This One Production Design Detail Makes Drowning Mona (2000) a More Interesting Film

Happy Friday, nerds! Today’s film was requested by Julie Holland, one of my comrades over at Modern Horrors who has been my partner in crime when covering online film festivals like Nightstream and the Chattanooga Film Festival. I always love discussing films with her since we’re often on the same wavelength, and what’s more, she’s one of my most endearing Twitter follows. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

Production design is so important! It was one of those on-set roles that I didn’t fully understand or appreciate until I met and worked with production designers. I imagine it’s also one of those Oscar categories that feels rather nebulous to more casual viewers.

Props and décor and even architecture rarely make or break a film, I think. But a good, creative, unique detail of production design can add an extra layer of enjoyment to a film that could otherwise feel forgettable. That’s how I felt while watching Drowning Mona, a turn-of-the-century black comedy where you come for the ensemble cast* and you stay for the stupid, ugly little cars.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. (Which is hard to do in one of those cars, I bet.)

Are you familiar with the Yugo auto manufacturer? I was not, so I’ll give you a brief history in case you aren’t either. They’re these hideous little boxy hatchbacks that originated in Yugoslavia (get it?) and arrived in the U.S. in 1985. They were apparently moderately successful at first, selling nearly 50,000 cars at their peak in 1987, but they ended up totaling a mere 140,000 over a run that only lasted through 1992. Most people hated them. Car and Driver calls it the worst car in history.**

The writer of Drowning Mona thought it would be hilarious to fill a 2000 crime caper with Yugo vehicles. He was absolutely correct. But these Yugos aren’t just a frivolous component of the story—they’re essential to establishing the wacky tone of the film. Here is the text that opens Drowning Mona before we see the first shot:

“Years ago, the Yugo Car Company chose Verplanck, New York, to test market its new breed of vehicle. But that’s a whole other story…”

That’s it. That’s all the context we’re given before we see Bette Midler, the titular Mona, stumble to her silly little car and follow a one-lane country highway until her brakes fail and she sails off a ledge and into a lake. The Yugo itself, mere minutes into the film, is already portrayed as a harbinger of doom.***

But this hideous yellow Yugo is not the last we see of this distinct design flourish. Everyone in this damn town—Verplanck, New York, a tiny hamlet along the east bank of the Hudson River—drives a damn Yugo. Bette Midler met her maker in her son’s yellow Yugo, even though she normally drove a red one. Her husband, played by William Fichtner, drives a silver one. Jamie Lee Curtis drives a green one. Casey Affleck and Neve Campbell share a blue one. The local bartender drives a white one. And Danny DeVito, the local police chief, drives a black one, which is even funnier because the police cruisers are also Yugos. Anything that isn’t a truck or a van in this town is a Yugo. It’s like a Richard Scarry book with the animals replaced by rednecks.

You know what the best part is, though? It’s all true. If the New York Post—who wrote a piece about how the real denizens of Verplanck, New York, were very upset about being depicted as “dirt-poor half-wits” in Drowning Mona—is to be believed, the idea came from an anecdote that was casually passed along while the screenwriter, Peter Steinfeld, was working at a previous day job.

As Steinfeld told the Post, he was moving furniture at the New Jersey office of Yugo of America, and one of the executives told him about the company’s failed efforts to test-market their putrid little vehicles in Verplanck. And like any good screenwriter, he saved that idea in his back pocket and used it years later to put movie stars in clown cars and let us laugh at them.

Okay, so maybe Steinfeld deserves more credit than Richard Toyon, the production designer. But wherever credit is due, I think it’s a brilliant conceit. It does a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of establishing the setting and the characters and the quirky nature of their community. But most of all, it’s just funny as hell. I mean, just look at that thing.

*Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Neve Campbell, Casey Affleck, Bette Midler, William Fichtner, a small role for Will Ferrell, and about 45 seconds of young Melissa McCarthy. Pretty good!

**Apparently there was a 1986 Yugo in Arrested Development, but it only appeared in deleted scenes.

***By 2000, Yugos were no longer being manufactured and/or sold in the U.S., so maybe the production team felt confident enough that they wouldn’t get sued. Or perhaps their foreign distributor simply skipped Yugoslavia. Which didn’t even exist at that point. I don’t know, I didn’t go to law school. Or map school. Shut up.

Drowning Mona is available on Amazon Prime, Kanopy, and Hoopla, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.