The Hudsucker Proxy is a 1994 screwball comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Sam Raimi co-wrote the script and served as second unit director. The film stars Tim Robbins as a naïve but ambitious business school graduate who is installed as president of a manufacturing company, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a newspaper reporter, and Paul Newman as a company director who hires the graduate as part of a stock scam.
The script was finished in 1985, but production did not start until 1991, when Joel Silver acquired the script for Silver Pictures. Warner Bros. Pictures subsequently agreed to distribute the film, with further financing from PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films. Filming at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, lasted from November 1992 to March 1993. The New York City scale model set was designed by Michael J. McAlister and Mark Stetson, with further effects provided by The Computer Film Company.
Upon its release in March 1994, The Hudsucker Proxy received mixed reviews from critics and bombed at the box office, but has since gained a cult following.
Plot
In December 1958, Norville Barnes, a business college graduate from Muncie, Indiana, arrives in New York City, looking for a job. He struggles due to lack of experience and becomes a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries, a large corporation. Soon thereafter, the company's founder and president, Waring Hudsucker, unexpectedly commits suicide during a business meeting by jumping out of a top-floor window.
Afterward, Sidney J. Mussburger, a ruthless member of the company's board of directors, knowing that Hudsucker Industries' bylaws call for Hudsucker's stock shares to be sold to the public, suggests a scheme to buy the controlling interest in the company by temporarily depressing the stock price by hiring a clearly incompetent president to run the business.
In the mailroom, Norville is assigned to deliver a "Blue Letter" to Mussburger. The letter is a top-secret communication from Hudsucker, sent shortly before his death. However, Norville does not deliver the letter; instead, he pitches Mussburger an invention of his (indicated with no other explanation than a simple drawing of a circle and his cryptic explanation, "you know: for kids"). Believing Norville to be an idiot, Mussburger selects him as a proxy for Hudsucker.
Across town, Amy Archer, a brassy Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for the Manhattan Argus newspaper, is assigned to write a story about Norville and find out what kind of man he really is. She obtains a job at Hudsucker Industries as his personal secretary, pretending to be yet another desperate graduate from his alma mater in Muncie.
One night, Amy searches the building for clues and meets Moses, who operates the tower's giant clock and knows "just about anything if it concerns Hudsucker". He tells her Mussburger's plot, and she takes the story back to her Chief, but he does not believe it.
The other executives at Hudsucker Industries decide to produce Norville's invention in hopes that it will flop and further depress the company's stock. However, the invention is the hula-hoop, which initially fails in obscurity but then becomes an enormous success.
Norville allows success to go to his head and becomes yet another uncaring tycoon. Amy, who had fallen for his naive charm, is infuriated over Norville's new attitude and leaves him. Buzz, the eager elevator operator, pitches a new invention: the bendy straw, which Buzz calls the "Buzz-sucker." Norville insults the idea and cruelly fires Buzz, ignoring his pleas that he needs the job.
Meanwhile, Aloysius, a Hudsucker janitor, discovers Amy's true identity and informs Mussburger. Mussburger reveals Amy's secret identity to Norville and tells him he will be dismissed as president after the new year. Mussburger also convinces the board that Norville is insane and must be sent to the local psychiatric hospital.
On New Year's Eve, Amy finds Norville drunk at a beatnik bar. She apologizes, but he storms out and is chased by an angry mob led by Buzz. Norville escapes to the top floor of the Hudsucker skyscraper and changes back into his mailroom uniform. He climbs out on the ledge, where Aloysius locks him out and watches as he slips and falls off the building at the stroke of midnight.
While Norville plummets, Moses stops the building's giant clock, which freezes time. Waring Hudsucker appears to Norville as an angel and tells him to read the Blue Letter (still in Norville's uniform pocket) that was supposed to be delivered to Mussburger: it contains Hudsucker's instructions to transfer his shares to his immediate successor as president, rather than to the public. This would have been Mussburger, but, unaware of this, he proceeded with his scheme to elect Norville.
Inside the building's giant clock, Moses fights Aloysius, defeating him. Norville descends safely to the ground. He and Amy reconcile. As 1959 progresses, Mussburger, after learning about Hudsucker's instructions, attempts suicide and is sent to an asylum, while Norville develops a new invention for kids: another enigmatic circle that ultimately turns out to be a frisbee.
Cast
- Tim Robbins as Norville Barnes
- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Amy Archer
- Paul Newman as Sidney J. Mussburger
- Jim True as Clarence "Buzz" Gunderson, the elevator operator
- Bill Cobbs as Moses, the clock man
- Harry Bugin as Aloysius, the janitor
- Bruce Campbell as Smitty, Argus reporter
- John Mahoney as Al, the Argus chief editor
- Charles Durning as Waring Hudsucker
- Patrick Cranshaw as Ancient Sorter
- Anna Nicole Smith as Za-Za
- Steve Buscemi as Danny the Bartender
- Sam Raimi as Hudsucker Brainstormer
- Jon Polito as Mr. Bumstead
- Peter Gallagher as Vic Tenetta
- Mike Starr as Newsroom Reporter
- Roy Brocksmith as board member
- John Goodman (credited as Karl Mundt) as Rockwell newsreel announcer
Development
Writing
The Coen brothers first met Sam Raimi when Joel Coen worked as an assistant editor on Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). Together, they began writing the script for The Hudsucker Proxy in 1981, and continued during the filming of Crimewave (1985), and post-production on Blood Simple (1984), during which Joel and Ethan Coen shared a house with Raimi. The Coens and Raimi were inspired by the films of Preston Sturges, such as Christmas in July (1940) and the Hollywood satire Sullivan's Travels (1941). The dialogue is an homage to Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940), while Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance as fast-talking reporter Amy Archer is reminiscent of Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn, in both the physical and vocal mannerisms. Other movies that observers found references to include Executive Suite (1954) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957). The inclusion of the hula hoop came as a result of a plot device. Joel remembers, "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."
Despite having finished the script in 1985, Joel explained, "We couldn't make Hudsucker back then because we weren't that popular yet. Plus, the script was too expensive and we had just completed Blood Simple, which was an independent film." After completing Barton Fink (1991), the Coens were looking forward to doing a more mainstream film. The Hudsucker Proxy was revived and the Coens and Raimi performed a brief rewrite. Producer Joel Silver, a fan of the Coens' previous films, acquired the script for his production company, Silver Pictures, and pitched the project at Warner Bros. Pictures. Silver also allowed the Coens complete artistic control. Jon Cryer auditioned for the lead role of Norville Barnes. Winona Ryder and Bridget Fonda were in competition for the role of Amy Archer, before Jennifer Jason Leigh was cast. Leigh had previously auditioned for a role in the Coens's Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink; her failed auditions prompted the Coens to cast her in The Hudsucker Proxy. When casting the role of Sidney Mussburger, "Warner Bros. suggested all sorts of names," remembered Joel. "A lot of them were comedians who were clearly wrong. Mussburger is the bad guy and Paul Newman brought that character to life." The Coens also offered their longtime friend Bruce Campbell an audition, but he initially refused, writing that "My history with the Coens spanned more than a decade...I would gladly and willingly accept the role, but these fellows knew my work well enough to spare me the audition." The Coens agreed and Campbell was offered, sans audition, the role of Smitty. Campbell was later effusive in his praise for the professionalism of the production and the other cast members, as well as being in awe that he was chosen to help Paul Newman rehearse before filming began.
Once Newman and Robbins signed on, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films agreed to co-finance the film with Warner Bros. and Silver Pictures. The film was shot on five sound stages at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, beginning on November 30, 1992. Raimi served as second unit director, shooting the hula hoop sequence and Waring Hudsucker's suicide. Gassner contemplated using five huge rooms needed to accommodate the sound stages. Gassner noted "You see, we wanted things to be big." He said that the huge 1950s-inspired table up in the boardroom was so long, it had to be built in five sections and later on assembled on the soundstage. The intention for the set sizes was to generate an oppressive feel. Principal photography ended on March 18, 1993.
Visual effects
The visual effects supervisor was Michael J. McAlister (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Willow) with Mark Stetson (Superman Returns, Peter Pan) as miniatures supervisor. Peter Chesney, mechanical effects designer on many Coen brothers films, created a pair of 16-foot angel wings for actor Charles Durning, who portrayed Waring Hudsucker. "I made a complicated steel armature with a lot of electric motors to time everything so he can fold up his wings, unfold them and flap them about. Then we covered them with real duck and turkey feathers," says Chesney. "We modeled them after photographs of a hovering dove landing in slow motion." The buildings in the background (designed by McAlister and Stetson) were 1:24 scale models, shot separately and merged in post-production. To lengthen the sequence, the model of the Hudsucker building was the equivalent of 90 stories, not 45.
Despite the New York City setting, additional skyscrapers in Chicago, Illinois, provided inspiration for the opening sequence of the skyline, such as the Merchandise Mart and Aon Center. Skyscrapers from New York City included the Chanin Building, the Fred F. French Building and One Wall Street, Manhattan. "We took all our favorite buildings in New York from where they actually stood and sort of put them into one neighborhood," Gassner continued, "a fantasy vision which adds to the atmosphere and flavor." First of all, a model had to be created based on the fantasy 1950s New York for the opening shot. So a miniature city was created, as McAlister mentioned that the Coens did not want a realistic reproduction of 1950s New York skyline, instead they wanted a more stylized version of it.
Soundtrack
The score to The Hudsucker Proxy was written by Carter Burwell, the fifth of his collaborations with the Coen Brothers. "Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia" from Aram Khachaturian's ballet Spartacus is the basis of the main theme and additional music from the ballet runs under the Hula-Hoop sequence. The popular music of the time is also reflected in the character of Vic Tenetta (Peter Gallagher), modeled after Dean Martin, who sings "Memories Are Made of This." Additional inspiration comes from Khachaturian's Gayane suite. A section from the ballet is used by Burwell for the scene in which Norville and Amy meet for the first time. Later, in a montage of the introduction of the hula hoop, Burwell's adaptation of Khachaturian's "Dance of the Young Kurds" (from Gayane) is used when sales of the hula hoop are initially slow and when a young boy is the first to try the hula hoop, followed by Burwell's adaptation of Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" (also from Gayane) when the children get excited and rush to the store, rapidly increasing the sales of the hula hoop. In addition, The Hudsucker Proxy opened the 1994 Cannes Film Festival on May 12, 1994. The film was in competition for the Palme d'Or, but lost to Pulp Fiction. The Hudsucker Proxy was released on March 11, 1994, and only grossed $2,816,518 in the United States and Canada. Worldwide, it grossed $11.3 million. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 based on 19 critics, which the site labels as "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.
Roger Ebert praised the production design, scale model work, matte paintings, cinematography, and characters. "But the problem with the movie is that it's all surface and no substance," Ebert wrote. "Not even the slightest attempt is made to suggest that the film takes its own story seriously. Everything is style. The performances seem deliberately angled as satire." Desson Thomson of The Washington Post described The Hudsucker Proxy as being "pointlessly flashy and compulsively overloaded with references to films of the 1930s. Missing in this film's performances is a sense of humanity, the crucial ingredient in the movies Hudsucker is clearly trying to evoke. Hudsucker isn't the real thing at all. It's just a proxy." John Simon of National Review described The Hudsucker Proxy as "asinine and insufferable".
Todd McCarthy, writing in Variety, called the film "one of the most inspired and technically stunning pastiches of old Hollywood pictures ever to come out of the New Hollywood. But a pastiche it remains, as nearly everything in the Coen brothers' latest and biggest film seems like a wizardly but artificial synthesis, leaving a hole in the middle where some emotion and humanity should be." James Berardinelli gave a largely positive review. "The Hudsucker Proxy skewers Big Business on the same shaft that Robert Altman ran Hollywood through with The Player. From the Brazil-like scenes in the cavernous mail room to the convoluted machinations in the board room, this film is pure satire of the nastiest and most enjoyable sort. In this surreal world of 1958 can be found many of the issues confronting large corporations in the 1990s, all twisted to match the filmmakers' vision."
Two decades after the film's release, Scout Tafoya of RogerEbert.com praised the film for its stylistic adventurousness and expansion upon the themes and concepts of the films that inspired it. "Whereas the comedies of the 1930s and '40s could talk quickly and move quickly, they couldn't run at a full gallop like the Coen Brothers. Their camera soars, traveling at the speed of progress, gossip, capitalism itself. Everything races at top speed. The production design, the one thing everyone felt comfortable praising, is a marvel. Every frame doubles as a survey of early modern art, from Art Deco to Futurism."
Home media
Warner Home Video released The Hudsucker Proxy on DVD on May 18, 1999. No featurettes were included. It was one of the first Blu-ray Disc titles released through the Warner Archive Collection on February 26, 2013, but it still lacked any featurettes.
Year-end lists
- 8th – Stephen Hunter, The Baltimore Sun
- 8th – Sandi Davis, The Oklahoman
- 9th – Sean P. Means, The Salt Lake Tribune
- Top 10 (listed alphabetically, not ranked) – William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Honorable mention – Mike Clark, USA Today
- Biggest disappointment – Glenn Lovell, San Jose Mercury News
See also
- List of films set around New Year