The Hudsucker Proxy

If you're from Muncie, Indiana, and you see a movie that mentions Muncie, then you know it's a real thrill. If you're not, then I'm sure it's the same feeling if you catch a reference to your own hometown in the movies, whatever town that might be. Of course, I wouldn't know that for sure, because I'm not from your hometown. I'm a Muncie man.

So, unless you're a Muncie Girl (or Guy), you might not know that feeling. If you are, you're probably someone I know, which puts you in the 100 or so people who read this blog regularly, and you know what I mean.

(Hey, a hundred readers is pretty swell. Go Eagles!)

Speaking of swell, Muncie might be the least swell place on the planet — a sleepy, post-industrial midwestern town famous for its ordinary averageness. Hollywood seems to enjoy pointing this out. That's fine.

The Hudsucker Proxy makes Norville Barnes, a Muncie native, out to be the biggest imbecile in New York, and of course, viewers can extrapolate that all Muncie natives are stupid if they want. One look at the stories and letters in the Muncie newspaper won't help.

(Side Note: Many of my Muncie friends who have moved to big cities east or west tell how the news from Muncie is so bizarre, so unbelievable, they often show non-midwestern friends, who in turn read the Muncie paper for entertainment. I'm not kidding.)

There's not much Muncie in The Hudsucker Proxy, but what's here is eerie. My high school colors are gold and blue, and our mascot is the eagle. Imagine my surprise when I saw this in 1995-ish with my then-girlfriend (also from Muncie) and discovered Norville Barnes is not only a Muncie native, but one who came from a similarly themed, (fake) college. Sure, not a high school, but still.

At least the fight song is different.

"The Muncie College of Business Administration" sends a few hundred dreamers to Hollywood every year, and few have done much out there. Joyce DeWitt, maybe. The rest are scrapping to make it happen, and more come and go all the time. None of them are imbeciles for trying. I'm proud of all my friends and former students who give it a go.

Muncie's most famous export isn't in Hollywood, though. This guy went to New York, and 30 years later, he's doing just fine. (Technically, he's from Indianapolis.)

I never went to Hollywood or New York. I never learned how to hula hoop, either. Can't hula, can't roller skate, can't skateboard, can't ski, can't swim, can't play basketball — why, it's a miracle I learned how to ride a bicycle or walk and chew gum. I can run, though, and write a little bit. I took those skills to Chicago after college, along with a truckload of moxie, see.

The opening montage of "experience needed" reminds me of pretty much every job hunt I've been on since I finished college — especially my days in Chicago, where even entry-level jobs require 3-5 years of experience. This is what happens when tens of thousands of people have the same idea. Big pond.

The Hudsucker Proxy is one of my favorite Coen brothers films, but despite the obvious connections to my hometown, I tend to forget the film even exists. Maybe the film offends me a little (not much, but there's a little pin prick each time). Maybe the film is overshadowed in their oeuvre by greater films such as Fargo, No Country For Old Men, or my favorite Coen brothers film, The Big Lebowski.

In fact, one could argue, as my wife the Hudsucker newbie remarked, "So...it's Lebowski as a period piece?" Well, yeah, kinda. A schlub gets in over his head and almost dies. There's a dance number, a white-haired millionaire, and so on. There's even a narrator who seems to know all. Then again, even The Big Lebowski is a period piece, so what do we know?

Say, how come when the janitor stops the clock at the end, freezing Norville Barnes in mid-air and leaving Sidney Mussberger's kinetic balls floating in mid-reaction, essentially stopping time, why do the snowflakes keep falling?

Betcha didn't expect that question from a Muncie man.





Kinetic balls.  Heh.