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Blood Simple
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Wikipedia article
'Blood Simple' is a 1984 American independent neo-noir crime film written, edited, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, and M. Emmet Walsh. Its plot follows a Texas bartender who finds himself in the midst of a murder plot when his boss discovers that he is having a love affair with his wife. It was the directorial debut of the Coens and the first major film of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, who later became a director, as well as the feature-film debut of McDormand.
The film's title derives from the Dashiell Hammett novel 'Red Harvest' (1929), in which the term "blood simple" describes the addled, fearful mind-set of people after prolonged immersion in violent situations. Stylistically, the film has been noted for its blending elements of neo-noir, pulp crime stories, and low-budget horror films. In 2001, a director's cut was released, the same year that it was ranked number 98 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills.
Plot
Ray, a bartender at Marty's Bar, and Abby, Marty's wife, are driving through a heavy downpour at night, discussing Abby's bad marriage. They arrive at a motel, where they have sex. A man named Lorren Visser, a private detective, has been hired by Abby's husband, Julian Marty, to follow Abby. Visser takes photos of the tryst between Ray and Abby, and delivers them to Marty.
Abby collects some things from home and warns Ray to stay away from the bar. Ray finds his boss, Marty, on the bar's back steps, and asks him for two weeks pay. Marty refuses and angrily tells Ray it will be funny when Abby at some point looks at Ray and says, "I haven't done anything funny."
Marty attempts to kidnap Abby from Ray's home. He fails and, humiliated, rehires Visser: this time, to kill the couple. Visser agrees and tells Marty to "go fishing" to establish an alibi. Visser breaks into Ray's home, steals Abby's gun, which was a gift from Marty, and it appears that he kills the sleeping couple. He presents photos of the couple's corpses (with blood and bullet wounds) to Marty as evidence. Marty goes to the bathroom to vomit and then opens the safe to give Visser his fee, surreptitiously placing one of the photos in the safe. Visser then shoots Marty with Abby's gun, taking the money and leaving the gun at the scene to make it appear that she killed Marty. But Visser doesn't realize that he has left his cigarette lighter on the desk underneath the fish that Marty caught on his fishing trip.
The audience learns that Ray and Abby are still alive (the photos of them in bed together apparently having been doctored to make it appear they had been shot and killed) when Ray returns to the bar and finds a motionless Marty in his chair, with a bullet wound in his chest. Assuming that Marty is dead and that it is Abby who murdered him, he puts her gun in Marty's coat pocket and loads the still-bleeding body into the backseat of his car. As he is driving the body away from the crime scene, he perceives movement in his rear view mirror and pulls over to the side of the road in a panic. Ray runs a short distance into a field. Returning to the car, Ray finds a barely alive Marty crawling away from the car. Ray puts him back in the car and drives into a field to dig a grave. Marty is still breathing as Ray drags him to a shallow hole and starts burying him. Marty raises the gun and pulls the trigger three times, but it is out of bullets. Ray gingerly takes the gun and continues to bury Marty, whose screams of terror become fainter and fainter as each shovelful of dirt is thrown into his face.
A distraught and panicked Ray goes to Abby's new apartment and tells her he cleaned up her mess. They are unable to communicate about Marty, as each has drawn erroneous conclusions from differing assumptions. Echoing Marty's earlier comment, Abby, baffled, says, "I haven't done anything funny." By the time Ray leaves, each is convinced that the other has done something to harm Marty. Ray leaves the same pearl-handled gun with Abby.
Visser realizes that he cannot find his cigarette lighter and goes back to the bar office to search for it, knowing it can identify him. He first observes Abby, and later Ray, visiting the bar office, each in pursuit of their own assumptions. When leaving the bar, Ray notices that he is being followed and heads to Abby's apartment, realizing that she might be in danger. He sits in the dark waiting for Abby. After Abby arrives, Visser, firing from a nearby rooftop with a rifle, fatally shoots Ray through the window, as Abby has disregarded Ray's admonition to turn off the lights. When Abby hears footsteps approaching, she quickly takes Ray's knife and hides in the bathroom.
Visser enters the bathroom to kill her, but finds the bathroom empty and the window open. Reaching out the window, he opens another window to the next room, into which Abby has escaped and is now hiding. She slams the window down and drives the knife through his hand into the sill, pinning Visser. He shoots vainly through the wall, finally punches through it to reach around, and removes the knife while Abby retreats and waits outside the bathroom, holding her gun which now contains one round. As Visser is about to emerge, she fires through the door, hitting him. Abby says, "I'm not afraid of you, Marty." Visser, lying mortally wounded on the bathroom floor, bursts into laughter and responds, "Well, ma'am, if I see him, I'll sure give him the message."
Cast
* John Getz as Ray
* Frances McDormand as Abby
* Dan Hedaya as Julian Marty
* M. Emmet Walsh as Loren Visser
* Samm-Art Williams as Meurice
Production
Development
After writing the screenplay, the Coen brothersneither of whom had any prior experience in filmmakingshot a preemptive dummy theatrical trailer for the film, which showed "a man dragging a shovel alongside a car stopped in the middle of the road, back towards another man he was going to kill" and "a shot of backlit gun holes in a wall."Ferarra, Greg [http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/69149/Blood-Simple/articles.html "Blood Simple (1984)" (article)] TCM.com The trailer featured actor Bruce Campbell, playing the Julian Marty role, and was shot by recent film school graduate Barry Sonnenfeld.After completing the trailer, the Coens began exhibiting it with the hope of convincing investors to help fund the full-length feature film. Daniel Bacaner was one of the first people to invest money in the project. He also became its executive producer and introduced the Coens to other potential backers. The entire process of raising the necessary $1.5 million took a year.
Filming
The film was shot in several locations in the towns of Austin and Hutto, Texas over a period of 8 weeks in the fall of 1982. The film spent a year in postproduction and was completed by 1983.Marsh, Calum (January 15, 2015) [http://www.maxim.com/entertainment/how-blood-simple-started-30-year-hollywood-firefight "How 'Blood Simple' Stated A 30-Year Hollywood Firefight"] 'Maxim''Blood Simple' was Frances McDormand's screen debut. All Coen brothers films are co-produced and co-directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, although Ethan was credited as the sole producer and Joel the sole director until 2004. The Coens share editing credit under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
Release
Critical response
While the film was only a modest box-office success, it was a huge critical success. It holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 105 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The critical consensus reads: "Brutally violent and shockingly funny in equal measure, 'Blood Simple' offers early evidence of the Coen Brothers' twisted sensibilities and filmmaking ingenuity."John Simon of the 'National Review' had a differing opinion, finding the film inept and detestable.
Box office
The film grossed $2.7 million worldwide. Its first big public viewing was the USA Film Festival in Dallas, followed by the Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Grand Jury Prize. The brothers took the film to the Toronto Film Festival, Cannes, and the New York Film Festival. They were very proud of their film, particularly in light of having raised the funds using their self-made trailer.Home media
The original MCA Home Video VHS tape and LaserDisc was released on October 10, 1985, with a 96-minute running time. The film was released on Universal Pictures Home Entertainment VHS tape for a second time in 1995 with a 99-minute run time.[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zP4jtxO3eKs/T9CrbBNTRJI/AAAAAAAEmZk/aaPhBvkbX_c/s1600/blood_simple_1984-dvdcover-1-small.jpg VHS cover (image)] Unusual for such an exercise, the "Director's Cut" is some 3 minutes shorter than the original 1985 theatrical release. The Coens reduced the run time with tighter editing, shortening some shots and removing others altogether. Additionally, they resolved long-standing rights issues with the music; the original theatrical version of the film made prominent use of The Four Tops' "It's the Same Old Song" (1965); the Coens had replaced it with Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer" (1966) for the 1995 U.S. home video edition on VHS. The Director's Cut reinstated the Four Tops track.Universal Home Video released a DVD version of the film in 2001, and again in 2005 as part of a DVD box set titled 'The Coen Brothers Collection'. A Blu-ray edition was released in 2011 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
In 2016, The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray and DVD, featuring a new 4K digital transfer supervised and approved by Barry Sonnenfeld and the Coens, along with various new special features.
Soundtrack
Carter Burwell wrote the 'Blood Simple' score, the first of his collaborations with the Coen brothers. 'Blood Simple' was also the first feature-film score for Burwell, and after his work on this film, he became a much-in-demand composer in Hollywood.Greiving, Tom (2016). [https://www.npr.org/2016/02/07/465725552/love-the-music-of-coen-brothers-films-you-can-thank-carter-burwell 'Love The Music of Coen Brothers Films? You Can Thank Carter Burwell".] Music News, National Public Radio (NPR), February 7, 2016. Retrieved May 15, 2017. By 2016, he had scored 16 of the Coen brothers' films.
The score for 'Blood Simple' is a mix of solo piano and electronic ambient sounds. One track, "Monkey Chant", is based on kecak, the "'Ramayana' Monkey Chant" of Bali.
In 1987, seven selections from Burwell's 'Blood Simple' score were released on a 17-track album that also features selections from the soundtrack of the Coens' next film, 'Raising Arizona' (1987).
'Blood Simple' selections on the 1987 album:
# "Crash and Burn" (2:40)
# "Blood Simple" (3:33)
# "Chain Gang" (4:47)
# "The March" (3:34)
# "Monkey Chant" (1:04)
# "The Shooting" (2:52)
# "Blood Simpler" (1:22)
Other songs from the film that are not on the album:
* "It's the Same Old Song", written by Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, performed by The Four Tops
* "Louie Louie", written by Richard Berry, performed by Toots & the Maytals
* "The Lady in Red", written by M. Dixon and A. Wrubel, performed by Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra
* "Rogaciano"
* "He'll Have to Go", written by Joe Allison and Audrey Allison, arranged by Jim Roberge, performed by Joan Black
* "El Sueno", written by Camilo Namen, performed by Johnny Ventura y su Combo
* "Anahi" performed by Maria Luisa Buchino and her Llameros
* "Sweet Dreams", written by Don Gibson, performed by Patsy Cline.
See also
* 'A Simple Noodle Story', a 2009 Chinese language remake directed by Zhang Yimou.
References
Sources
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