The Hudsucker Proxy
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Hudsucker Proxy is a 1994 comedy film co-written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Sam Raimi co-wrote the script and served as second unit director. The film stars Tim Robbins as a naïve but ambitious business school graduate who is installed as president of a manufacturing company, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a newspaper reporter, and Paul Newman as a company director who hires the graduate as part of a stock scam.
The script was finished in 1985, but production did not start until 1991, when Joel Silver acquired the script for Silver Pictures. Warner Bros. subsequently agreed to distribute the film, with further financing from PolyGram Filmed Entertainment and Working Title Films. Filming at Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina lasted from November 1992 to March 1993. The New York City scale model set was designed by Michael J. McAlister and Mark Stetson, with further effects provided by The Computer Film Company.
Upon its release in March 1994, The Hudsucker Proxy received mixed reviews from critics and bombed at the box office, but has since gained a cult following.
Plot
In December 1958, Norville Barnes, a business college graduate from Muncie, Indiana, arrives in New York City, looking for a job. He struggles due to lack of experience and becomes a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries, a large corporation. Soon thereafter, the company's founder and president, Waring Hudsucker, unexpectedly commits suicide during a business meeting by jumping out of a top-floor window. Afterward, Sidney J. Mussburger, a ruthless member of the company's board of directors, knowing that Hudsucker Industries' bylaws call for Hudsucker's stock shares to be sold to the public, suggests a scheme to buy the controlling interest in the company by temporarily depressing the stock price by hiring a clearly incompetent president to run the business.
In the mailroom, Norville is assigned to deliver a "Blue Letter" to Mussburger. The letter is a top-secret communication from Hudsucker, sent shortly before his death. However, Norville does not deliver the letter; instead, he pitches Mussburger an invention of his (indicated with no other explanation than a simple drawing of a circle and his cryptic explanation, "you know: for kids."). Believing Norville to be an idiot, Mussburger selects him as a proxy for Hudsucker. Across town, Amy Archer, a brassy Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Manhattan Argus newspaper, is assigned to write a story about Norville and find out what kind of man he really is. She obtains a job at Hudsucker Industries as his personal secretary, pretending to be yet another desperate graduate from his alma mater in Muncie. One night, Amy searches the building for clues and meets Moses, who operates the tower's giant clock and knows "just about anything if it concerns Hudsucker". He tells her Mussburger's plot, and she takes the story back to her Chief, but he does not believe it.
The other executives at Hudsucker Industries decide to produce Norville's invention in hopes that it will flop and further depress the company's stock. However, the invention is the hula hoop, which initially fails in obscurity but then becomes an enormous success. Norville allows success to go to his head and becomes yet another uncaring tycoon. Amy, who had fallen for his naive charm, is infuriated over Norville's new attitude and leaves him. Buzz, the eager elevator operator, pitches a new invention: the flexi-straw. Norville dismisses it and fires Buzz. Meanwhile, Aloysius, a Hudsucker janitor, discovers Amy's true identity and informs Mussburger. Mussburger reveals Amy's secret identity to Norville and tells him he will be dismissed as president after the new year. Mussburger also convinces the board that Norville is insane and must be sent to the local psychiatric hospital.
On New Year's Eve, Amy finds Norville drunk at a beatnik bar. She apologizes, but he storms out and is chased by an angry mob led by Buzz. Norville escapes to the top floor of the Hudsucker skyscraper and changes back into his mailroom uniform. He climbs out on the ledge, where Aloysius locks him out and watches as he slips and falls off the building at the stroke of midnight. While Norville plummets, Moses stops the building's giant clock, which freezes time. Waring Hudsucker appears to Norville as an angel and tells him to read the Blue Letter (still in Norville's uniform pocket) that was supposed to be delivered to Mussburger: it contains Hudsucker's instructions to transfer his shares to his immediate successor as president, rather than to the public. This would have been Mussburger, but, unaware of this, he proceeded with his scheme to elect Norville. Inside the building's giant clock, Moses fights Aloysius, defeating him. Norville descends safely to the ground. He and Amy reconcile. As 1959 progresses, Mussburger attempts suicide and is sent to an asylum while Norville develops a new invention "for kids": another enigmatic circle on a folded sheet of paper that ultimately turns out to be a frisbee.
Cast
- Tim Robbins as Norville Barnes
- Jennifer Jason Leigh as Amy Archer
- Paul Newman as Sidney J. Mussburger
- Jim True as Clarence "Buzz" Gunderson, the elevator operator
- Bill Cobbs as Moses the clock man
- Harry Bugin as Aloysius the janitor
- Bruce Campbell as Smitty, Argus reporter
- John Mahoney as Al, the Argus chief editor
- Charles Durning as Waring Hudsucker
- Patrick Cranshaw as Ancient sorter
- Anna Nicole Smith as Za-Za
- Steve Buscemi as Beatnik bartender
- Sam Raimi as Hudsucker brainstormer
- Jon Polito as Mr. Bumstead
- Peter Gallagher as Vic Tenetta
- John Goodman as Rockwell newsreel announcer
