Movie: Fargo

This time I watched Fargo. This one, I need to take in two chunks: the movie itself, and the false claims made for it.

The movie itself is pretty good. Proof that any situation, no matter how morbid, is funny if you're watching Minnesotans do it. Not surprisingly, a lot of Minnesotans don't much appreciate the movie and I can't blame them. If you don't find Minnesotans inherently funny, it would probably be pretty boring. But if you do, it is a good dark comedy.

And Margie is one of the best female protagonists ever.

Unfortunately, the Coen brothers engaged in what is my biggest movie pet peeve outside of offensive portrays of women or minority groups: they claimed the story was true, when it is not. Right when it opens, it splashes a screen saying the movie is a true story, only the names have been changed, and the events are exactly as it happened.
It isn't true. It isn't true at all. It isn't even based on anything. The Coen brothers completely made it up, and the reason they did so (according to the DVD documentary) was because they did not think the story was strong enough to stand on its own, but that people would buy it if they thought it was an actual event.

Ooooh. I HATE that. At best it's a sign of unconscionably lazy writing -- the authors don't want to make their story believable, or enjoyable enough that people won't care, so they just slap on this false "notice" so hide the inconsistencies. At worst, it's downright fraudulent. They're trying to get money from people who would pay for a nonfiction story, but not a fictional one.

Blair Witch Project did this to the point of turning their "making of" special into "documentary" on the "history" of the Blair Witch and selling the accompanying book as though it were a nonfiction case summary. Fans believing them did massive amounts of damage to the building and town where the movie was filmed and to the surrounding town.

The Hellraiser franchise has tried to add an element of historical basis to their merchandising, and as a result an acquaintance in the Poser community was nearly sued for copyright infringement when he used photos that were altered to look like and marked as old enough to be public domain but were actually modern merchandising material.

In Fargo's case, this fraud may have contributed to a fatality.

Now, there are those out there who basically argue that people should be cynical all the time, and find any form of "gullibility" to be an utterly unforgivable sin. I've actually seen people say that those gullible enough to buy some unimportant story should be killed for it -- ironically the "gullible suckers" story in that case was false, and it was the would-be executioners who were believing bullshit without evidence.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I don't think very highly of that opinion. When someone has an extreme, irrationally intolerance for gullibility, especially when it gets to the point of believing that the "gullible" deserve to die, I always wonder why. Who have they cheated, what scam have they pulled that they need to justify it by believing the victim deserved it?

Suffice to say, I'm of the opinion that writers should make stories that stand on their own instead of making false claims. Unfortunately in Fargo's case, the opposite put a very bad taste in my mouth over a movie that would have been rather good otherwise. (If you don't share my pet peeve, though, it is worth a watch. Hell, you'll get so many more MST3K jokes. ^_~)