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END OF FILM. "Raising Arizona" has been a surprisingly influential movie considering its origin as a relatively low-budget comedy made by relatively inexperienced filmmakers. By the way, it’s no coincidence that in True Grit, the Coen’s greatest hit to date, Mattie has a strong primal desire from page one: to avenge the murder of her father. This script is a transcript that was painstakingly transcribed using the screenplay and/or viewings of Raising Arizona. Raising Arizona is about An ex-con, HI (Nicolas Cage), who falls in love with an ex-cop (Helen Hunt), the two marry and desperately try to have a baby. But it was the outrageously farcical Raising Arizona that announced the Coens' darkly comedic audacity to the world. NATHAN ARIZONA is on the telephone, his stocking feet up on an ottoman. Despair. 32.00 POV – Biker finds trace of Gale & Evelle at fuel stop. If the previous sequence didn’t end with a clearly defined end goal (they effectively want to keep the baby indefinitely) then this one does, by introducing an antagonist. where do you think the first culmination is? In voiceover, Nicholas Cage closes the film with these words: "And it seemed like . What do you think.
When it turns out that the Edwina is incapable of conceiving a child, the couple decides to kidnap one of a set of quintuplets born to a wealthy furniture chain owner named Nathan Arizona (played by Trey Wilson). "Hi" McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina "Ed" McDunnough, a former police officer and Hi's wife. I’ve got scenes down, but a sequence has more going on, it’s not as clear. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account.
Famous critic Robert Ebert stating that “The movie is narrated by its hero, a man who specialises in robbing convenience stores, but it sounds as if he just graduated from the Rooster Cogburn school of elocution. 55.00 POV – Biker camps outside McDunnough’s "Maybe It Was Utah" is even the name of the online fanlisting for "Raising Arizona.". 02.00 Parole for Hi but back to prison after robbery. Sebsequent movies made by this critically acclaimed filmmaking team include: Miller's Crossing (1990); Barton Fink (1991); The Hudsucker Proxy (1994); Fargo (1996); The Big Lebowski (1998); O Brother, Where Art Thou? 87.00 The End. I dreamt that Gale and Evelle had decided to return to prison. well, our home. I don't know. He proposes to Ed, they get married, and after some happy time together Ed decides she desperately wants to start a family. Change ). and Ed rescue the baby from a vicious and dangerous bounty hunter named Leonard Smalls (actor Randall 'Tex' Cobb), and they return the baby to his father. Because of Cage's rural Arizona dialect, his words "I don't know" are often transcribed "I dunno," such as in this transcription from. McDonnough) -- "Maybe it was Utah" -- is uttered 1 hour, 30 minutes, 48 seconds after the start of the movie. New York's Roosevelt Hotel to close after 96 years due to COVID-19: The iconic hotel was used as a filming location and setting for movies such as The Irishman, Men in Black 3, Malcolm X, Wall Street, The French Connection, 1408, and The Dictator
that the hero can be passive in the first act. Below is the dialogue from the dream scene, as it can be heard in the movie: 1 hour, 27 minutes, 28 seconds after start of film: I don’t quite know what to make of them.
(MID) I was thinking how Raising Arizona has quite an unconventional structure as the central “want” is in essentially achieved at the “break into two” and the central dramatic question revolves around retaining this “want”. Does Hi have a character change (if so, what is it specifically?) I don't mean to sound superior, and they're a swell couple of guys, but maybe they weren't ready yet to come out into the world.
The Coen’s where a fresh voice within the american independent movie scene, which is why when they returned in 1987 critics where a little baffled when they ditched the dark and ominous style that made Blood Simple such a runaway critical success, opting for a out and out zany cartoons comedy with Raising Arizona. One of the first things that becomes abundantly clear when watching Raising Arizona is just how cartoonish and unconventionally wacky the film is. .
. FADE TO BLACK. that comes from a “need” that exists before the story begins (as in most monomyths)?
. Hi is now a changed man, yet he comes under the greatest pressure from everyone. And then I dreamed on, into the future . 51.00 Gale and Evelle try to get Hi on board for a bank robbery. I believe that one of the key reasons of the success of this film is the almost constant and relentless pursuit of some goal by our hero Hi.
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04.00 Parole board: back to prison. Because of Cage's rural Arizona dialect, his words "I don't know" are often transcribed "I dunno," such as in this transcription from: Latter-day Saint filmmaker Jared Hess (writer/director of the similarly-quirky hit comedy "Napoleon Dynamite") specifically cited "Raising Arizona" as his favorite comedy. I’ll have to study this more. .
McDUNNOUGH (Nicholas Cage): That night I had a dream. 61.30 Gale & Evelle have overheard, take baby, tie up Hi and leave. 28.30 POV – Nathan Arizona Sr. talks to press & is angry at FBI. ( Log Out / When it is discovered that Hi is unable to have children they decide to snatch a baby. 37.30 Dot gives Ed advice on everything. H.I. But my favorite comedy of all time is Raising Arizona, which is a perfect film."
. He dreams about what will happen to the other characters in the movie. 68.30 Ed: Don’t want to go on living with you. At the end of the dream he dreams of himself and his wife living happily as an older couple, the parents of well-adjusted children who have children of their own. . And still I dreamed on . and Ed as they adjust to being parents, and then encounter various oddball characters who try to steal the baby from them in order to collect reward or ransom money. 22.30 Gale & Evelle arrive at Ed & Hi; Gale questions them on baby. And this was cloudier, 'cause it was years . I firmly disagree with those who say (2000); The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); Intolerable Cruelty (2003); The Ladykillers (2004). 00.30 H.I. You tell me. 02.30 Ed’s fiance left her. 66.00 POV – Gale & Evelle realise they left baby behind, go back. Many consider Raising Arizona to be the film in which the Coen’s found their true cinematic identity, as the two directors master what would be become their calling cards within the industry in creating unconventional characters in a realistic world, wild but organised camera movements, sharp and funny scripts that aren’t afraid to delve into philosophical questions religious ideology and eccentric dialogue.
ROLL CLOSING CREDITS.]. There is no clear plan. ... the Coen brothers keep the quirky tone that would become their trademark style by leaving the viewer with an open ending about the future of Ed and Hi. Quite often I see filmmakers take liberties with conventional structure, quoting the success of independent filmmakers who love breaking the rules, such as the Coen brothers. .
53.00 Hi’s letter to Ed: “I don’t have the strength of character.”. wondering if he ever thought of us, and hoping that maybe we'd broadened his horizons a little, even if he couldn't remmeber just how they got broadened. Even if there is no clear-cut eight sequence structure, the film is very obviously structured sequentially with a climax every ten minutes or so.
further into the future than I'd ever dreamed before . In the end, H.I. This is an excellent sequence breakdown! Hi shoots but the biker comes back for him. The final line from "Raising Arizona" has become a famous, oft-quoted line. 17.30 Welcome Home party for Jr.
It is Hi’s goal to keep baby Arizona Jr. and the dramatic question posed at this point is: how will Ed and Hi try to keep their baby – and their secret.
Raising Arizona Blood Simple made it clear that the cinematically precocious Coen brothers (writer-director Joel and writer-producer Ethan) were gifted filmmakers to watch out for.
In the final scene of the movie, H.I. From the introduction to Nicolas Cage’s character Hi with his constantly spiked messy hair and his seemingly endless supply of Hawaiian shirts, he looks as if he’s been pulled out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon and dropped into the real world. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. The cinematography also helps to emphasise this idea, the Coen’s and cinematographer Barry Sonnerfeld (a popular director himself) meticulously craft a heavily symbolic shooting style full of long but sped up tracking shots, POV’s from the babies perspective to oddly crafted wide shots creating a illusion of distance and space between characters.
42.00 Hi robs convenience store, Ed drives off. Another reason why I would argue this is the end of Act One: at the beginning of the following sequence we go to Nathan Sr for the first time since the kidnapping of his son.
It can be argued that this is the end of Act One. He is now ready to take on the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse so we enter into Act Three. It’s not cut-and-dried as our heroes don’t exactly state a closed-ended goal but the breakdown above explains why I believe the story works the way it does. ( Log Out /
And it seemed like .
. 10.00 Opening Titles. . If not Arizona, then a land not too far away .
15.00 POV – Nathan tells wife to go check on the kids. where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all children are happy and beloved. FLORENCE Sits reading Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care. 75.30 Ed takes the baby. Nathan’s advice: “Keep trying!” 50.00 Back home, Ed tells Gale & Evelle to leave: bad influence. Hi’s dream montage. The final line from "Raising Arizona" has become a famous, oft-quoted line. And it seemed real. meets Ed for the first time in prison. Hi Roy – Great you enjoyed this breakdown! It feels like injustice to him that he can’t have kids, but for there to be justice, he has to learn to be just himself first, and leave his life of crime behind. As the scene continues the camera enters a cul-de-sac and then into the drive way of the home of the stolen baby where the mother has discovered that her child is missing, the scene is not only comical but it remains grounded in reality creating this odd combination of skewered reality.