The perfect New Year’s Eve comedy turns 30

There aren't that many movies specifically set on New Year's Eve, but one of the best is The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Joel and Ethan Coen's visually striking, affectionate homage to classic Hollywood screwball comedies. The film turned 30 this year, so it's the perfect opportunity for a rewatch. (WARNING: Spoilers below.) The Coen brothers started writing the script for The Hudsucker Proxy when Joel was working as an assistant editor on Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). Raimi ended up co-writing the script, as well as making a cameo appearance as a brainstorming marketing executive.  The Coen brothers took their inspiration from the films of Preston Sturgess and Frank Capra, among others, but the intent was never to satirize or parody those films. "It's the case where, having seen those movies, we say 'They're really fun—let's do one!'; as opposed to "They're really fun—let's comment upon them,'" Ethan Coen has said. They finished the script in 1985, but at the time they were small indie film directors. It wasn't until the critical and commercial success of 1991's Barton Fink that the Coen brothers had the juice in Hollywood to finally make The Hudsucker Proxy. Warner Bros. greenlit the project and producer Joel Silver gave the brothers complete creative control, particularly over the final cut. Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is an ambitious, idealistic recent graduate of a business college in Muncie, Indiana, who takes a job as a mailroom clerk at Hudsucker Industries in New York, intent on working his way to the top. That ascent happens much sooner than expected. On the same December day in 1958, the company's founder and president, Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning), leaps to his death from the boardroom on the 44th floor (not counting the mezzanine).

A meteoric rise

To keep the company's stock from going public as the bylaws dictate, board member Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman) proposes they elect a patsy as the next president—someone so incompetent it will spook investors and temporarily depress the stock so the board can buy up controlling shares on the cheap. Enter Norville, who takes the opportunity of delivering a Blue Letter to Mussburger to pitch a new product, represented by a simple circle drawn on a piece of paper: "You know... for kids!" Thinking he's found his imbecilic patsy, Mussburger names Norville the new president. Meanwhile, a reporter for the Manhattan Argus, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is skeptical about this new "idea man" and cons her way into becoming Norville's secretary to find out what's really going on. At first, everything goes according to the board's plan. Norville's proposal for the "dingus" is fast-tracked into production and dubbed the Hula-Hoop by marketing. It's shaping up to be a spectacular failure until a little boy finds a discarded Hula-Hoop on the street and demonstrates a variety of tricks while playing with it. The Hula-Hoop becomes a national sensation. The company's stock soars instead of crashing and Norville basks in unexpected glory. Frankly, the success goes to his head. But the ruthless Mussburger has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Is Norville any match for his machinations? Maybe he is, with a little timely magical intervention to ensure a happy ending.

A fad is born

Unfortunately for the Coen brothers, The Hudsucker Proxy was not their hoped-for mainstream success. It was a box office bomb, grossing just $11.3 million worldwide against a production budget of between $24-$40 million. Reviews were mixed, with critics declaring the film something of a technical pastiche that lacked humanity—all style with little substance and too many sly references to classic films from Hollywood of yore. But as often happens, the film withstood the test of time, amassing a strong cult following over the last 30 years. Even the film's harshest critics had nothing but praise for the film's stunning cinematography and production design, a tribute to the distinctive vision of its directors. Visual effects supervisor Michael McAlister, in a 2019 interview, called The Hudsucker Proxy his favorite of the many films he's worked on: "It's the only movie that I've worked on that I wouldn't change one frame of film under my department's domain." This is a mythical version of New York City, created with miniatures of all the iconic skyscrapers, crammed together into a single area to evoke a bygone Manhattan. (The models were later used for films like Batman Forever and Godzilla.) There are shades of Art Deco and Frank Lloyd Wright, mixed in with darker dystopian touches reminiscent of films like 1985's Brazil. I've never understood the early criticisms, but then, I've always been a fan of screwball comedies and appreciate that the Coen brothers played this one straight, rather than trying to make a clever satire. It's the sheer earnest good cheer they bring to the film that makes The Hudsucker Proxy so eminently watchable, year after year—reminiscent of It's A Wonderful Life (1946), Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), and similar feel-good fare.

A second chance

You've got smart, snappy dialog and rapid-fire delivery in the style of 1940s comedies like The Front Page. Jason Leigh specifically modeled Amy Archer's vocal and physical mannerisms on Rosalind Russell's reporter in that film, as well as on Katharine Hepburn. Robbins plays Norville's wide-eyed optimism to perfection and Paul Newman's rasping delivery ("Sure, sure") and smug confidence makes Mussburger the perfect screwball comedy villain. You've also got the fast-talking elevator operator, Buzz (Jim True) for comic relief, firing off bad puns about the former president's suicide ("When is a sidewalk well-dressed? When it's WARING Hudsucker! Get it?"), John Mahoney as Argus chief editor Al, and Bruce Campbell as Amy's dim-witted misogynist colleague, Smitty. The Coen brothers even employ a couple of dyspeptic diner patrons, Benny and Lou, as narrators to provide the needed exposition in the scene where Amy picks up an unwitting Norville with the old mother's lumbago ruse ("she's good, Lou"). Ultimately, The Hudsucker Proxy is an uplifting fable about why it matters to be good and decent, even in a cut-throat world that values nothing but profit. Those pursuits didn't bring Waring Hudsucker true happiness, after all, leading to his voluntary departure for the Great Hereafter. As he wrote in his final missive, "Failure should never lead to despair. That despair looks only to the past, in business and in love. The future is now." It's a fitting reminder for us all as 2024 draws to a close.