FROM THE SCREENPLAY:
We are high and wide on the office building’s parking lot. Jerry emerges wrapped in a parka, his arms sticking stiffly out at his sides, his breath vaporizing. He goes to his car, opens its front door, pulls out a red plastic scraper and starts methodically scraping off the thin crust of ice that has developed on his windshield.
The scrape-scrape-scrape sound carries in the frigid air.
Jerry goes into a frenzy, banging the scraper against the windshield and the hood of his car.
The tantrum passes.
Roger Deakins, our greatest living Director of Photography, was finding new and interesting ways to film snow. The Coens had an idea to accent the blankness of the environment by shooting landscapes where the snow-covered ground would be the same blank color as the sky. Most of the film is shot straight on, but my favorite image is the scene written above.
William H. Macy is great at conveying frustration about to boil over. There’s the long take in Boogie Nights, but here the camera is so high up it’s like God himself is looking down on this little man. Everything is against him, from his schemes to his windshield, and he needs to take it out on something, so he just starts banging away in anger. Easily the day I’d want to be on set for.
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