That was my first thought as well but I figured the poster meant that she should have stopped working, being in the last trimester or whatever, for the sake of the baby. She could have done some desk work or something else if she wanted to work till the baby came instead of putting herself in a situation that could be physically demanding.
My favourite bit has no dialogue. It’s Marj pointing at the badge on her hat and the
“get it?” look on her face.
This could be it of course, and Jerry doesn’t come off as the hooker/blow/philandering type. More like a frustrated everyman/loser/knucklehead.
But just like the mystery of whats in the breifcase in Pulp Fiction (same year I believe), I like thinking it was something more sinister!
No one has mentioned FARGO’s music…fantastic I thought, and it really added to the snowy desolation/isolation. Brrrrrrrrrrr.
I agree, he just doesnt seem like the hooker/philandering type. Yet, he is MASSIVELY in debt - not just a little under water. Furthermore, his father in law doesnt seem to suspect Jerry, so Jerry’s massive debt is probably a secret to Jean and her dad.
Jerry also doesnt seem to be a very fun guy who lost money doing anything that would be interesting, or from something that is real fun.
He is not overtly mean , or overtly suspicious, else Jean or her dad would not be so respectful to him, and not so trusting of him.
If I was to guess Jerry’s problem, I would venture a “guess” that he lost a massive amount of money in a very mundane and boring manner, that Jerry has been embezzling money from GMAC for several years, pyramiding his fradulent debt to GMAC, by financing a long series of unsuccessful gambles in the stock market that have finally added up to almost a million dollars and now too large to prevent GMAC from detecting.
I remember seeing Elton John on a talk show right after this movie came out and he used Mike Yanagita in conversation! I was so impressed. I mean, after just one viewing (although, who knows, maybe he had a print…rich people…) being able to remember Mike Yanagita’s name is pretty cool.
This is definitely one of my favorite movies.
“You okay there Margie?”
“Yeah, just think I’m gonna barf.”
It’s so cool that we’ve probably covered the whole movie via quotes in this thread!!!
When I first heard about this movie, I thought it was about a bunch of murders, occuring in Fargo, North Dakota…
…and we all know that in real life, North Dakota has the least amount of murders than any other state in the union.
Being from North Dakota myself, I was reluctant to watch it the first time because “if” it was going to be about lots of murders in North Dakota, I just wouldnt be able to watch the movie in any accepting manner. Once I figured out that the murders were occuring in Brainard Minnesota, the movie suddenly became believable, and so I could “drop my shields” and really get into and enjoy the movie.
It was a much-welcome break from all the knock-off Tarantino indies of the mid-90’s. Every damn movie back then was some hipster and his girlfriend in a rundown motel in the Mojave desert, with a suitcase that a bunch of badguys were after. Fargo still had the comic amorality that was in vogue at the time, but it didn’t suggest it was funny when people’s lives were casually snuffed out.
Every time I pass a Ciera on the street, no matter what the color, I shout this out. I never fail to crack myself up.
Also, it is a complete travesty that Fargo lost out to The English Fucking Patient for best picture. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
My favorite “no dialogue” scene was when Jerry was scraping the snow and ice off his windshield and just lost it, beating against the windshield with his scraper in cold, cold frustration.
What if Jerry just needed money from Wade/kidnapping to pay back the car guy? Perhaps he was attempting to scam them for some easy money (as he is wont to do with that damn Tru Coat) and it backfired. So when the guy starts badgering him for his monies, he sets Plans B and C into motion. That is, the parking lot and kidnapping.
My dad used to drive a tan Ciera when I was a little kid. I always hated it; my mom had a yellow Oldsmobile Starfire and some European moped, also yellow, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. I always called my dad’s Ciera “the brown car”, never the actual name, because the drab brown colors of it depressed me so. The emblem had been ripped off, years ago, back in New York (which cemented in my little-kid mind, along with a lot of movies like Home Alone 2, the idea that New York was a dangerous wasteland where people ripped parts off of cars for no reason.)
This is actually one of my favorite scenes from any movie, dialogue or not.
She was a descendant of farm wives, and they were a lot harder and more ruthless than we tend to give them credit for. My grandmas were hard-core. 
My guess for why Jerry needs the money? I think he’s realized that he’s trapped in his desperate life and he wants to escape. He’s using all of his schemes to allay suspicion until he gets the money and he can fake his death (probably ineptly) and escape from the situation. All he has to do is try to keep all the balls he’s juggling up in the air just long enough to cover his escape.
When the movie first came out, there was universal agreement around here (I’m in MN) that the only guy who sounded right was the old guy out shoveling his driveway. I’ve since heard that he is the only non-actor in the movie, being an old guy out shoveling his driveway near where they were shooting, and they gave him a couple of lines.
It’s was also fun for a long time going to local theater productions and seeing actors who were in Fargo. “Look! It’s the parking lot attendant!”
Nah. The really incredible thing for folks not raised there to understand is that THEY REALLY ARE THAT NICE. :eek:
And damn, once your personality has been poisoned by moving away, it embarrasses you to find that you are not.
What about the whole “Minnesota nice, Minnesota ice” some of us hear about?
Sorta, “Don’t let the smarmyness fool ya”
Um, Showalter is German, not Scandinavian. And you are suggesting a camaraderie between people from the several nations that border the Baltic that is belied when you have to live with them.
I never heard that one, being part of several of the clans so I could usually find a distant relative. 
But I spend a lot of my time with these people, and I know that the nice part is genuine, though they may not offer to cosign a loan. They are nice people whose ancestors came from a land that, much of the time, is a barren desert. Their niceness comes from the same root as the hospitality of Bedouins: I hope for reciprocation when I need it, but after many generations it becomes part of the culture. Yeah, they can sometimes seem less than charitable: today we buried an in-law I would describe as a “grumpy, old Swede,” but I’d also say that Eric was a good man who would give the shirt off his back as long as you didn’t interrupt his White Sox game too much.
ETA: I mean, we’re not freakin’ ITALIANS, y’know.