The Hudsucker Proxy poster art by Nate Gonzales
October 18, 2024
By Koraljka Suton
In 1981, three years before he and his brother Ethan made their directorial and screenwriting debut with Blood Simple, Joel Coen worked as an assistant editor on Sam Raimi’s first feature film The Evil Dead. The Coen brothers and Raimi quickly became friends and, after discovering that they share a love of 40s Hollywood comedies, the trio started working on one such script together. This creative process continued over the course of the following years, as the three filmmakers collaborated on the screenplay for Raimi’s second film Crimewave (1985) and even moved in together during the post-production of Blood Simple. But although the script for the screwball comedy The Hudsucker Proxy was finished in 1985, production would have to wait, because, as Joel himself said, the movie would be expensive and he and his brother were not as popular yet, having just made an independent film. And so, the Coens shelved it for the time being and went on to make Raising Arizona (1987), Miller’s Crossing (1990) and Barton Fink (1991).
Despite none of them becoming hits (Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink even flopped at the box office), the latter went on to win three awards at the Cannes International Film Festival (Best Director, Best Actor and the Palme d’Or), garnered three Academy Award nominations (Best Supporting Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design) and opened to much critical acclaim. All of this resulted in Joel Silver, producer of films such as Lethal Weapon (1987), Predator (1987) and Die Hard (1988), deciding to buy the shelved screenplay for Silver Pictures and pitch it at Warner Bros. With a $25 million budget thanks to several production companies backing the project and the Coens being allowed complete artistic control, The Hudsucker Proxy could finally see the light of day in 1994. And even though the gestation period was a long one, it was well worth the wait.
Unfortunately, neither critics nor viewers thought so upon the film’s initial release. The Coen brothers’ fifth feature and their most expensive film up until that point, bombed at the box office (earning only $11 million) and the reviews were largely mixed, accusing it of prioritizing style over substance. Be that as it may, The Hudsucker Proxy was in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (and lost to none other than Pulp Fiction) and would eventually go on to attain a cult following.
Because while it is true that the film is highly stylized, it in no way lacks substance. The Hudsucker Proxy opens to the scene of one Norville Barnes (played by Tim Robbins), preparing to jump from a skyscraper window on the last day of 1958. This was, in fact, the very first image that the screenwriters came up with. And from there they just had to decide on the whys and hows—why he was there to begin with and how they were going to get him down. What they did was take us back to December 1st 1958, the day Norville’s rise and subsequent fall began.
The protagonist comes to New York from his hometown Muncie, Indiana, where he earned a business degree. Looking for a job in the Big Apple, the graduate becomes demotivated upon seeing that all positions require prior experience (positions that include, but are not limited to, that of a cat’s meats man, a goaltender, a goat herd, a gutter sweep, and a rope braider). But in the cleverest of ways, fate takes it upon herself to make sure Norville sees an ad for a job at a corporation called Hudsucker Industries. And this position requires no prior experience. But the moment Norville enters the Hudsucker building, something else happens, putting him on his destined trajectory further and faster than he could have ever anticipated. Waring Hudsucker, founder and president of said corporation, jumps out of a closed window on the 44th floor during a business meeting (this plot point was allegedly inspired by a real-life event that took place in 1975, when chairman of United Brands Eli Black plummeted to his death by jumping out of a closed 44th floor window of the Pan Am Building in New York, briefcase in hand).
His unexpected death sets in motion a plan that will directly affect Norville’s fate. Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), member of the board of directors, wants to hire an inept president so that the company’s stock price could sink, which would in turn enable the board to buy the controlling interest. How hard could it be to hire an incompetent schmuck to run a company? As it turns out, not hard at all. Following a string of ludicrous circumstances, Norville ends up in Mussburger’s office, quickly proving himself to be a more than worthy candidate for the position. Or so Mussburger thinks. To his great surprise, the product that he allows Norville to pitch to the board, with the intention of it flopping and further plummeting the company’s stock, ends up being an unprecedented success. As Joel Coen explained: “We had to come up with something that Norville was going to invent that on the face of it was ridiculous. Something that would seem, by any sort of rational measure, to be doomed to failure, but something that on the other hand the audience already knew was going to be a phenomenal success.” And that something was the hula-hoop.
In The Hudsucker Proxy, the Coen brothers and Sam Raimi (who also worked as second unit director) brilliantly subvert our expectations. Prior to the board meeting, Norville had already pitched the idea several times to other characters (and, subsequently, to us) by showing them a drawing of a circle and simply saying “you know, for kids”, making them (and us) believe that he truly is the idiot Mussburger makes him out to be. The protagonist’s naïveté comes off as charming and his childlike inability to see through the malice and hidden intentions of others renders him endearing. It is precisely this childlike innocence that enables him to come up with an idea so basic, yet so effective: children are, after all, perfectly capable of having enormous amounts of fun with the simplest of objects. And Norville’s internal wiring allows him to inherently tap into that. It would be easy to assume that Norville would remain sweet and innocent even after the unexpected success of the hula-hoop. But the exact opposite happens, much to the dismay and disappointment of fast-talking career gal Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who sets out to write a story on Norville by pretending to be a girl from his hometown and obtaining a secretarial job at Hudsucker Industries.
Although her initial intention is to take both him and the company down, she soon realizes that Norville is not in on the scheme and starts falling for him. But Norville, in all his sweetness and innocence, turns out not to be immune to the shadow side of sudden success. And oh boy, does he succeed. But, as is usually the case, success proves itself to be a capricious mistress—one day you’re on top of the world and the next marks your fall from grace. Or in Norville’s case: one month you’re on top and by the end of it, you’re yesterday’s news.
The Coen brothers’ ambitious film is, by all accounts, an open love letter to a number of pictures. Its sentimentality, as well as the fact that it presented us with a hero’s journey of a regular Joe, is very much influenced by Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), and, most notably, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). The Hudsucker Proxy’s narrative structure is an unmistakable homage to the latter, beginning with an omniscient narrator informing us of our suicidal protagonist’s intentions and then going back in time to show us how he got there in the first place. But unlike Frank Capra’s Christmas film, it is only near the very end that The Hudsucker Proxy goes all in on the magical realism it has been cleverly playing with throughout. And it does so in a way that is very much tongue-in-cheek, with a literal deus ex machina swooping in and saving the day, thereby managing to be both highly unexpected and delightfully subversive.
But Capra’s aren’t the only films The Hudsucker Proxy borrows from. The snappy, fast-paced dialogue is a direct homage to director Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940), while Jennifer Jason Leigh’s physical appearance and vocal idiosyncrasy clearly evoke the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Jean Arthur and Rosalind Russell (in preparation for the part, Leigh even went so far as to read the biographies of all three actresses). But if you asked the Coen brothers, their intention was neither making a commentary on nor doing a parody of the abovementioned films, but rather simply creating one such picture. In Ethan’s words: “It’s the case where, having seen those movies, we say ‘They’re really fun—let’s do one’; as opposed to ‘They’re really fun—let’s comment upon them.’”
When it came to casting choices, the Coen brothers advocated for Tim Robbins all the way, even though Silver wanted Tom Cruise. As far as the role of Amy Archer is concerned, Bridget Fonda and Winona Ryder were both in talks for the part before Leigh was ultimately cast. The Coens were very much familiar with Leigh, seeing as how she went to auditions for Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink, but ended up getting rejected. The first person the brothers offered the role of Sidney Mussburger to was none other than Clint Eastwood, but the legendary actor was otherwise engaged. Warner Bros. had a variety of suggestions, but most of the actors they had in mind were comedians, which clearly wasn’t a good fit for the antagonist. Luckily, Paul Newman was game—and he sure as hell had the time of his life playing the baddie.
Actor Bruce Campbell, who was friends with the Coen brothers, initially declined to audition for the role of Smitty, Amy Archer’s colleague, because he was of the opinion that the Coens were already well aware of his acting chops. This resulted in the brothers eventually giving him the role without insisting on him auditioning. Charles Durning was incredibly memorable as Waring Hudsucker, even though he didn’t have a lot of screentime, whereas actors such as Steve Buscemi, Peter Gallagher and John Goodman all made brief appearances—Buscemi as a beatnik bartender, Gallagher as singer Vic Tenetta (he hits the stage with booze and a cigarette in hand and sings for about thirty seconds) and Goodman as a newsreel announcer. Even Sam Raimi had a cameo—his face is not visible, but his silhouette is, and we hear his voice while he tries to come up with a name for the hula-hoop as one of the Hudsucker brainstormers.
Despite getting mixed reviews and being a box office flop, The Hudsucker Proxy remains a funny and intelligent entry in the Coen brothers’ filmography. Wonderfully shot (courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins) and directed (although only Joel is credited as director, and Ethan as producer because of guild rules, both brothers did both things) and cleverly written, the film is a perfect recreation of the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, but still manages to remain original and subversive. It is fast-paced and full of surprises. Whimsical and serious at the same time. It pokes fun at its characters while loving them profusely. Its themes are heavily anchored in reality and are, as such, more pertinent than ever, whereas its execution is highly stylized and sprinkled with magical realism. That is, until it becomes drenched in it in the film’s home stretch. It may not have been what audiences in the 1990s wanted or expected. But that has nothing to do with the movie’s quality. And it sure as hell doesn’t make it any less worthy of a viewing. Or two.
Koraljka Suton is a member of the Croatian Society of Film Critics and has a master’s degree in German and English. For her thesis, she did a comparative analysis of Spielberg’s ‘Band of Brothers’ and ‘The Pacific’. Koraljka trained at a Zagreb-based acting studio for six years and fell in love with Michael Chekhov and Lee Strasberg’s acting techniques. She is also a contemporary dancer and a Reiki master who believes in the transformative quality of art. Read more »
Screenwriter must-read: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen & Sam Raimi’s screenplay for The Hudsucker Proxy [PDF]. (NOTE: For educational and research purposes only). The DVD/Blu-ray of the film is available at Amazon and other online retailers. Absolutely our highest recommendation.
The montage in The Hudsucker Proxy in which the Hula Hoop is developed is the greatest montage of the Coen brothers’ filmography. The great irony of this is that this montage was not directed by the Coen brothers. —You Know, For Kids!
To celebrate The Hudsucker Proxy’s quarter-century anniversary, befores & afters asked visual effects supervisor Michael McAlister and miniature effects supervisor Mark Stetson about their experiences on the film, including filming models lying down, what it took to make great miniatures back then and where to spot the buildings in other subsequent films. —A visual journey inside the miniatures of ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’
For more on the miniatures from The Hudsucker Proxy, including where the models found future homes, check out this extended scene from Berton Pierce’s Sense of Scale documentary.
ROGER DEAKINS, ASC, BSC
“To me, The Hudsucker Proxy is the most underrated movie that the Coen Brothers have done. I bump into people who say, ‘Wow, that was a really interesting movie; I didn’t see it when it came out!’… But also, you think now, how many films have been made with a similar sensibility to The Hudsucker Proxy, and in it’s day it was stylistically such a departure, but now you see films with that kind of stylization. There’s a much broader range of films now, and a film like that can be accepted more.” —Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC
Andrew Weisblum, ACE discusses shot choice in The Hudsucker Proxy.
Host Rico Gagliano tells the story of the soaring Coens movie that paved the way for the flatlands of Fargo. Guests include Hudsucker’s legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins, acclaimed film podcaster Karina Longworth, and more.
Scout Tafoya’s video series, The Unloved, honors films that he believes possess artistic merit, even though they received harsh criticism upon their initial release. This one is about Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1994 comedy The Hudsucker Proxy, the filmmaking duo’s most expensive flop and perhaps their most critically reviled as well. Scout finds poetry in it, along with a grandiose playfulness that Hollywood films of any era rarely muster.
Alec Baldwin hosted the 2013 The Art of the Score discussion, which featured the Coen brothers and their longtime composer Carter Burwell. This discussion was a remarkable convergence of ideas, boldly exploring the psychological aspects of film music. Highly entertaining and worth every minute.
The Film Society of Lincoln Center held an hour-long discussion between Joel and Ethan Coen and fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach. Some of the topics covered include how the Coens open their movies, their use of voice-over, how they use misdirection, and how their films compare to Baumbach’s. The interview is particularly compelling as the Coens seldom discuss their films, preferring to let them speak for themselves.
Here are several photos taken behind-the-scenes during production of Ethan Coen & Joel Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy. Photographed by Jim Bridges © Warner Bros., Silver Pictures, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment, Working Title Films. Intended for editorial use only. All material for educational and noncommercial purposes only.
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