Build a movie plot around this: What is Marge Gunderson's job? Police chief
The movie opens with a car towing a new tan Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera through a sub-freezing blizzard to a small inn in Fargo, North Dakota. It is 8:30 p.m. on a cold night in January 1987. When the driver goes inside, we see that it is Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy), and he uses the false name 'Jerry Anderson' to check in. He then goes to the inn's bar/restaurant to have a meeting with two men.Jerry has obviously never met them before. The short, bug-eyed, dark-haired, annoyed, talkative one, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi), tells him that Shep Proudfoot, a mutual acquaintance of theirs who set up the meeting, had said Jerry would be there at 7:30 rather than 8:30. The other man, a tall, blond Swede named Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), sits silently and smokes. They discuss the tan Ciera as part of a payment to them from Jerry, plus $40,000. Apparently, Jerry has hired the men to kidnap his wife in order to get a ransom from his wife's father. Jerry is a fast talker and doesn't want to say much about why he needs the money, but he reveals that his father-in-law is rich and that he plans on asking for $80,000 and keeping the other half for himself. Carl and Gaear accept the deal.The next day, Jerry returns to his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota where we see part of his impassive home life. Jerry awkwardly greets his laid-back, subservient wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud), but he becomes uncomfortable when he sees his father-in-law, Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell), sitting on the couch watching a hockey game on TV, visiting that night for supper. They all eat dinner, and Jerry and Jean's young teenage son, Scotty (Tony Denman), leaves early to go to McDonald's. Jerry and Wade start to argue about this and that Jerry seems to spoil Scotty and allows him to do whatever he wants does not inflict much discipline. To get out of the conversation, Jerry changes the subject by bringing up a deal he had apparently suggested earlier to Wade, in which he's asking for a loan of $750,000 to build a 40-acre parking lot in...