Wood-chipping on Square Lake
For many of us, the movie Fargo elicits wonderful memories.
One of the best - the classic woodchipper scene and story - has taken on a life of its own, from one story-teller to another, over the past 28 years. For Fargo fans, I share the following “inspired by true events” memory, in the spirit of the movie’s famous preface: This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.
In 1995, I resided in my old lake cabin on the north side of Square Lake - the site of the house I subsequently built and am now living. I commuted to my office in Minneapolis every day. One winter evening while driving home from work, I noticed a "Fargo" highway sign on Highway 7 leading to Square Lake.
I asked around and discovered that a couple of St. Louis Park brothers named "Coen" had rented the lake cabin adjacent to the home of dear friends Keith and Jan Bakke, for a movie shoot.
No one knew anything more about it, until late one evening when the Bakke’s drove down the unlit dirt road leading to their house after work to meet their young children for supper.
No one was around. Eerie silence. Snow falling. Wind blowing.
Tracks in the snow covered. Except for what appeared to be a trail of blood in the snow and adjacent trees. They jumped out of the car, ran to the house, fearing the worse.
Only to encounter a couple of departing film crew who nonchalantly said,
"Nothing to be concerned about here, for Pete’s sake. Kids are just fine, doncha know. It was a beautiful afternoon, so we shot the wood-chipper scene right out there by the lake. Guess we dripped a bit of red paint in the process. Sorry to get yah all riled up.”
We later learned what they met by the “wood-chipper scene” when the movie came out.
Oh you betcha yeah, the Fargo wood-chipper has definitely taken on a life of its own over the past three decades. A careful look will reveal a flash image of the former-Johnson farmstead, and then an image of the Josephson farm: Fargo (1996) - The Wood Chipper Scene.
Uff da!
I recall being in New York City on business the weekend the movie opened. The Times Square movie theatre was full, with a line outside awaiting the next show. As soon as the movie started, we all knew Fargo would be a huge hit, when the typically-critical NYC audience roared in laughter as the Scandinavian accents began to define our Square Lake heritage, with lines like:
"Sir, you have no call to get snippy with me. I'm just doing my job here… There's more to life than a little money, you know... And here ya' are - and it's a beautiful day."
Don Josephson recalls, Joanne and I were still living and working in Illinois but happened to be up here that weekend visiting Dad. We were hiking on the lake and noticed that there were no fish houses in the area where [Keith and Jan] lived for so many years. All the fish houses were concentrated in front of the scout camp. A fisherman there told us they had all been asked to move away from parts of the lake to shoot scenes for a movie. Thus, our first clue about “Fargo”.
If any of you have Fargo movie stories, please email me at jim.seidl@legalresearch.com. Season 5 of the Fargo television series is currently running on FX, and is also highly recommended, including a prominent role by the Scandia police department: Fargo Season 5 Trailer.
For further clues on where the woodchipper chipped, the 20th anniversary story by Chris Hewitt, that ran in the St. Paul paper in 2016 is attached below. Here’s the link: 20 years ago, ‘Fargo’ put Minnesota on the map, doncha know
By Chris Hewitt | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: March 10, 2016.
“Would we still be talking about the Oscar-winning “Fargo” - originally released 20 years ago on March 8, 1996 - if Joel and Ethan Coen had stuck with their original plan to call it ‘Brainerd’?
When I interviewed the brothers in New York City back in 1996, Ethan said “Brainerd” was their intended title — it makes sense, since nearly the whole movie takes place either there or in Minneapolis — but they were forced to change it because “when we would tell people the title, nobody would believe it was a real place.”
The tragicomedy, which the Coens often described as ” ‘In Cold Blood’ as re-imagined by Erma Bombeck,’ ” is about a Minneapolis man who engineers the kidnapping of his own wife, as well as the bickering thugs who execute the kidnapping and the deceptively sly Brainerd cop who gets to the bottom of the crime.
Ethan, left, and Joel Coen
“Fargo” won Oscars for its screenplay and for actress Frances McDormand, who plays policewoman Marge Gunderson. But, during the shoot, location assistant Stuart Skrien did not see any of that coming.
“We were able to watch dailies (screenings of the previous day’s footage), so you got a sense of the movie,” says Skrien, still a location manager/scout for his own Skrien Locations. “Reading the script, initially, I didn’t think much of it, but when you saw the actors working and things started to come together, it seemed like, ‘Oh, yeah. This is going to be interesting.’ ”
Stuart Skrien scouted locations for the Coen brothers’ movie “Fargo.”
Skrien, who lives in West St. Paul, worked throughout the shoot, but his big coup was finding King of Clubs, the now-defunct Minneapolis bar that appears in the film’s opening scene (although it was shot in Minneapolis, the scene takes place in Fargo).
“I was kind of hitting all the regular spots, but I finally ran into that old bar on Central Avenue,” says Skrien, who returned later with the Coens. “They really liked the red carpeting that went up the walls on that place. That’s what struck them. And it was also a good opportunity because they wanted to do an exterior shot of the place and, by shooting from across the street, you could cover the whole cityscape.”
Related Articles
March 8, 1996 From the archives: Our 1996 review of ‘Fargo’ sang its praises
October 3, 1996 From the archives: ‘Fargo’s’ 1996 video release riles up Uff-Da land
Skrien’s main memory of “Fargo” is the film’s great migration north. Skrien said the Coens wanted lots of the snow they remembered from winters growing up in St. Louis Park and, much like this year, Minnesota did not ante up in 1995. So the production shifted to the Grand Rapids area and, then, even farther north to Hallock, Minn., and the northeast corner of North Dakota.
“We ended up chasing the snow almost all the way up to Canada,” Skrien says. “That was kind of fun shooting up there. One of the things that happened because of the weather was (location manager) Bob Graf got a call at 3 in the morning. We had a base camp in the corner of one of the beet fields up in North Dakota and the snow had really started to melt and it was flooding terribly because it wasn’t freezing overnight. The water flowed into this one spot, so we had to rescue all these vehicles parked into what was turning into a lake.”
The cabin in “Fargo.”
One of the most vividly remembered locations in the film, albeit one not found by Skrien, was in northern Washington County: the Square Lake cabin where the notorious woodchipper scenes at the end of the movie were filmed.
“The Coens were looking for something specific — a pretty modest-looking cabin that looked remote. Square Lake looks like it could be in the middle of nowhere because the one piece of private property at the time was on the north side of the lake and there are not many buildings, but it’s only 30 minutes from town,” Skrien says. “And there was a big red barn in the background. They liked that a lot.”
The cabin is no longer there, having been moved to Wisconsin. Many of the other locations are no longer visitable, either. You also can’t drop in at Gustafson’s Olds (really Wally McCarthy Oldsmobile). Or the Carlton Celebrity Room, which was already gone when the film was shot, with Chanhassen Dinner Theatres subbing in. Or the St. Louis Park Embers restaurant where Jerry has a meeting with his father-in-law as traffic on Interstate 394 zips back and forth in the window behind them. That location sticks in Skrien’s mind because of the visitors who were there that day.
“Joel and Ethan’s parents (Edward and Rena Coen) came out to the set because they lived close by. They hung out at Embers with us all day,” recalls Skrien, whose own apartment almost ended up making an appearance in “Fargo.”
“They were maybe going to try to find a warehouse space for one of the characters, so they came to my place,” Skrien says.
While his apartment didn’t make the filmmakers’ final cut, Skrien says the brothers are keepers.
“Those guys were wonderful. It was a real treat to work with them. You almost felt like you were working on a student film. They’d put their jeans on and get right to work. They’re super-organized, they’re great communicators, and they welcome your collaboration and ideas,” Skrien says.”