Paul Murphy, the special effects coordinator on Fargo, says, “People focus on the darkest scenes in movies.”
Special effects experts make the pretend things, like amputated legs sticking out of wood chippers, seem real. That was Paul Murphy’s job on Fargo. I interviewed Murphy in 2020 for A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere: The Untold Story of the Making of Fargo. I didn’t include every detail from our conversation in the book, but I’m sharing some additional tidbits here, including how difficult it was to make a few fake snowflakes fall gently outside a window for a scene that didn’t make the final cut. We began by talking about the wood chipper scene.
Paul Murphy: The leg was probably the last thing that was shoved through the chipper technically in a scene like that. The whole body would have went through before that. That’s why [Joel Coen] wanted that big wide swath of land [covered with blood].
Todd Melby: Jerry’s wife was probably put through the chipper, but we never see that. Then I noticed next to the [chipper] I see what looks to be part of a fake corpse underneath a tarp.
Paul Murphy: There were more people that were killed in that cabin, so I believe he had two or three corpses. I think this was the first of two or three. Then Fran showed up, the sheriff. She showed up at the cabin and heard the wood chipper down below, the noise and commotion and that’s what attracted her down to that area and then she seen what was going on. There were more bodies to be chopped up.
Todd Melby: It’s still wild that this is such an iconic scene in American cinema and probably world cinema for that matter.
Paul Murphy: Well, it’s funny how people react to different things. People focus on the darkest scenes in the movie a lot in a lot of features. I thought about that as I was making movies and working on films. I know it’s the suspense and what happens to the bad guys and all that. It was surprising to me that everyone focused on the wood chipper and the wood chipper was so popular. It’s the most popular scene in the movie by far.
“ Joel and Ethan are very particular on their scenes. They want them to be as accurate as the script. There wasn’t a lot of room if something couldn’t happen exactly the way they wanted it to happen. They would figure out a way to make it happen.”
Todd Melby: For sure. There are other scenes where people are talking with the accent in a particularly funny way and something is said that people also get a big kick out of like with the two hookers, the Asian guy, Stephen Park who played Mike Yanagita. The more I step back and think about it, the more impressed I am.
Paul Murphy: Well, Joel and Ethan are very particular on their scenes. They want them to be as accurate as the script. There wasn’t a lot of room if something couldn’t happen exactly the way they wanted it to happen. They would figure out a way to make it happen.
I remember one scene in particular. We were in the third or fourth story of a building in downtown Minneapolis and three or four of the main characters were in a room looking out the window. Joel just wanted a couple of snowflakes to fall past the window outside.
We were up on the roof. Typically, with a scene like that, you just drop snow out of your hand. It was the top story that they were in, so we were right above them or two stories above them. It was a pretty windy night that night and the updraft kept on pushing the snow back up. I remember we couldn’t get any snow down to that window from where we were, so we had to come up with a new idea.
I went down [to the indoor shooting location] and Joel was getting real frustrated because [he wasn’t seeing snowflakes like he wanted]. I went down and had a talk with him and said, “Look, we’ve got a constant updraft. It’s very difficult to get anything down there.” He was frustrated with that. As an effects coordinator, you never want to tell the director, “No, you can’t do it,” especially if it’s scripted.
What we ended up doing was taking a piece of PVC right down to the top of the window. It was about one inch in diameter and we just started dropping a few snowflakes through that. The updraft caught it but it swirled it and dropped it right in front the window exactly like he wanted it. We just got lucky.
It’s those small things. Typically, that would be a piece of cake, that scene, but Mother Nature was fighting us all the way that night.
Todd Melby: I would never have thought that it would be that difficult. Maybe he didn’t either. If you’re not the person dropping the snowflakes, you wouldn’t even think about an updraft.
Paul Murphy: Exactly. And that’s why he was so frustrated because it should have been such a simple scene.
Todd Melby: Do you remember what Joel said?
Paul Murphy: I went down and explained what was going on to him and I said, “We’ll come up with something.” I remember exactly what he said. He said, “I don’t believe you.” That’s what he said. He said, “I don’t believe you, but let’s go for it.” I was frustrated.
Todd Melby: You mean he didn’t believe you that there was an updraft?
Paul Murphy: Yes, that’s exactly what he said. That kind of a scene, there [were] actors involved, there was dialogue involved. There was no precise moment to drop the snow, he just wanted to see a few flakes falling during the scene. We did have a cue for action. I think we were on the third or fourth take and that’s when I went down to explain to him and then he said, “I don’t believe you, but I’ll go with it.”
I said, “We’re going to try something different.” That’s when we got the PVC. One of the crew members came up with that idea. I said, “Yeah, it sounds good. Let’s try it.”
Todd Melby: Speaking of snow, I read that there was very little or no snow in Minneapolis the winter of 1995.
Paul Murphy: Yes, that’s why we had to head up north.
Todd Melby: Maybe we should talk about exterior snow that you had to do for various scenes in Minneapolis. Maybe we could talk about the North Dakota, northern Minnesota snow. How frustrated were Joel and Ethan that there was no natural snow?
Paul Murphy: That was a huge move for them, the decision to move up North and to start the movie up there. Logistically and financially, it throws everything out of whack.
I think as it turned out, it was the only choice to make, but it was a smart choice. Most of the scenes went without a hitch up there.
As far as the cover snow, they had plenty of it up there, so they could do just about anything they wanted. It snowed a lot, so if we had to reshoot something the next day or a few days later, all the tracks were covered, and it was a fresh scene again. We got lucky that way with the ground snow.
Then we created our own snow. We had the option to make real snow. We had a 3,000 gallon water truck with a device on it that made foam snow. Once we did that, the foam snow would settle in and it would like just like real snow and you could cover a large area if you had to. You could cover half a block in 20 or 30 minutes.
We had all those tools, but still, the little scenes were the ones that got us. It was really frustrating because Mother Nature did not cooperate.