Thoughts on Blood Simple

via IMDB

"The world is full of complainers. But the fact is, nothing comes with a guarantee. I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States, or even Man of the Year -- something can always go wrong. And go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help -- watch him fly. Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else -- that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas ... And down here... you're on your own."

In earlier reviews, I'm complained about movies which play out in a straightforward A-B-C-D fashion. Blood Simple, the first from writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen, shows that it can be fun when the audience is ahead of the characters.

Bartender Ray (John Getz) enters into an affair with the boss's wife, Abby (Frances McDormand). Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) hires private eye Lorren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) twice. First to track Abby (she's got lots of personality, you know), then to kill the couple. Visser doesn't follow through, but convinces Marty (who is paying him with $10,000 that Marty intends to claim was stolen by Ray) he has before shooting him with Abby's gun. Any advantage Visser gains by framing Abby (the most obvious suspect) appears to be lost when he leaves his lighter in Marty's office. It's actually not lost because Ray doesn't notice the lighter. Thinking Abby shot Marty, Ray ends up being the one who commits murder.

"... The truth is ... he was alive when I buried him."

*The newspaper hits Ray's screen door at the absolute worst time*

Some of my favorite moments in Blood Simple come when the Coens are toeing the line between comedy and thriller. I'm thinking of Ray's confession, or when Marty tries to rape Abby. She breaks his finger, then kicks him in the dick hard enough to induce vomiting. The movie doesn't have to go far to reach horror. It may seem to be outside, like the views from Ray's windshield during his two late night drives. It may seem to be beyond, like when Abby's facing Visser, who she assumes is Marty. It may even be inside, like when Ray is trying to clean Marty's office after the shooting.

My appreciation for Blood Simple's scarier or tension-filled moments doesn't mean I didn't appreciate the comedy. This is an often very funny film with fascinating characters played by idiosyncratic actors. If I had to rank the central quartet, I'd go Getz, McDormand, Hedaya and in first place, Walsh. Talk about one memorable son of a bitch.

"Stick your finger up the wrong person's ass? ... You know a friend of mine broke his hand a while back. Put in a cast. Very next day he takes a fall, protects his bad hand, falls on his good one, breaks that too. So now he's got two busted flippers and I say to him 'Creighton, I hope your wife loves you. 'Cause for the next five weeks you cannot wipe your own goddamn ass ...' *a laughing fit* ... That's the test, ain't it? Test of true love --"

"Got a job for you."

" ... Well, if the pay's right and it's legal, I'll do it."

"It's not strictly legal."

"*after lighting a cigarette* If the pay's right I'll do it."

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- Box Office: The original gross was $2.15 million on a $1.5 million budget. 

-- This is one of at least two movies where Dan Hedaya is buried alive. The other is The Addams Family, directed by Blood Simple's cinematographer, Barry Sonnenfeld.
-- Marty and Ray are dead by the end of the movie, and Visser's likely to follow. What happens to Abby? She might have enough information to understand what happened if the cops, paramedics, etc. came to her apartment, she learned who Visser was and she happened to return to Marty's office and found Visser's lighter under the (most likely rotten by now) fish. On the other hand, she could be just like Ray, not think clearly and decide to get rid of Visser's body any way she can. Discuss.

-- Ethan Coen was interviewed in 2000 by Nathan Rabin. "To tell you the truth, we were thinking about what kind of thing we could do on a low budget," Coen said. "We knew we were going to be raising the money ourselves and that there wouldn't be much money. The sort of claustrophobic, heavily plotted murder melodrama seemed tailor-made for something you might be able to do successfully on a small budget, in real practical terms." 

-- Awards Watch: A Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance, Blood Simple received five nominations at the first Independent Spirit Awards. Joel Coen won for directing, tying with Martin Scorsese for After Hours. Walsh won in the Best Male Lead category (supporting categories wouldn't come until the third awards). The film lost Best Feature to After Hours, Best Screenplay to The Trip to Bountiful and Best Cinematography to Trouble In Mind. Finally, Blood Simple lost the Edgar Award to Witness.

-- Critic's Corner and commentary, the mothership(s): From the Coen-Rabin interview:"It's plain, mean, ordinary people doing bad things to each other in the dark, so I guess that qualifies it as film noir." Scott Tobias, 2002: "There's never been a purer metaphor for crime than a blood stain that will never wipe clean." In 2007, he declared the Coens were "in command right from the start." Mike D'Angelo, The Dissolve, 2014: "Their screenplay is among the greatest ever written: a merciless roundelay of deceit, mistrust and utterly false impressions." D'Angelo, AV Club, 2016: "Insofar as their name signifies an aesthetic, the Coen brothers were fully formed right from the get-go."

-- Critic's Corner: "The funniest comedy an the thrillingest thriller in what seems like an age," according to Paul Attanasio, Washington Post. "Fresh and exhilarating," wrote Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times. "(It's) too raw to win any awards in Hollywood," according to Gene Siskel. "Only those who want to be challenged by the movies they see will accord it any measure of honor."

-- Critic's Corner, the Coens: "A directorial debut of extraordinary promise," Janet Maslin wrote. "In addition to its stylishness, Blood Simple has the kind of purposefulness and coherence that show (them) to be headed for bigger, even better, things." "The Coens, if they are lucky, will have a long, brilliant career making films that cross the line, David Denby wrote in New York.

-- Detractor's Corner: Pauline Kael wasn't impressed with the movie. "It isn't a thriller -- it's a crude, ghoulish comedy on thriller themes," she wrote in The New Yorker. Kael also disapproved of the Coens receiving so much praise. "What's the glory of making films outside the industry if they're Hollywood films at heart, or, worse than that -- Hollywood by-product? Joel and Ethan Coen may be entrepreneurial heroes, but they're not moviemaker heroes."

-- Nice usage of the rule of three. Ray tells Abby twice that he's not a marriage counselor. Later, Marty asks if he's a "fucking marriage counselor." Of course Ray's going to smile.

-- Musical Moments: "It's the same old song/but with a different meaning/Since you've been gone." You could argue the Four Tops hit is there for a reason, like a cheeky nod to the fact that Blood Simple is a fresh take on classic material, but I think it's just a song the Coens liked.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Holly Hunter as the voice of Helene, an apparent hookup of Meurice's. According to IMDB, Hunter had auditioned for Abby but turned the role down to appear in a play in New York. Hunter, Anthony Heald, Patricia Richardson and Stephen Tobolowsky all appeared in The Wake of Jamey Foster. Written by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), it closed after 12 performances.

-- "We all felt we could have done a better job," Sonnenfeld said. "The pacing is too slow, and I could have shot it better. These days, we'd do it for 10 times the price, and it would be 8 percent better."

-- Next: The Falcon and the Snowman. On deck: Witness.