The Tribeca Festival celebrated the 25th anniversary of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning film Fargo with an outdoor screening and reunion Friday night, June 18, 2021, at Pier 76. Following the film, Pictures at a Revolution author Mark Harris moderated a lively conversation with co-writer/director Joel Coen and stars Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi. The group covered a lot of ground during the 40-minute discussion, including the writing process, casting, and potential film sequels. Below are six things we learned from the evening.

1. Joel and Ethan Coen got stumped during the writing process and put the Fargo script in a drawer for 4-5 months

The Coen brothers notoriously don’t like to start with an outline. They are more fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants writers who make the story up as they go along. With Fargo, they wrote up to the scene where Shep attacks Carl and weren’t sure what came next. So, they put the script in a drawer for 4-5 months and came back to finish it.

2. An early draft had Marge attending a Right to Life protest

McDormand was eager to share that in an early draft of the screenplay, Marge had a different motivation for traveling to Minneapolis. Instead of drinks with her high school crush Mike Yanagita, she was traveling down because her friend invited her to attend a Right to Life protest. Coen said it was just a thought experiment that he and Ethan explored. McDormand was clearly relieved that it didn’t make the final version.

3. The Coen brothers are easily amused on set

Both Buscemi and McDormand shared experiences of filming scenes and hearing the Coens laughing at them off-camera. Buscemi recalled the pair’s chuckling when he was trying to bury the suitcase in the snow. And their giggles distracted McDormand after her foot unexpectedly sunk in the snow when she was walking back to her car. In the scene, you can actually see her look toward the camera for an instant. While almost everything in the film was in the script, that look wasn’t.

4. Peter Stormare writes persuasive letters and was originally cast in Miller’s Crossing

Actor Peter Stormare came to work with the Coen brothers from a letter he sent them before they filmed Miller’s Crossing. In the letter, Stormare offered his services if they ever needed a Swede. The actor’s pitch and the fact that Stormare was part of Bergman‘s company intrigued the brothers, so they wrote a part for him in Miller’s Crossing called “The Swede.” Unfortunately, Stormare had to drop out because he was called to Japan to direct Miss Julie. The Coens wrote his character out of Miller’s Crossing but kept him in mind for Fargo. The Coens cast Stormare as the Swedish sociopath, Gaear Grimsrud, despite having never met the actor in person.

5. William Macy convinced the Coen brothers to go in a different direction with Jerry Lundegaard

William Macy originally came in to read for the part of the accountant, Stan Grossman. After his audition, he asked the brothers if he could read for the part of Jerry Lundegaard. They were apprehensive at first because they envisioned Jerry being slightly overweight and uncomfortable in his body, the exact opposite of Macy. They eventually relented and let him read. Macy’s audition convinced the brothers that his version of Jerry was better than the Jerry they imagined.

6. The Coen brothers toyed with doing a Barton Fink sequel

While alas there will never be a Fargo II from the Coen brothers, Coen said that he and his brother entertained the idea of doing a sequel to Barton Fink. Another of the pair’s “thought experiments,” they spitballed calling the film Old Fink. They would set it in the 1960s with John Turturro’s character being a lot older and teaching at Berkeley during the Summer of Love. However, it would only work if, when they shot it, Turturro was actually old.

Photo: Frances McDormand and Steve Buscemi speak at the 25th Anniversary “Fargo” reunion during the 2021 Tribeca Festival at Pier 76 on June 18, 2021, in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)