Friday 31 December 2021

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994 Joel & Ethan Coen)

Also written with Sam Raimi, who's also the second unit director. Also.

If The Man Who Wasn't There is the Coens' Double Indemnity, this is their His Girl Friday, with Jennifer Jason Leigh and John Mahoney perfect as fast-talking newspaper editor / sassy journalist (Bruce Campbell as 'Smitty' is another link back to Raimi / The Evil Dead, on which Joel was the assistant film editor).

Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Charles Durning, Jim True-Frost (Buzz), Bill Cobbs.

Fittingly takes place on New Year's Eve, 1958. Great model work. Another dazzling bit of cinematography from Roger Deakins. Carter Burwell music (themes from Aram Khachaturian), edited for once by no-Coen Thom Noble (Thelma and Louise, Witness, Fahrenheit 451). Great sound design from Skip Livesay, production design Dennis Gassner, costumes Mary Zophres.

Loved the super-fast letter-filer who's worked in the mail room 49 years.

Paul Newman's make-up is by Monty Westmore, who'd been 'doing' him since 1972's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.



The Coens love a big cigar



There's surely no argument that the Deakins-Coens relationship has been a particularly fruitful one


And... Finally. OK, it's not a triple stitched suit, as I always remembered, but double-stitching which saves someone's life. Been trying to remember that one for years...


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