Where to watch Fargo (1996)

Trivia & production notes

• William H. Macy flew to an audition in New York after learning the Coen brothers were still casting, telling them directly that he wanted to read again for the role of Jerry because he was afraid they would hire someone else.
• Frances McDormand learned how to use and fire a gun for the role and spent days interviewing a pregnant police officer to prepare for playing Marge Gunderson.
• Fargo was filmed during the winter of 1995, but due to unusually low snowfall in central and southern Minnesota, the crew had to shoot snow-covered scenes in northern Minnesota and northeastern North Dakota instead.
• The King of Clubs bar and pool hall in Minneapolis where Jerry meets Carl and Gaear was demolished in 2003 and replaced with low-income housing.
• The 24-foot Paul Bunyan statue was constructed specifically for the film and then dismantled after shooting wrapped.
• Despite being titled Fargo, the entire film was shot in other locations and none of it was filmed in Fargo, North Dakota.
• The Coen brothers based their script on an actual criminal event but created a fully fictional story around it, with Joel Coen later stating that the actual murders did not occur in Minnesota as the film suggests.
• Carter Burwell composed the score for Fargo, with the main motif based on the Norwegian folk song "The Lost Sheep."
• The Carlton Celebrity Room, where José Feliciano appears in the film, was an actual closed venue in Bloomington that had been shut down for almost ten years when filming began, so that scene was shot at the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre instead.
• The cabin used for the kidnappers' Moose Lake hideout was relocated from Square Lake near May, Minnesota to Barnes, Wisconsin in 2002.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Fargo (1996 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.