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Down From the Mountain: Invasion of the Autoharp Damsels and Flat-Pickin' Boys

David Dalton, Gadfly, 2001

OPENING SHOT: SOMEWHERE IN the mid-West. Through windscreen we see two-lane black top. Flat, farmland stretches out to the horizon. We pull back to see two dudes in their retro convertible. It’s the Coen Brothers, the semi-mythical filmmaking twins raised by an ornery ol’ airiflex 16-mm synch-sound camera in the attic of postmodernism. Maybe they’re going home [cue 'Going Home' from Aftermath], they’re from Minnesota, after all, displaced heartland boys — hence their pastoral fetishes and rustic demonizing.

Total word count of piece: 1045

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