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Raising Arizona is a 1987 American crime comedy film directed by Joel Coen, produced by Ethan Coen, and written by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Nicolas Cage as H.I. "Hi" McDunnough, an ex-convict, and Holly Hunter as Edwina "Ed" McDunnough, a former police officer and his wife. Other members of the cast include Trey Wilson, William Forsythe, John Goodman, Frances McDormand, Sam McMurray, and Randall "Tex" Cobb. The Coen brothers set out to work on the film with the intention of making a film as different from their previous film, the dark thriller Blood Simple, as possible, with a lighter sense of humor and a faster pace. Raising Arizona received mixed reviews at the time of its release. Some criticized it as too self-conscious, manneristic, and unclear as to whether it was fantasy or realism. Other critics praised the film for its originality.The film ranks 31st on the American Film Institute's 100 Years...100 Laughs list, and 45th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies" list. Raising Arizona was released in the United States on March 13, 1987. Plot Convenience store robber Herbert ("H.I." or "Hi") McDunnough meets police officer Edwina ("Ed") when she takes his mugshot after each of several arrests in Tempe, Arizona. He eventually learns that Ed's fiancé has left her and proposes after being released from prison. They marry and move into a desert mobile home, and Hi gets a job in a machine shop. They want children, but Ed is infertile and they cannot adopt due to Hi's criminal record. Hi and Ed learn of the quintuplet sons born to regional furniture magnate Nathan Arizona. They kidnap one of the babies, whom they believe to be Nathan Jr., intending to start a family. Soon afterward, Hi's former cellmates Gale and Evelle Snoats escape from prison and visit the couple. They persuade Hi to shelter them and tempt him to return to his former life of crime. That night, Hi has an intense nightmare of monstrous biker Leonard Smalls. Hi's foreman Glen visits with his large and unruly family on the next day. Glen and wife Dot offer parenting advice amid their children's misbehavior, but when Glen suggests that he and Hi exchange wives, Hi punches Glen in the face. That night, Hi succumbs to the temptation to rob a convenience store while buying diapers, leading to a chase with police and a pack of dogs that he manages to outrun. As Ed and Nathan Jr. sleep, Hi decides to leave his family to join Gale and Evelle in a bank robbery. Glen returns the next morning to fire Hi, revealing his inference that Hi and Ed kidnapped Nathan Jr. Glen threatens to turn them in unless they agree to give the baby to him and Dot. Overhearing this exchange, Gale and Evelle overpower Hi and kidnap Nathan Jr. themselves. As Hi and Ed resolve to rescue him, Smalls approaches Nathan Sr. and reveals himself as a bounty hunter. When Nathan Sr. rejects Smalls' offer to bring back Nathan Jr. for $50,000, Smalls decides to do the job anyway and threatens to sell the baby on the black market. Gale and Evelle grow attached to Nathan Jr. The two nearly leave him behind while robbing a convenience store, then forget him again during the bank robbery. A dye pack explodes in their stolen money sack, covering them and the getaway car interior with blue dye. The distraction allows Smalls to capture the baby before Hi and Ed arrive. In the ensuing struggle, Ed grabs Nathan Jr. while Smalls severely beats Hi. Hi ultimately pulls the pin from one of the hand grenades clipped to Smalls' vest, causing all of them to explode and kill him. Hi and Ed sneak back into the Arizona home to return Nathan Jr. but are caught by Nathan Sr. Upon learning the reason for the kidnapping, Nathan Sr. sympathizes and decides not to report them to the authorities. Learning that Hi and Ed are considering a divorce, he suggests that they take some time to think about it first. While sleeping beside Ed that night, Hi has a series of prophetic dreams. Gale and Evelle return to prison, having realized that they are not ready for society; Glen is arrested by a Polish-American police officer who is unamused by the ethnic jokes he tells; and Nathan Jr. becomes a high school football star after receiving a football for Christmas from a couple who chose to remain anonymous (hinted to be Hi and Ed). The dream ends far in the future, with an elderly couple enjoying a holiday visit from their many children and grandchildren. Hi ponders the possible reality of his dreams and decides that he and Ed have the ability to be good and raise a loving family. "If not Arizona, then a land not too far away...I don't know. Maybe it was Utah." Cast Production Casting and conception The Coen Brothers started working on Raising Arizona with the idea to make it as different as possible from their previous film, Blood Simple, by having it be far more optimistic and upbeat. The starting point of scriptwriting came from the idea of the character of Hi, who has the desire to live a regular life within the boundaries of the law. To create their characters' dialect, Joel and Ethan created a hybrid of local dialect and the assumed reading material of the characters, namely, magazines and the Bible. In contrast to Blood Simple, the characters in Raising Arizona were written to be very sympathetic. The Coens wrote the character Ed for Holly Hunter. The character of Leonard Smalls was created when the Coen Brothers tried to envision an "evil character" not from their imagination, but one that the character would have thought up. His name is widely thought to be a reference to the character of Lennie Small, from John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. John Goodman was drawn to characters of "great feeling, [guys] who could explode or start weeping at any moment" and became a frequent collaborator following his performance as Gale Snoats. The script took three and a half months to write.The film was influenced by the works of director Preston Sturges and writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor (who was known for her Southern literature; "She also has a great sense of eccentric character," Ethan Coen told one interviewer). Joel and Ethan showed the completed script to Circle Films, their American distributor for Blood Simple. Circle Films agreed to finance the movie. The Coens came to the set with a complete script and storyboard. With a budget of just over five million dollars, Joel Coen noted that "to obtain maximum from that money, the movie has to be meticulously prepared". Filming Raising Arizona was shot in ten weeks. Many crew members who had worked with Joel and Ethan on Blood Simple returned for Raising Arizona, including cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, co-producer Mark Silverman, production designer Jane Musky, associate producer and assistant director Deborah Reinisch, and film composer Carter Burwell.The relationship between actor Nicolas Cage and the Coens was respectful, but turbulent. When he arrived on-set, and at various other points durin.... Discover the Raising Quirk popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Raising Quirk books.