Skip Sprang’s Buried Myth
With the name of his production company, 26 Keys, FX’s Fargo creator and showrunner Noah Hawley recognizes the primordial importance of the keys on a typewriter. When it comes to last year’s Fargo installment, those keys are the foundation in more ways than one.
Skip Sprang, the can’t-catch-a-break salesman whose pact with Rye Gerhardt leads to the Waffle Hut Massacre, is a hidden key himself in the absurdist—or is it?—saga of March 1979. I spoke with comedy veteran Mike Bradecich about his tone-perfect performance in the role, working with Hawley, and the meaning of the very blue IBM Selectric II.
The images and text below contain SPOILERS for season two.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.
Sure, of course! I enjoyed the blog. It’s fun to see somebody try to take it apart on the same level that Noah puts it together—to try to find all the pieces!
When did you start realizing that this was going to go so far beyond a typical television series in that respect?
A little bit in season one—seeing all the layers he put into it, it was pretty clear from the get go. I wasn’t privy to any of his conversations with the Coen brothers, but as far as I know they had no hands on involvement in season two, and I think even pretty early in season one they kind of said, “OK, this guy knows what he’s doing, we’re gonna leave it to him.” So I always had an idea that there were a lot of layers to what was going on, and that I could make it through the entire process of working on the show without ever realizing ALL of them.
I still think he’s the only one who knows everything he’s doing. I think it’s also possible people are finding things he never even intended to be in there!
You’re probably right [laughs]. In interviews with cast from the show everybody talks about Noah Hawley and how much of a “genius” he is—that word keeps getting used. How does that affect what you’re doing as an actor?
I was in the episode [two, ”Before the Law”] that he directed, and I think I talked to him more before and after that episode than I ever did during. I think while he was directing I maybe exchanged ten words with him. As a director he was very hands off. So the way it manifests itself for me is in reading the scripts, and in rereading the scripts and finding new things, and rereading and finding something new every single time. And then the rest of it for me is probably the same as it is for you!
The anecdote for me is—I don’t know if this was motivated by the ultimate fate of True Detective season two—but they went through and watched the first cut of the first episode of season two of Fargo, and it didn’t have any of the split screen—that was never a part of it at the beginning. None of that visual style that’s so different from season one was part of the original planning for the season. And Noah went in and they were nervous, they didn’t love the first episode. So Noah went into the editing room and conceived of all that stuff on the spot, he started pulling scenes from other episodes and moving things around, and he took this thing that he’d already made that was already great—I’m sure if I watched the original cut of the first episode, I’d’ve liked it! And I’m sure most people probably would—but he wasn’t satisfied, and he reconceived the whole thing on the fly.
Another thing that frequently comes up when people talk about his writing is how he writes visually.
The thing that helped me personally… I auditioned for the first season and didn’t get that, then auditioned again for the second season for Skip. And between the first audition for the casting director and the second audition for Noah and Warren [Littlefield, executive producer], I made a commercial for my typewriter store—I just went on my own, set the camera on a tripod, stood in front of the building, moved the camera a couple times, and made this commercial for my typewriter store. And Noah told me later it was really clear that I got the character and the tone. And I don’t take a lot of credit for that—it was just clear. When you read the script, you just see what it’s gonna look like. He’s very visual and very clear.
You can tell he’s a novelist—he’s economical with his words, he can say two sentences and you can get a very clear picture of what’s going on in his head.
I was struck watching that commercial [included on the DVD], thinking how your character is—if there is such a thing—the only character in season two who’s a “traditional” Fargo character.
Totally, and I think that was the intention. I heard Noah say at one point, you’re supposed to think Skip is Lester [from season one], or William H. Macy from the movie. You’re supposed to think, “oh here he is again, here’s this hapless businessman who’s got a lot of ambition but not a ton of brains. And not a very strong moral standard!” So it’s that guy, yet again. And then all of a sudden you meet Kirsten Dunst and you find out “oh no, this is who we’re gonna follow…” I think he plotted Skip’s character in there as a sort of a misdirect for the audience.
I was shocked when you got crushed by all the rocks!
Yeah, my wife still doesn’t agree. She thinks it was completely unjustified, she just doesn’t buy it. “There’s no reason to kill him! Poor guy.”
I was not posing a threat to anybody [laughs]. I think I was demonstrating just how vicious Dodd was.
And also, the brief struggle you have captures this absurdism that Camus wrote about, and then at the end of the episode “The Myth of Sisyphus”, getting crushed by all these rocks…
I loved that! I never… that was the one in particular… I was like, “oh! A mountain of rocks…” I liked that, that was good. That was a good call.
I was struck by all these episode recappers, all these words spilled, and nobody seemed to make this connection, between the title of the episode and ending in this opposite way.
Yeah, once you said it, it was super obvious to me! Never occurred to me before that. I was with all those commentators and episode summarizers, it just blew right past me.
Amongst the cast, or on set, were there any conspiracy theorists trying to figure all this stuff out—the meaning of the titles, the meaning of the UFOs?
No, I was actually very much the opposite… During the block when I was shooting episode three [”The Myth of Sisyphus”] they were also starting stuff from episode four [”Fear and Trembling”], and one morning I woke up and there was a script of episode four sitting outside my hotel room, and I got that thing out of my hands as fast as I could, I said “no no, I don’t want to know ANYTHING…” and I told Noah I was trying not to find any spoilers after Skip gets buried! So he got protective of me. If people started talking about episode four in front of me he would shut them down very quickly—“No don’t! Mike wants to watch the show and be surprised!” I really just wanted to experience the show as an audience member once we got past the stuff that I knew because I had to know it.
And I didn’t really find anybody else doing that either that I remember too much. I think people were too concerned just getting through moment by moment. Most of my interactions were with other actors and I think the tendency is to figure out just what your character needs to know and where they’re coming from. It’s fun after the fact to armchair quarterback it and try to put all the pieces together.
Now that you’ve seen it in full, armchair quarterbacking it, what really jumped out? What do you find Hawleyesque—if that’s an adjective yet—that was pulled off that can’t be pulled off anywhere else?
Connections, there are so many connections. I think that’s one of the great things he does… I didn’t realize until the series was almost completely over why it was so meaningful that I kept referring to the typewriters as spaceships. “Oh, even I said spaceships!” So, UFOs… I could spin theories all day long and I still have none that make any sense to me! It’s one of those things that I have no idea what’s going on, but I know that Noah knows what’s going on! And I enjoyed it, it didn’t take me out of the story. But yeah, I wouldn’t try to explain it.
And then also, some of the closure stuff, seeing Mike Milligan end up in an office, and how anticlimactic that is, but how much sense it makes.
So you mentioned the typewriters, and that great line “spaceships, really”—what did they represent to you, or how do you think Skip Sprang saw them? It seems like Noah Hawley would put a lot of care into…
It’s funny because I think the intention—or at least the most surface intention—for Noah is that it’s a joke because here’s this guy in 1979 who’s so invested in this new technology that he’s sure is going to be the wave of the future—not knowing that computers are pretty close around the corner and the typewriter is quickly going to become obsolete. He’s sure that he’s got his finger on the pulse of the world. It’s the same as the other salesman characters, Lester in season one and Jerry in the movie, he’s just sure he’s got a sure thing on his hands. But oddly enough, I think he’s right! Because I did some research, and the IBM Selectric II Electric Typewriter with Patented High-Speed Type-All really was THE typewriter, for a number of years. And even still places like law offices that still need to do carbon copies, that’s the typewriter that’s still there.
If he had survived, if he had got his funds unlocked from Judge Mundt, if he had been able to see this thing through, I think he WOULD’VE become really rich by being on the cutting edge of the IBM Selectric II. Even when I was making the commercial for the audition, I found a typewriter repair shop here in Long Beach. I explained to the owner what I was doing—I said I don’t really need a functioning typewriter, I just need a shell. I just need something shaped like an electric typewriter. And he pointed to one on the bottom of a stack that was probably twelve high of just beat-up old typewriters. There was maybe three quarters of an inch of dust sitting on top of the thing. I grab it, he gives it to me for ten bucks, I take it home, I hose it down, and it’s an IBM Selectric II. That couldn’t be any more perfect.
But yeah, there’s also something going on besides the joke of this poor sap not knowing that computers are about to crush his livelihood, there’s also definitely something about it being a creative engine. I mean there’s no way Noah doesn’t have something else going on with that aspect of it.
Absolutely, and also the great visual gag of you attached to it.
Yeah! Which you know, that tie also being a foreshadow to the American flag tie sticking up out of the ground [at the end of “The Myth of Sisyphus”]. I had a lot of friends at the end of episode two write to say how excited they were that I was still alive! [laughs]
Do you think Skip Sprang and you have much in common?
Gosh, I hope not! Probably more than I would like to admit… but hopefully I’m a little more self-aware. I think that’s a big distinction between the characters, the dunces and the buffoons in the Fargo world and the smart ones. Mike Milligan and Hanzee not necessarily being righteous, but they’re self-aware. There’s a line being drawn between the smart people and the dunces. And Skip definitely falls in the un-self-aware buffoon category in the Fargo universe. And it’s great because it’d be real easy to draw a caricature of a buffoon. But Noah doesn’t. They’re still real characters, they’re just not very self-aware.
What would you wish for the producers of dramatic series in the future would learn from Noah Hawley and from Fargo?
Well, I would say not to take the surface thing of “oh, well he found a quirky movie from the ‘90s and was able to adapt it really well”—no, that’s not the lesson. It’s not to try and repeat what he did. The only thing they should be trying to repeat is finding someone like Noah who has a very singular, very clear vision, and the ability to execute it really well. I think the best thing FX did was allow him to surround himself with people who could help bring that to fruition and then kind of get out of his way and let him do it. And at FX, he’s doing Legion, Cat’s Cradle, and season 3 this year. So clearly FX has figured out that they’ve got something pretty great on their hands with Noah.
Once you find somebody… and I don’t know this, but Warren Littlefield, the guy who kind of invented “Must See TV,” he was running NBC during all those incredible years… he’s probably a voice in support of that. Find someone who’s really talented and really smart and let them do what they do. And I think that’s kind of Noah’s directing style too. At least in the scene I was in, in the typewriter store with Bokeem [Woodbine] and Brad and Todd [Mann], he didn’t have much to say, he talked to the DP a little bit, he talked to production design a little bit, and every once in a while he’d say a word or two to the actors—but not many. He’s just like, get the people in there that you trust and let them do what they do.
So that’s what I would encourage producers in Hollywood—if they want to emulate the success of Fargo, find some more Noah Hawleys! Find the Noah Hawley tree and start plucking!
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