FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Invitation: Oscar Night Party. Location: Fargo Theater. Dress: Formal. (Only your finest long johns and big-hooded parkas, please.) RSVP: Yah sure, you betcha.
The Fargo Theater is holding an Academy Award party March 28 to honor the dark comedy “Fargo,” which is in the running for the best picture award.
But this won’t be a typical formal affair, says Margie Bailly, the theater’s development director.
“Dress will be strictly North Dakota formal,” Bailly joked Monday. “That’s fur hats, overalls, huge parkas and everything else everybody else thinks we all wear.”
Bailly said she and other fans wanted to throw a party to honor the movie and decided to play up as many Midwestern Scandinavian stereotypes from the film as they could.
Written and directed by Minnesota natives Joel and Ethan Coen, “Fargo” is the quirky tale of an underachieving Minnesota car salesman who hires two bumbling hitmen to kidnap his wife so he can collect the ransom from her wealthy father.
The movie ends with one of the hitmen disposing of the other in a chipper-shredder machine, while a pregnant police chief, played by Oscar nominee Frances McDormand, looks on.
With that scene in mind, Bailly said she plans to rent a chipper-shredder to place outside the theater. Inside, guests will be encouraged to speak in their heaviest Scandinavian accents and snack from a smorgasbord of pickled treats.
The party will be free and open to the public, “but we may have to have some kind of ticketing process just so we don’t have a riot,” Bailly said.