by Mark Brinkerhoff
The Coen Brothers have no shortage of veritable classics on their résumé (Fargo, No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, etc.), but somewhat overlooked within their filmography are the quirky, sweet (read: non-violent, still absurdist) little diversions into optimism, vs. their patented nihilism. And so, sandwiched between the critical and commercial triumphs Barton Fink and Fargo, arrived The Hudsucker Proxy, the Coens’ mid-‘90s (25th anniversary, y’all!) ode to the zany, screwball comedies of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
They had me at "You know, for kids.”
I was one of the few who saw The Hudsucker Proxy in theaters—it bombed…hard—at the mall where I worked as a teen (at Subway in the food court, natch). In fact, it wasn’t by chance that I saw The Hudsucker Proxy; I actually sought it out, for reasons I can’t totally recall. But loved it I did, from the very first watch...
Now it’s not like The Hudsucker Proxy is in constant reruns or even always readily available on streaming (although you can catch it now on Cinemax if you have it), but it’s one I got on home video that I absolutely cherish. Why? At first it must’ve been because The Hudsucker Proxy was so non-‘90s, rat-a-tat-tat and rich in art-deco feels at a time when we were swimming in greasiness and grunge. Given that this was the Coens’ first big-budget feature, you can definitely see where the money went—it’s right there on the screen, with the gorgeous production values and costumes of a dreamlike, mid-century New York.
The story itself is a rather simple one: Simpleton arrives from Indiana, brimming with ideas that others doubt or dismiss, stumbling into an incredible opportunity laden with ulterior motives, rising and falling and then getting redemption (and the girl) by the end. But plot points aside, this is a movie that lives or dies on style and banter, and it’s in that vein that I find The Hudsucker Proxy so enjoyable (and endlessly re-watchable).
-Say, what do you think you were in your previous life, Amy?
-Oh, I don't know. Maybe I was just a fast-talking career gal who thought she was one of the boys.
-Oh no, Amy, pardon me for saying so but I find that very farfetched. That kind of person would come back as a wildebeest, or a warthog. No, I find it more likely that you were a gazelle, with long, graceful legs, gamboling through the underbrush. Perhaps we met once, a chance encounter in a forest glade. I must have been an antelope or an ibex. What times we must have had...
1994 was, anecdotally, a banner year for all three of The Hudsucker Proxy’s (wonderful) stars. Tim Robbins, coming off The Player, followed this up with The Shawshank Redemption and the underrated romcom, I.Q. (another of my Over & Overs). Jennifer Jason Leigh, who reportedly beat out her Single White Female co-star Bridget Fonda—P.S. I miss you!—for this role which was also coveted by Winona Ryder, had Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, one of her many near-Oscar-nom misses. And Paul Newman came back from a four-year screen absence with this and Nobody’s Fool, one of his finest performances. Add in a delightful-as-always Charles Durning, Bill Cobbs, Bruce Campbell, Jim True, and John Mahoney, and you’ve got all of the ingredients to an ensemble that delivered like Domino’s.
The Hudsucker Proxy remains, no joke, one of my top 10 favorite movies—of all time. It’s an eclectic bunch with All About Eve, Darling, Network, Rosemary’s Baby, The Secret of NIMH, et al, with The Hudsucker Proxy one that I come back to time and time again. It never fails to make me smile.
previously on "Over & Overs"