Minnesotans remember the Oscar winners when ...

MINNESOTANS REMEMBER THEM WHEN ...

Diablo, we hardly knew ye. A quick check-in with friends, classmates and co-workers of Ms. Cody and the Coen brothers produced a variety of enlightening -- and occasionally vague -- recollections.

At St. Louis Park High School, "Joel [Coen] just seemed kind of dark and kind of creepy. He wouldn't look in your eyes. There was something about sitting in the back, lurking, an observer. There were so many stars in that group. He was not one of them. When he first made 'Raising Arizona' I went, 'I bet that's the creepy guy!' It was one of those things, who would have ever thought!" Sandra Johnson, Bloomington

"Ethan [Coen] was the little kid. You'd ditch him. Joel was fun to be with because he had such a creative mind. He was very creative in play. We'd play Davy Crockett and he'd say, 'Go here, fall down, this is the way we're going to do it.' I appeared in one of their early movies, 'Zeimers in Zambezi' (an African adventure) in Super-8. I just got a bit part in it. They said we need a wild man, so I was voted in. I wore raggedy old animal skins and raced through the wild fields that had once been golf club fairways behind our homes. I can't remember if I was told the story. It was just run through here, climb that tree. They gave me a butcher's knife to run around with. It was dangerous. You shouldn't run with those things. You could put an eye out." Mark Hautman, St. Louis Park

"[Joel] used to like to quote Kenneth Clarke's series 'Western Civilization,' where Clarke said, 'As to the so-called art of the film, it is usually vulgar and always ephemeral.' His mom taught art history and they had some Goya prints, The Capriccios. That might account for some kind of influence there. [In his bedroom] they had wallpaper based on 19th-century engravings of nude women blown up very large. An unusual choice for a boy's room." David Amdur, St. Paul.

Diablo Cody "was a very low-level employee here for a brief time. She was a copy typist, an administrative person. She was never creative." Rosemary Abendroth, Fallon Advertising

"[The City Pages] office has historically attracted a flock of oddballs. She certainly was one of those. She was an incredibly comic conversationalist and a pleasure to talk to, but that said, she's not a freaky eccentric. The amount of time I talked to her about stripping was zero. The fact that she's incredibly frank doesn't mean that she shoves off-color material into the workplace or into her life constantly." Michael Tortorello, her first editor.

"What's her name? She worked here? Huh. Never heard of her." Dylan, assistant manager, Déjà Vu.

COLIN COVERT