The Quintessential Minnesota Film: The Mighty Ducks

This is part of a series I worked on at one point combining my geography major with my film writing to discuss the quintessential film for each state. 

The Quintessential Minnesota Film: The Mighty Ducks

My Minnesota Credentials:
I spent a summer studying in Minneapolis and visited my sister multiple times when she lived in St Louis Park for 6 years. This is the same Minneapolis suburb that the Coen brothers are from and my sister's synagogue (where my niece was christened) happened to be the shooting location of "A Serious Man". My time in Minnesota was spent as a gangly 20-year-old trying to get a new start halfway around the country (my hope was to finish college there) and as such I became acutely aware of the differences between myself as an East Coaster and the nuances of the "Minnesota nice" mentality. While I was never able to convince my parents to pay the out-of-state tuition to restart my life in Minnesota, I will always have an appreciation for the state where I learned to roller blade, where I learned what it means to be be resourceful in Wintertime, where I rode a rollercoaster indoors, where the evil eye of Walmart is replaced by the mildly conspicuous conglomerate of Target, and where no one gave me weird looks for cross-country skiing.

My Pick:
The films of Joel and Ethan Coen have a strong sense of place as evidenced by their portrayals of Mississippi ("O Brother Where Art Thou"), Hollywood ("Intolerable Cruelty"), a quasi-modern day Louisiana ("The Lady Killers"), Texas ("No Country for Old Men") and Washington DC ("Burn After Reading"). They are perhaps best known for their portrayal of their home state of Minnesota in 1996's "Fargo."

The Oscar-winning film veers towards the darker end of the Coens' dark comedies with graphic images of murder juxtaposed by the offbeat and cheery nature of the characters involved in the case. Since premiering, it has been claimed by many in the state as a quintessentially Minnesotan work of art. When Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura got into a public feud with another state cultural institution, Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion", in 1999, he offered up "Fargo" as a better example of Minnesota humor than Keillor who he described as "high-brow and boring."

In "Fargo", there's much to appreciate in the spot-on accents and the portrayal of the bitter cold of Winter. It truly is a kind of cold that demoralizes the population and one gets the sense that these people are committing murders because they have nothing better to do. That's where "Fargo" goes wrong: The portrayal of Minnesota as a bleak and dull winter land is inaccurate.

Minnesotans are among the healthiest, happiest and most civically active people (they actually rank #1 in voter turnout) in the nation. Minneapolis as a breeding ground for backwater hicks also seems incongruous with the version of Minneapolis I've experienced as one of the most urban and fast-moving cities I've ever lived in.

In light of these virtues, what could better representative Minnesota than a sports film about Minnesota's most beloved sport? "The Mighty Ducks" is not the only film ever made about hockey but it might as well have been if you were growing up in the early 90s. For a kid like me, few things would have made me (a kid who always got assigned right field in Little League) feel more fulfilled than bonding to my peers on a diamond or ice rink as a valuable member of the team. I didn't find my athletic niche until 10th grade but in the interim, the movies of the 90's seemed pretty hell-bent on selling me fantasies I could live vicariously through. There was a a high school outcast who suddenly becomes eligible for the Chicago Cubs on a freak accident ("Rookie of the Year"), a kid who unites his broken home through enlisting heavenly aide to help his beloved Angels ("Angels in the Outfield") a boy who becomes a hero on the Iditarod because he's good to his dog ("Iron Will"), and most beloved of all, that kid from Notre Dame who just wanted to play ("Rudy").

Labatt Blue US Pond Hockey Championships

In "The Mighty Ducks," Emilio Estevez's Gordon Bombay, is a disgraced ex-hockey player ordered by the court (see the civic pride tie-in) to coach a youth hockey team. This is a state in which nearly every Minneapolis suburb (that I saw) has its own community center with a hockey rink so it's more than fair to say that many a Minnesotan defined themselves as a budding hockey star before moving onto adulthood.

A lawyer on the go with only a tinge of Minnesotan drawl in his speech, Bombay seems like the archetypal Twin Cities urbanite but he's contrasted with his mentor Hans (Joss Andros) who is an ambiguous Upper Midwestern version of Yoda or Mr. Miyagi if green alien or stereotypical Japanese was replaced with stereotypical Scandinavian.

It's also worth noting that in the land of 10,000 lakes, ice skating isn't just done in the ice skating rinks but on frozen lakes as well. Minneapolis has hosted the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships annually since 2007. It's an ubiquitous part of state culture and Bombay first meets his time as they're playing on a pond. It also must have made many a Minnesotan must have swooned when the film's primary romantic spark occurs as as Bombay is stroking his love interest's hair as the St. Paul's ice carnival is featured in the background.

The Quintessential Tennessee film

The Quintessential Tennessee film: Mystery Train

Tennessee is what I like to call the horizontal Chile of the US: A rectangular slab so thin and long that people on one end have virtually nothing in common with people on the other end.

Tennessee might be associated with music as one can see by the state quarter's inscription: "Musical Heritage," but it has three centered around the state's three major cities of Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville as signified by the three stars on the Tennessee state flag. Look at Tennessee's state quarter and you'll see a guitar on the left, a violin (or fiddle) on the right and a trumpet in the middle with three stars on the outside and the inscription "Musical Heritage" written in the center. The message is clear: The state is three distinct regions defined by musical styles.

In the West, the port city of Memphis was a convergence point in the development of the Blues dating back to the 1700s as musicians traveled up and down the Mississippi in river barges. The city is the home of Beale Street, Graceland and Sun Studios where Elvis got his start. In addition to the King, Memphis was instrumental in the musical journeys of Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Al Green and pretty much every other icon of rock and roll you can think of.

In the center, Nashville is the world capitol of country music. Like Memphis, the city's tourist scene is also nearly synonymous with its music scene, counting Mercy Lounge, the Gran Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame as its greatest landmarks.

While Memphis is the classic Midwestern city and Mississippi River port and Nashville is a bastion of the glamorous side of Antebellum South, Knoxville is squarely in the heart of a distinct cultural sliver of the U.S. known as Appalachia where one of America's most distinct musical styles is king: Bluegrass.

The quintessential Tennessee film is an ensemble film in which different strangers' lives are united through musical fandom and, no, its not Rob Altman's landmark epic "Nashville." That film is more about aspiring dreamers and politicians than people living in the present reality of Tennessee.

Source: New-video.de

Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989) has three (our magic number) interlocking stories set in a seedy Memphis hotel tied together in lock-step time by a local radio station playing the Elvis Presley version of "Blue Moon." For added effect, this story about the transcendent power of music has a cameo by  blues musician Screamin' Jay Hawkins in the role of the desk clerk.

The first story centers around a suspicious woman on the run who needs a room for the night and is taken in by a sympathetic boarder. The second one centers around three lowlifes (Steve Buscemi is one of them) for whom a night of drinking turns into all-out criminal activity from which they seek shelter at the same hotel.

The third is the one with the largest thematic connection to Tennessee's musical heritage although the other two stories provide a much-needed backdrop of the ebb and flow of urban life for this story to bounce off of.

A young Japanese couple is making pilgrimage to Memphis to witness its musical history. They're heavy rock and roll buffs who have an ongoing debate over whether Elvis or Carl Perkins was the true father of rock and roll. The young man looks out of place as a Japanese tourist dressed like a greaser. In addition to his attempts to look cool smoking (much like Godard's film "Breathless"), there's another running gag of him flicking out his comb and running it through his hair. Despite the juxtaposition, the film portrays this young couple's relationship to the musicians they idolize with sincerity and a certain delicacy.

Roger Ebert wrote in his review:
In the hands of another director, this setup would lead directly into social satire, into a comic putdown of rock tourism... But Jarmusch is not a satirist. He is a romantic, who sees America as a foreigner might - as a strange, haunting country where the urban landscapes are painted by Edward Hopper and the all-night blues stations provide a soundtrack for a life.

The message is that true passion of music transcends any superficial disconnects (much like the theme on the state quarter suggests). It's also a film that delves into nostalgia and how the pervasiveness of Elvis is both haunting to some and a source of beauty to others.

The quintessential New Jersey film

The quintessential New Jersey film: Dogma

Mob dramas such as "The Sopranos" or "Boardwalk Empire" on TV or "Atlantic City," "Wise Guys," "Color of Money," or "Owning Mahoney" have a long tradition in the Garden State but the gangster/casino genre has long been established as belonging to Chicago and Atlantic City can't hold a candle to Las Vegas. Even if Las Vegas' latest offerings in film (Honeymoon in Vegas, The Hangover, Waking up in Vegas) or TV (take your pick between the failed Michael Chiklis/Dennis Quaid series "Vegas", the moderately successful yet shallow Josh Duhamel/James Caan series "Las Vegas" or the failed Rob Lowe series "Dr. Vegas") fail to measure up to the Atlantic City-based dramas in terms of portraying the grandiosity of a casino town, that doesn't change the fact that Las Vegas is THE casino town in America.

Another popular candidate might be Zach Braff's quirky indie comedy Garden State. Braff is not the only New Jersey native who decided to honor his home state in his titling choices (Danny DeVito's production company is called Jersey films despite the fact he no longer lives in Jersey). He delivered a nicely convincing soliloquy on Jersey when he hosted SNL (complete with a song and dancing Prudential Center) but that doesn't mean his love of New Jersey translated into film very well. His film felt like it could be centered anywhere in the U.S. that has deciduous (you better believe I spell-checked the hell out of that word) forest.

New Jersey, the nation's densest and richest state, is the epicenter of suburbia in the U.S. Most of its residents are suburbanites of three of the country's largest metropolitan areas (Baltimore, Philly, and New York) and what's left over has formed an indistinct tract of the larger Northeastern megalopolis. People who drive between NYNEX and the Mid-Atlantic on a regular basis think of New Jersey as a series of rest stops along the New Jersey Turnpike or Garden State Parkway (taking your pick between those two is likely the most exciting thing you'll do while inside the state).

The state's biggest attempt at having a thriving city of its own, Newark, has been a complete failure for most of the past 150 years, despite the popularity of ex-mayor Cory Booker's Twitter account. One of the most notable moments in Booker's tenure was when he received a $150 million dollar donation to the school system from Mark Zuckerberg which isn't so much an indication of Booker's ability to charm Silicon Valley so much as Zuckerberg deciding that no municipal government was more hopeless than Newark.

In 1903, as the power of the suburbs increased, the state legislature froze Newark's municipal expansion and it became the country's first doughnut city (where the suburbs are bigger than the city center). Hence, New Jersey is where suburbs rule.

And no one knows suburbia better than blue collar director Kevin Smith. The suburbia of Kevin Smith's world is the place where bored teenagers escape into the world of comic books, pot, and sexual perversion (or if not actual sexual perversion, discussions about the topic). It's populated by foul-mouthed characters uninhibited by any sense of fear because they likely didn't grow up with any serious problems or boundaries. It's a place where the most glamorous place in town is the mall (see "Mallrats"). The mall is so iconic to suburban history that most textbooks on urban development or land use planning note a distinct phase in the evolution of suburbia called "malling."
In other words, Kevin Smith's suburbia filtered through the lens of his New Jersey experiences, is suburbia period.

Among his many Jersey-set films, I'm drawn to Dogma because of it's sheer self-importance. The film posits the scenario that Jersey is the center of the celestial universe. It's where God occasionally takes human form to play pinball along the boardwalk, where the devil's minions are are a street hockey gang, and where Jesus's thirteenth apostle is hanging out behind a Burger King. Most importantly, it's the nexus of Heaven and Hell where the universe's very existence will cease to exist unless a loud mouth New Jersey slacker and his sidekick don't act.

The Quintessential Hawaii film

The Quintessential Hawaii film: Blue Hawaii

Hawaii is widely seen as America's slice of exotic paradise. It's one of the nine states I haven't been to but my image of it is well-formed by the friends I have who take their once-in-a-lifetime vacations there and by all the sitcom specials (Saved by the Bell, My Wife and Kids, Step by Step, Full House) where the family or gang takes a trip to Hawaii.

A popular choice is Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity.

The 1953 Best Picture Oscar winner, set in a military barracks on the eve of Pearl Harbor, is famous for that makeout scene on the Beach, Montgomery Clift's broody performance, and Frank Sinatra winning an Oscar for a character dressed in tacky Hawaiian shirts. 

From Here to Eternity did lead to an increased resurgence in Hawaiian aloha shirts but the problem with the film is that Pearl Harbor doesn't define Hawaii. It's one of the two most disastrous homeland attacks ever to occur on American soil, but that's more of an anomaly and that anomaly is far overshadowed by the ensuing years of Polynesian-tinted sunniness.

Courtesy: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Another option is Alexander Payne's 2011 film The Descendants (an Oscar nominee and winner in the screenplay category) which (like Sunshine State) seeks to crack the facade of a tourism mecca and show struggling ordinary people underneath. The film delves into the social hierarchy between Hawaiian land owners, natives, and new blood in the real estate market, but this all falls into the B-story that's overshadowed by an A-plot about a disheveled middle-aged man struggling to cope with the pending loss of his unfaithful wife. In short, it's largely a film about a disheveled George Clooney in tacky Hawaiian wear. 

Descendants is a worthy runner-up, but my pick is going to be the 1961 film Blue Hawaii because it's pure kitschy, fun escapism. 

Elvis Presley stars as the quintessential all-American looking to have a good time after getting out of the Army. His father wants him to work at the Great Southern Hawaiian Fruit Company but Chad decides to work at his girlfriend's tourist agency instead as a guide. 

It's not really about any sort of grand socio-economic conflict. The film's tag line was:
"Ecstatic romance...exotic dances...exciting music in the world's lushest paradise of song!"

Also of note: A lot of the glamour of Hawaii was first spread through military men stationed in Hawaii during the war reporting back to the homeland on how glamorous the islands were, so it's fitting that Presley plays an ex-GI, although his journey is in reverse. 

In short, the film features Elvis (an honorary Hawaiian) wearing an aloha shirt and playing a uke. What better image could Hawaii want than that?

The Quintessential Alabama and Mississippi films

The Quintessential Alabama film: To Kill a Mockingbird
If being Southern before the Civil War is a bad thing and holding onto that Southerness after the Civil War is considered a very bad thing, then Alabama (along with Mississippi) is widely considered one of the two worst states in the nation. Whereas Mississippi has other points of pride that don't specifically bring up its racist history (the blues, aquaculture, the Mississippi Delta, some of the South's more ornate plantations), there's not as much for Alabama to do except own up to being the epitome of the Deep South which would explain the nickname Heart of Dixie. After all, Alabama today is a center of industry and manufacturing which is something present-day Alabama has in common with Alabama in antebellum days.

Candidates for the quintessential Alabama film ranges from dark films like Color Purple while a film like Tuskegee (or what I imagine Red Tails would be like) tries to simply portray heroism without its contrast. Talladega Nights and My Cousin Vinny also come to mind as films with a specific location but I associate NASCAR as being more of a Carolinas thing and My Cousin Vinny lacks a strong regional flavor. I first assumed it was in the Midwest or Not-So-Deep South before looking it up.

The quintessential Alabaman film, therefore, should be a film that negotiates Alabama's racist past with its progress. It should be a film that's unapologetic about the attitudes of its people back in the day. To Kill a Mockingbird has the quintessential hero in a fight for justice that results in his client not being exonerated. It's a bittersweet film in which the main protagonist (the book's narrator) is a young girl who learns that right and wrong are complicated where they live.

It's a good portrait of small-town Alabaman life as told first-hand by an Alabaman.  Although it's primarily known as a book, the film version is iconic enough to appear in the iconic AFI list: 100 Years...100 Movies.

The Quintessential Mississippi film: O Brother Where Art Thou
Mississippi, like Alabama, is known for being the extreme Deep South so we could go for a film that uses the state as a hotbed for hatred such as "Mississippi Burning" or "Ghosts of Mississippi" but look closer (as I did last year on a very touristy trip through the state while staying in Memphis) and you'll see other traits such as their blues heritage, the riverboat culture of the Mississippi Delta, the ornate plantations, and even the fact that they farm fish (aquaculture). Mississippi also has a natural beauty with its swampy magnolia and oak forests that's almost mystical.

The Coen brothers create a strong sense of place in their films and capture that natural beauty out of which tall tales could be spun, the likes of which appear in the travels of Everett, Delmar and Pete. Mississippi is the proud birthplace of the blues in their purest form (as in acoustic, unpolished recordings) which ties into the trademark sound of the inadvertent band formed by the trio known as the  Soggy Bottom Boys. In its early form, Blues was almost indistinguishable from something heard in churches which is why it's also appropriate that there's such elaborate religious mythology.

Remember the talk of elaborate ornate plantations Mississippi was famous for? We see that in the elaborate divide between rich and poor and the class-conscious ex-wife of Everett (Holly Hunter).

Lastly, when I was in Mississippi, a lot of the tourism centered on roads and corridors such as the Blues Highway (running through Clarksdale) or the Natchez Trace and the film emphasizes this geography as well as all the mythical and legendary stuff they encountered was along the road. The character who sold his soul to the devil (Tommy) is even based on a piece of Mississippi folklore about a famous blues guitarist (Robert Johnson) who sold his soul to the devil at the confluence of two major highways in Cleveland, Mississippi.

The quintessential Florida film: Sunshine State

The Quintessential Florida film: Sunshine State

Since Ponce de Leon came to Florida looking for his fountain of youth, the state of Florida has historically been a land of opportunity with vastly different groups of dream seekers -- the tourist industry, Russian arms dealers, Cuban emigres, Latino power players, Northeastern snowbirds, adherents of the philosophy/religion of Jimmy Buffet -- intersecting to make a vast socio-economic web that includes the moderately dysfunctional government we often read about.

There are a lot of great examples of Florida films covering all those different views of Floridian life: Off the top of my head, there's the dysfunctional urban landscape of Miami in Barry Sonnenfeld's adaptation of the Dave Barry book "Big Trouble," the mob film "Scarface" (few know that Al Capone ran much of his Chicago mob operations from Florida), the portrait of Florida as an lavish 50's vacation spot for snowboards in "Some Like it Hot" and "Palm Beach Story," Miami as a happening singles scene in "Hitch," and the more backwater view of Florida as a small-town haven of eccentric characters in "Because of Winn Dixie."

Rather than pick and choose any one specific version of Florida for the quintessential Florida film, I've chosen "Sunshine State" because it includes the intersection of multiple Floridian versions in one Altmanesque whirlwind.

The underrated gem by John Sayles flew under the radar when it was released in 2002 but it's worth a second look. Starring an ensemble that includes Mary Steenburgen, Edie Falco, Angela Bassett, Timothy Hutton, Alan King, James McDaniel, and Jane Alexander, the film centers around seaside town whose tranquil existence is threatened by an enroaching real estate developer.

Florida is largely a state where real estate development is the rule of the land. The city of Miami, for example, is no longer home to the Miami Dolphins, Miami Beach, University of Miami, Key Biscayne, or even Miami airport. As seen below, all those places broke off from the main city proper as the municipalities became dominated by gated communities and developments that encouraged voters to need the city less. Miami, in fact, survived a vote to dissolve the city entirely in 1997.

Steenburgen stars as a chamber of commerce head and overanxious real estate developer who is trying so hard to sell her latest development she doesn't even notice that her husband (King) is suicidal. In my years of local reporting, I have come across these Chamber of Commerce types and these jobs typically require very perky people who speak about where they live like it's shangri-la.

The only reason there isn't enough sprawl to connect the East and West coasts of Florida is through the tireless work of wetland preservationists (what ultimately dooms this real estate venture). The Everglades saved through the championing of Majority Stoneman Douglas who now has a number of streets, statues, and parks named after her in South Florida.

Bassett stars as former town pariah Desiree Perry who got pregnant by the local football star (McDaniel) before he made it big and is now returning to her hometown. She's deciding on behalf of her family whether to sell the land or preserve the special piece of her town. The theme here is Florida being a dream for so many conflicting groups of people is represented here. For Bassett's character and her neighbors, the town represented the opportunity for blacks to have their little piece of the beach. The town also highlights the pockets of poverty found in many a Florida coastal town.

Lastly, we have Edie Falco as Marley Temple who represents the state's evolving tourist industry. Temple, a sixth generation Floridian, used to be a mermaid in one of the seaside attractions that lined the highways before the corporate megaliths of Sea World and Disney World took over. What Temple is referencing, when she talks about her past life as a mermaid, is a real tourist attraction: The mermaids at Weeki Wachi Springs.

 

This is also a Florida thing, as the mermaid shows or the alligator shows that still populate the land today pose all sorts of questions as to how to promote nature, myth, and how not to step on past or future waves of progress in the tourist industry.  

Falco is now an owner of the family motel who's sick of where she's living. Her tryst with a landscape architect hired (Timothy Hutton) by the prospective land developer. It's a metaphor for the past Florida going the way of the future.

As a tapestry of intersecting lives, Sunshine State works as a great scene piece that has aged well and will likely continue to be relevant.