FILM 2349: RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

TRIVIA: Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter were roommates at the Yale School of Drama in 1982.

The Coen brothers wrote Holly Hunter's character specifically for her.

Kevin Costner auditioned for the role of H.I. McDunnough three times.

The opening credits appear at 11 minutes into the film.

According to Ethan Coen, Nicolas Cage was crazy about his Woody Woodpecker haircut and that it reacted to H.I.'s stress level. The bigger the danger he's in, the bigger the wave in his hair gets.

H.I.'s work uniform logo shows he works for Hudsucker Industries, which became the setting of a later Coen movie, The Hudsucker Proxy (1994).

The shot in which the camera moves in on Florence Arizona discovering that Nathan Jr. is gone is a direct homage to The Evil Dead (1981), a film on which Joel Coen was an assistant editor.

As Hi watches the sun rise on day one with baby Nathan Jr. He says, "Sometimes it's a hard world for the little things". This is taken from Rachel Cooper's observation in The Night of the Hunter (1955) - "It's a hard world for the little things".

Favorite film of writer/director Edgar Wright.

The baby on the international poster is the lead singer of the rock band Say Anything, whose father designed the poster.

A grown-up Nathan Jr plays football at the Sun Devil Stadium, 500 East Veterans Way, on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe. The stadium is also seen in the remake of A Star is Born (1976), with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, the Robert Zemeckis comedy Used Cars (1980) and in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996).

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

I’m making my way through the book "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider. See my blog post about my copy of the book here…

You can buy an updated version (which I will get after I’ve made my way through this edition) here…

I really hope you can come on this journey with me – if you do I’d love to know which films you’ve enjoyed the most!

This is featured on the podcast Unspooled Episode #202.1