Friday, November 13, 2009

The Coen brothers and typos

Peter Stormare played Gaear Grimsrud in the Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo (1996). Here he comments on his second line in the film, “Where’s Pancakes House?”:

I said, “It’s gotta be Pancake House.” And then when we were doing the scene, I was saying "Where’s the Pancake House?" And Ethan: “Peter?” “Yeah?” “What were you saying there?” "Where’s the Pancake House?" “No, it says Pancakes House.” “Oh, I thought it was a typo.” “No, no, there’s no typos in our scripts.”

From Minnesota Nice (dir. Jeffrey Schwarz, 2003), a short documentary on the making of Fargo

comments: 2

Chalupa said...

I think the "pancake" vs "pancakes" was put in because English wouldn't have been Gaear's first language.

Michael Leddy said...

Yes. I suspect that one or another Coen must have noticed one day that we say “House of Pancakes,” but “Pancake House.”