Word: minnesotans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...YEARS BACK, HOWARD MOHR of A Prairie Home Companion wrote a book called How to Talk Minnesotan. Was it funny? Hey, you betcha. So are the twistings of that frosty, flabbergastingly flat accent as heard on the Minnesota-based Mystery Science Theater 3000. Two other gifted natives, the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, have apparently never got over the giggle value of their regional dialect. Fargo, their derisive new true-crime comedy, could be subtitled How to Laugh at People Who Talk Minnesotan...
...this a Mystery Violence Theater. After some superb mannerist films, the Coens are back in the deadpan realist territory of Blood Simple, but without the cinematic elan. Fargo is all attitude and low aptitude. Its function is to italicize the Coens' giddy contempt toward people who talk and think Minnesotan. Which is, y'know, kind of a bad deal...
MOVIES . . . FARGO: After some superb mannerist films, filmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have returned to deadpan realist territory in their new film their native Minnesota. But the derisive new true-crime comedy should really be subtitled 'How to Laugh at People Who Talk Minnesotan,' says TIME's Richard Corliss. The film -- which has not much at all to do with Fargo, North Dakota -- is about the difficulty real folks have pulling off crimes that always go smoothly in fiction. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) needs a lot of cash, so he hires two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare...
Burger was in many ways a walking contradiction, a gregarious loner. He showed up at social events all over the capital, but he had few intimates. When Nixon named another Minnesotan, Harry A. Blackmun, to the high court and Blackmun wondered whether he was up to the job, Burger thundered, "Of course you are. Harry, you and I have been preparing all of our lives for these jobs. We are as good as the rest of them...
...women often have trouble finding a lawyer who will initiate a child-support case on contingency. In fact, several states have now contracted out some of their collection work to private firms. The likelihood is that ever more women may find themselves following in the footsteps of Minnesotan JoAnn Anderson. She filed a child-support claim with the state in 1990; nothing happened. In 1993 she hired Hoffman's firm, which located him within a few weeks. She now receives $1,600 a month. "I don't mind paying their fee," she says. "I am certain Minnesota would never have...