Jana Larson - Reel Bay: A Cinematic Essay

REEL BAY

REEL BAY

A Cinematic Essay

Jana Larson

Copyright 2021 by Jana Larson

Cover design by Carlos Esparza

Book design by Ann Sudmeier

Author photograph Shelly Mosman

The cover illustration by Edmund Weiss was originally published in his book Bilderatlas der Sternenwelt (1888) and is public domain.

Coroner Unable to Find Cause of Death of Japanese Woman by Deena Winter was published in the Bismarck Tribune, January 7, 2002, and is used with permission.

Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, .

Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Larson, Jana, author.

Title: Reel bay : a cinematic essay / Jana Larson.

Description: Minneapolis : Coffee House Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024148 (print) | LCCN 2020024147 (ebook) | ISBN 9781566895989 (paperback) | ISBN 9781566896047 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Larson, Jana.

Classification: LCC CT275.L2714 A3 2021 (ebook) | LCC CT275.L2714 (print) | DDC 977.6/05092 [B] --dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024148

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

For Takako

CONTENTS

REEL BAY

TITLE CARD:

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. THE EVENTS DEPICTED TOOK PLACE IN MINNESOTA IN 1987. AT THE REQUEST OF THE SURVIVORS, THE NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED. OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE DEAD, THE REST HAS BEEN TOLD EXACTLY AS IT OCCURRED.

FARGO , BY JOEL AND ETHAN COEN

If this book were a film, it would open on the black-and-white image of a woman walking alone on a snow-covered road. She is seen from a distance, a dark impression against a frozen backdrop of wheat fields covered in white. A closeup reveals her hands, bare, flushed with cold. She cups them to her face, mostly obscured by a fur-lined hood, and exhales a cloud of steam, trying to get warm. She looks out at the landscape in front of her. Her face is young, moon-shaped, her pale skin framed by straight black hair that goes blond at the tips. Wind stirs the fur trim on her hood as if prodding her to move on. She pulls a folded map out of her pocket and studies it, then looks out across the fields at a wall of blowing snow that occasionally lifts and swirls into eddies. She pockets the map and starts to wade through deep banks of white into the distance. Her figure recedes until it disappears, overtaken by an alternate geography of shifting drifts.

This image first appears to you when you read a newspaper article with the title Coroner Unable to Find Cause of Death of Japanese Woman, a small item published in the Bismarck Tribune on January 7, 2002. You read the story, and something about it catches and holds you. You look for more information and find nothing, but over the coming days the image of the woman searching at the edges of nowhere replays in your mind, feels like a message.

Coroner Unable to Find Cause of Death of Japanese Woman

DEENA WINTER, Bismarck Tribune, January 7, 2002

A Minnesota police chief says the Japanese woman who was apparently searching for the hidden money featured in the movie Fargo wanted to commit suicide, although a coroner was unable to determine the exact cause of her death.

Takako Konishi, 28, was found dead near Detroit Lakes, Minn., on Nov. 15. Her body was sent to the Ramsey County Medical Examiners Office in St. Paul, where the final autopsy could not pinpoint a cause of death, but did find a number of drugs in her system.

A bow hunter found Konishis body in a wooded area on the southern edge of Detroit Lakes, Minn., which is about 60 miles east of Fargo. Six days prior, the Tokyo woman had been in Bismarck, where police said she spent a night in a hotel and then went looking for money that had been hidden by a character in the movie. She was found wandering around near a landfill with a crude map of a tree next to a highway.

Eventually, she ended up at the Bismarck police station, where an officer spent hours talking to her. She showed the officer her map and referred to the movie and being in the U.S. to find the money. The officer tried to explain to her that Fargo was just a movie, but they had trouble overcoming the language barrier.

Since Konishi had money and her papers were in order, police dropped her off at a bus station. She took a bus to Fargo, then took a taxi to Detroit Lakes, where she apparently hitchhiked a ride out of town.

Detroit Lakes Police Chief Kelvin Keena said the autopsy found no sign of sexual assault, trauma or an overriding medical condition that could have caused Konishis death. But he learned that the woman had sent a letter to her family expressing a desire to commit suicide.

Our working theory is that she was intending to commit suicide and, although perhaps not directly successful, she was ultimately successful, Keena said Monday.

He said she tested positive for at least six different drugs in her system, including sedatives, anticonvulsant drugs, tranquilizers and antipsychoticsbut they werent concentrated enough to directly cause her death. He said the drugs were probably a contributing factorthat, and the exposure to the cold. Authorities are still performing lab work on additional substances that were found in her possession, Keena said.

She is believed to have arrived in Detroit Lakes on Nov. 12, and the temperature dipped to 26 degrees that night. Keena said she was seen hitchhiking and standing beside a road.

She was given a ride by two people and they were under the impression that she was in a hurry to go someplace and that she was late for work, he said. I just know that they had a real hard time understanding her.

REEL 1