Oh Fer Cute

Each pocket of the country has its own way of speaking. It just so happened that the vowel formation of this area was highlighted and exaggerated in the 1996 Coen brothers’ classic “Fargo.” I didn’t attempt to watch the homespun murder story until a few years after it came out and even then I only made it through half of it before I took the VHS tape out of the VCR and threw it against the wall.

Perhaps I wasn’t mature enough to handle such a dark comedy, or maybe I didn’t like the idea of people in other parts of the country making fun of the way we speak.

I think I’ve grown up since then and I’ve started to realize that being from this area, and especially from Fargo, is a novelty to people in other areas of the U.S. We have an advantage over everyone else – we had a movie made about us, kind of.

A few years back I picked up a conference guest speaker at the airport. He had flown in from Florida and thought it would “be a hoot” to be able to see where Fargo was filmed. While in the car he spoke on the phone to his friend in California who was having a bad day. From the passenger seat, he thrust the phone in my direction and said, “Here, will you ‘talk Fargo’ to him? It will cheer him up.”

I took one hand off the steering wheel and greeted the miserable man at the other end of the line with a string of phrases from “Fargo,” the movie I never finished, “Oh jeez. What the heck do ya mean? Oh, I just think I’m gonna barf. But you’re sayin’…what are ya sayin’?” And that’s all it took. The guy at the other end of the line was suddenly having a fabulous day – he just heard someone in Fargo quote the movie “Fargo.”

A few months later I was in Florida at a conference and after a day of bonding with other media professionals I attempted to board a full elevator.

“Nope,” one the attendees put up his hand. “Not until you ‘talk Fargo.’”

This was getting ridiculous.

I went through the usual string of quotations and everyone in the elevator laughed out loud, slapped their knees and almost fell over on each other. I started to realize that exaggerating the accent might be able to get me places. And I wasn’t the only one who had that figured out.

At the Fargo Film Festival one year, I heard Fargo, N.D. actress Kristin Rudrud speak. She played the kidnapped wife in the film and has other film credits to her name. She said she would never forget the second audition when she cracked the code to the accent. She put a severe break in her voice, one she said could peel wallpaper right off the wall, and confidently stood in front of the filmmakers and read a line from the script, “Dad, are ya stayin’ for sup-PER?” She said the Coen brothers almost fell off their chairs laughing and she was hired on the spot.

As I start to work with and meet more people from other areas of the country, I find that I kind of enjoy when they bring up our accent, even if it’s not connected to a movie reference. I know I say phrases like “Oh fer cute” and I’ll never apologize for it. I’ll embrace it. This is where I grew up and I’m proud of it.

If it gets me a spot on a packed elevator or brightens someone else’s day, well, that’s even better, don’t cha know.