Raising Arizona

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Raising Arizona

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Joel Coen
Produced by Ethan Coen
Written by Ethan Coen
Joel Coen
Starring Nicolas Cage
Holly Hunter
William Forsythe
John Goodman
Frances McDormand
Randall 'Tex' Cobb
Music by Carter Burwell
Cinematography Barry Sonnenfeld
Editing by Michael R. Miller
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) 6 March 1987
Running time 94 min.
Language English
Budget $6,000,000 (estimated)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Raising Arizona is a 1987 Coen Brothers comedy film starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, and Randall "Tex" Cobb. Not a blockbuster at the time of its release, it has since achieved the status of a cult film. Typical Coen Brothers fare, the movie is replete with symbolism, visual gags, yodeling folk music, unconventional characters, flamboyant camera work, pathos and idiosyncratic dialogue. The movie ranked number 31 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Laughs and number 45 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies."

Contents

[edit] Plot synopsis

Arizona petty criminal Herbert "H.I." McDunnough (known as "Hi") and policewoman Edwina (known as "Ed") meet after she takes the mugshots of the recidivist Hi during his many trips through her station. After Ed's fiancé leaves her, they fall in love and get married. Hi promises to reform.

They move into a desert mobile home, and Hi gets a job in a machine shop. After serious and ongoing attempts to have a baby, Ed discovers that she is infertile. The couple cannot adopt because of Hi's criminal record. The couple learns of the "Arizona Quints", sons of locally-famous Unpainted Furniture magnate Nathan Arizona; Hi and Ed decide to kidnap one of the five babies. After a nearly disastrous false start, Hi successfully abducts Nathan Junior (or so he thinks, the fact is never fully established).

Hi and Ed return home and are promptly visited by his prison inmate chums, Gale Snoats and his brother Evelle, who have just tunneled out of prison. Under the two brothers' influence, Hi threatens to revert to his felonious ways, leading him to believe that Ed and he are not well suited for each other. Their problems are only worsened when Hi's supervisor, Glen, proposes wife swapping and Hi assaults him.

That night, Hi steals diapers and cash from a convenience store and is sucked into a wild chase around the local neighborhood with the police, a gun-toting store cashier, and a pack of dogs. Ed drives off without Hi, but finally relents and picks him up, leading to a tense ride home.

Back at the McDunnough residence, Glen stops by to officially fire Hi and reveals that he has deduced "Junior's" true identity and gives Hi an ultimatum: give up the baby to be raised by Glen and his wife, or Glen will turn them in for the reward.

Gale and Evelle overhear this conversation and immediately decide to betray Hi and take Junior themselves for the reward. Gale and Hi's ensuing fight wrecks the mobile home's interior before Hi is subdued and tied up. Gale and Evelle leave to rob a "hayseed" bank with Junior in tow. When Ed comes home, she finds the battered and bound Hi and learns that the baby is gone. Despite their disintegrating relationship, Ed and Hi arm themselves and set out to retrieve their child together. Hi admits to Ed that "You were right, I was wrong, honey. A blind man could see that." Hi then cocks his rifle and shouts "Now let's go get Nathan Jr.!"

While the previous events were taking place, Nathan Arizona Sr. was approached by the menacing and heavily-armed biker/bounty hunter Leonard Smalls, who offers to find the child for twice the publicly posted reward. Even though he considers police efforts to locate his son totally inadequate, Nathan Sr. refuses to partake of Smalls' services. Smalls decides to recover the child anyway and sell him on the black market, as was done to himself when he was a baby. He begins tracking Gale and Evelle, using the scent of the brothers' hair pomade. He breaks into the deserted McDunnough mobile home, and finds a newspaper clipping concerning the targeted bank.

Gale and Evelle successfully rob the bank, but end up leaving Junior behind in the road in his car seat. Their miseries are compounded when one of the bank's anti-theft dye canisters explodes in their loot sack, coating them and the interior of their car in blue dye. Back at the bank, Smalls arrives and beats Ed and Hi to Junior, mounting Junior's car seat on the front of his bike, and turns around to fight the couple. Ed grabs the baby and flees; Hi is able to fend Smalls off for a short time, but then the biker begins to methodically brutalize him. After throwing Hi to the ground and drawing his matched pair of shotguns to finish the job, Hi holds up his hand to reveal that he has pulled the pin from one of the many working hand grenades which dangle from Smalls' jacket. Smalls struggles unsuccessfully to drop the guns and get rid of the grenade before being blown to pieces.

Hi and Ed wearily sneak Nathan Jr. back into his home. As they are putting him back in his crib, Nathan Sr. confronts them, learns why they took his son, and is uncharacteristically understanding of their predicament. When they say that they are breaking up, he advises them to not act rashly; perhaps someday, medical science will catch up with them, just as it did with him and his own wife. Hi and Ed go to sleep in the same bed, and Hi dreams: Gale and Evelle elect to return to prison, Nathan Jr. becomes a football star, Glen gets what's coming to him, and maybe, just maybe, Hi and Ed will remain married for many years to come, have lots of children, and live together in a better place. Then again, maybe he was just dreaming about Utah.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Production

The police station scenes were filmed at the Tempe, Arizona police station on 5th Street next to Sun Devil Stadium on the Arizona State University campus, while the family picnic where H.I. punches Glen was filmed at the Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, Arizona.

The baby on the movie's international poster is Max Bemis who, years later became a foundation member and the lead singer of the band Say Anything. His father designed the poster and used him as a model.

[edit] Reception

The film grossed $22,847,564 in US box office totals and $6,332,716 Non-US.

[edit] Influences

After Evelle and Gale break out of prison, they clean up in a gas station restroom where "P.O.E." and "O.P.E." are spraypainted on the walls, a reference to the film Dr. Strangelove, where it stood for both "Peace on Earth" and "Purity of Essence".

Leonard Smalls shares the name of Lennie Smalls, from John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. Both are physically powerful men who damage things smaller and weaker than themselves, though only Leonard does so intentionally. Lennie wants to take care of rabbits, while Leonard kills one with a grenade.

The text of the second-to-last screen of credits, which shows acknowledgment of several Southwestern U.S. Native American tribes, is arranged in the shape of a large clay pottery jar, a craft piece historically made by such tribes.

When Hi goes to work in a factory, his chatty co-worker (a cameo by M. Emmet Walsh) can be seen wearing a jumpsuit with the label, "Hudsucker Industries". The company name derived from a script written by the Coen brothers a couple of years earlier in collaboration with Sam Raimi, The Hudsucker Proxy, which the Coens had put on the back burner because they knew they wouldn't be able to raise the budget to make it properly. The script would eventually be filmed by the Coens and released in 1994. The idea of tracking a fugitive by the scent of his hair-pomade is reused in the Coens' 2000 film O Brother Where Art Thou?

[edit] Soundtrack

Original Motion Picture Soundtracks: Raising Arizona and Blood Simple
Original Motion Picture Soundtracks: Raising Arizona and Blood Simple cover
Soundtrack by Carter Burwell
Released 1987
Genre Film score
Length 39:26
Label Varèse Sarabande
Professional reviews
Coen Brothers film soundtracks chronology
Blood Simple
(1984)		 Raising Arizona
(1987)		 Miller's Crossing
(1990)

The score to Raising Arizona is written by Carter Burwell, the second of his collaborations with the Coen Brothers.

The sounds are a mix of organ, massed choir, banjo, whistling and yodeling.

Themes are borrowed from the "Goofing Off Suite", originally recorded by Pete Seeger in 1955, which includes an excerpt from the "Chorale" movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" and "Russian Folk Themes and Yodel". Musicians credited with playing the music for the film are Ben Freed on banjo, Mieczyslaw Litwinski on Jew's harp and guitar and yodeling by John R. Crowder.

Selections from Burwell's score to Raising Arizona were released on an album in 1987, along with selections from the Coen's previous (and first) feature film, Blood Simple.

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Introduction - A Hole In The Ground" – 0:38
  2. "Way Out There (Main Title)" – 1:55
  3. "He Was Horrible" – 1:30
  4. "Just Business" – 1:17
  5. "The Letter" – 2:27
  6. "Hail Lenny" – 2:18
  7. "Raising Ukeleles" – 3:41
  8. "Dream Of The Future" – 2:31
  9. "Shopping Arizona" – 2:46
  10. "Return To The Nursery" – 1:35
    • The tracks from Raising Arizona comprise the first ten tracks on a 17-track CD that also features selections from the Blood Simple soundtrack.

[edit] External links

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v • d • e
Coen Brothers films
1980s
Blood Simple (1984) · Raising Arizona (1987)
1990s
Miller's Crossing (1990) · Barton Fink (1991) · The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) · Fargo (1996) · The Big Lebowski (1998)
2000s
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) · The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) · Intolerable Cruelty (2003) · The Ladykillers (2004) · Tuileries, from Paris, je t'aime (2006) · No Country for Old Men (2007) · Burn After Reading (2008) · A Serious Man (2009)
2010s
Misc