunderson: [smiling] Is there a phone down here, you think? **
But then on the lobby phone asks:
Marge Gunderson: [on lobby phone, asking advice about a restaurant] Is it reasonable?
So she’s asking on the phone about the place she’s already in?
Thank you, and thanks to rock party, dontcha know.
Do people from there really talk like that? I know Sarah Palin does, but I was born just south of there and I don’t remember that. (I was really young though.) Didn’t the Coens get a bit of flack for it?
Come on now. I defy you to watch the scene and point out where Mike wasn’t crazy, or Margie acted unfriendly in any way. Especially when it’s revealed that he made up the whole dead wife story.
In an episode of The Venture Brothers, Steve Park did the voice for a scientist named Mike Suriyama and did it in that same style as Mike Yamagita. A nice little homage/in-joke.