The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) on Netflix
PG19941h 51mComedyDramaFantasy
Norville Barnes, a business graduate from Muncie, Indiana, takes a mailroom job at Hudsucker Industries. Sidney J. Mussburger, a board member, makes him president to drive the stock price down.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb7.2/1090,965 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes63%
Trailer
Plot summary
Norville Barnes arrives in New York City from Muncie, Indiana, with a business degree and an idea for a new product that he can only show as a circle drawn on paper. He finds work as a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries. Its founder and president, Waring Hudsucker, jumps from a top-floor window during a board meeting. Sidney J. Mussburger, a board member, proposes to depress the stock price by putting an obviously incompetent man in the president's chair, because Hudsucker's shares must be sold to the public. Norville, sent upstairs with a Blue Letter and a pitch for his invention, is what Mussburger wants. Reporter Amy Archer is assigned to learn what kind of man the new president is and takes a job as his secretary, posing as an unemployed woman from Muncie.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Joel Silver wanted Tom Cruise as Norville Barnes and Jon Cryer auditioned for the part, but Joel and Ethan Coen held out for Tim Robbins. It was the first time the brothers had built a film around big stars.
- Winona Ryder and Bridget Fonda were both up for reporter Amy Archer, but the part went to Jennifer Jason Leigh: she had auditioned unsuccessfully for Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink, and those failed tries were what made the Coens cast her.
- Clint Eastwood was the Coens' first choice for the ruthless board member Sidney Mussburger and had to refuse over scheduling, while Warner Bros. pushed comedians Joel Coen thought were plainly wrong. Paul Newman took the role instead.
- Bruce Campbell, a friend of the Coens for over a decade, refused to audition, arguing they knew his work well enough to spare him. They agreed and handed him the role of Smitty without one.
- Effects man Peter Chesney built Charles Durning a pair of 16-foot angel wings on a steel armature driven by electric motors so they could fold, unfold and flap, then covered them in real duck and turkey feathers, modeled on photographs of a dove landing in slow motion.
- The fantasy 1950s New York skyline was a miniature: 27 crew members spent three months building the city at 24:1 scale, with production designer Dennis Gassner working from the book New York in The Forties.
SPOILER
For the two falls from the Hudsucker building the miniature city was hung sideways so the camera could travel its full height. Visual effects supervisor Michael J. McAlister worked out the drop would really last seven seconds; on screen it was stretched to about thirty.- The skyscraper models built for this film did not go to waste: they were used again in The Shadow, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin and Godzilla.
