Barton Fink


Barton Fink is a 1991 American black comedy thriller film written, produced, edited and directed by the Coen brothers. Set in 1941, it stars John Turturro in the title role as a young New York City playwright who is hired to write scripts for a film studio in Hollywood, and John Goodman as Charlie Meadows, the insurance salesman who lives next door at the run-down Hotel Earle.
The Coens wrote the screenplay for Barton Fink in three weeks while experiencing writer's block during the writing of Miller's Crossing. They began filming soon after Miller's Crossing was finished. The film is influenced by works of several earlier directors, particularly Roman Polanski's Repulsion and The Tenant.
Barton Fink had its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1991. In a rare sweep, it won the Palme d'Or as well as awards for Best Director and Best Actor. Although the film was a box office bomb, only grossing $6 million against its $9 million budget, it received positive reviews and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Prominent themes of Barton Fink include the writing process; slavery and conditions of labor in creative industries; superficial distinctions between high culture and low culture; and the relationship of intellectuals with "the common man". The diverse elements of the film have led it to defy efforts at genre classification, with the work being variously referred to as a film noir, a horror film, a Künstlerroman, a postmodernist film and a buddy film. It contains various literary allusions and religious overtones, as well as references to many real-life people and events – most notably the writers Clifford Odets and William Faulkner, of whom the characters of Barton Fink and W. P. Mayhew, respectively, are often seen as fictional representations. Several features of the film's narrative, particularly an image of a woman at the beach which recurs throughout, have sparked much commentary, with the Coens acknowledging some intentional symbolic elements while denying an attempt to communicate any single message in the film.

Plot

In 1941, up-and-coming Broadway playwright Barton Fink accepts a contract from Capitol Pictures in Hollywood to write film scripts for a thousand dollars per week. Upon moving to Los Angeles, Fink settles into the cheap Hotel Earle. His room's only decoration is a small painting of a woman on the beach, arm raised to block the sun. Fink is assigned to a wrestling film by his new boss Jack Lipnick, but he finds difficulty in writing for the unfamiliar subject. He is distracted by sounds coming from the room next door, and he phones the front desk to alert them of the disturbing sounds. His neighbor, Charlie Meadows, the source of the noise, visits Fink to apologize. During their conversation, Fink proclaims his affection for "the common man", and Meadows describes his life as an insurance salesman.
Still unable to proceed beyond the first lines of his script, Fink consults producer Ben Geisler for advice. Irritated, the frenetic Geisler takes him to lunch and orders him to consult another writer for assistance. Fink meets the novelist W. P. Mayhew by chance in the bathroom. They briefly discuss movie-writing and arrange a second meeting later in the day. Fink later learns from Mayhew's secretary, Audrey Taylor, that Mayhew suffers from alcoholism and that Taylor ghostwrote some of his scripts. With one day left before his meeting with Lipnick to discuss the film, Fink phones Taylor and begs her for assistance. Taylor visits him at the Earle and they have sex. Fink awakens the next morning to find that Taylor has been violently murdered. Horrified, he summons Meadows and asks for help. Meadows is repulsed but disposes of the body and orders Fink to avoid contacting the police.
After Fink has a meeting with an unusually supportive Lipnick, Meadows announces to Fink that he is going to New York for several days, and asks him to watch over a package he is leaving behind. Soon afterwards, Fink is visited by two police detectives, who inform him that Meadows's real name is Karl "Madman" Mundt. Mundt is a serial killer whose modus operandi is beheading his victims. Stunned, Fink places the box on his desk without opening it and he begins writing feverishly. Fink produces the entire script in one sitting and he goes out for a night of celebratory dancing, returning to find the detectives in his room, who inform him of Mayhew's murder and accuse Fink of complicity with Mundt.
As the hotel is suddenly engulfed in flames, Mundt appears and kills the detectives with a shotgun, after which he mentions that he had paid a visit to Fink's parents and uncle in New York. Fink leaves the still-burning hotel, carrying the box and his script. Shortly thereafter he attempts to telephone his family, but there is no answer. In a final meeting with Lipnick, who has been conscripted by the United States Army Reserve to serve as a colonel in the Second World War, Fink's script is lambasted as "a fruity movie about suffering", and he is informed that he is to remain in Los Angeles; although Fink will remain under contract, Capitol Pictures will not produce anything he writes until he "grows up a little". Dazed, Fink wanders onto a beach, still carrying the package. He meets a woman who looks just like the one in the picture on his wall at the Earle, and she asks about the box. He tells her he does not know what it contains nor who owns it. He asks her if she has ever been in pictures, and she says no. She then assumes the pose from the picture on the hotel room wall.

Cast

Background and writing

In 1989, filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen began writing the script for a film eventually released as Miller's Crossing. The many threads of the story became complicated, and after four months they found themselves lost in the process. Although biographers and critics later referred to it as writer's block, the Coen brothers rejected this description. "It's not really the case that we were suffering from writer's block," Joel said in a 1991 interview, "but our working speed had slowed, and we were eager to get a certain distance from Miller's Crossing." They went from Los Angeles to New York and began work on a different project.
In three weeks, the Coens wrote a script with a title role written specifically for actor John Turturro, with whom they'd been working on Miller's Crossing. The new film, Barton Fink, was set in a large, seemingly abandoned hotel. This setting, which they named the Hotel Earle, was a driving force behind the story and mood of the new project. While filming their 1984 film Blood Simple in Austin, Texas, the Coens had seen a hotel which made a significant impression: "We thought, 'Wow, Motel Hell.' You know, being condemned to live in the weirdest hotel in the world."
The writing process for Barton Fink was smooth, they said, suggesting that the relief of being away from Miller's Crossing may have been a catalyst. They also felt satisfied with the overall shape of the story, which helped them move quickly through the composition. "Certain films come entirely in one's head; we just sort of burped out Barton Fink." While writing, the Coens created a second leading role with another actor in mind: John Goodman, who had appeared in their 1987 comedy Raising Arizona. His new character, Charlie, was Barton's next-door neighbor in the cavernous hotel. Even before writing, the Coens knew how the story would end, and wrote Charlie's final speech at the start of the writing process.
The script served its diversionary purpose, and the Coens put it aside: "Barton Fink sort of washed out our brain and we were able to go back and finish Miller's Crossing." Once production of the first film was finished, the Coens began to recruit staff to film Barton Fink. Turturro looked forward to playing the lead role, and spent a month with the Coens in Los Angeles to coordinate views on the project: "I felt I could bring something more human to Barton. Joel and Ethan allowed me a certain contribution. I tried to go a little further than they expected."
While they worked with J. Todd Anderson to create detailed storyboards for Barton Fink, the Coens began looking for a new cinematographer, as Barry Sonnenfeld—who had shot their first three features—was committed to his own directorial debut, The Addams Family. The brothers eventually travelled to London to interview prospective directors of photography. Roger Deakins had impressed the Coens with his work, particularly the interior scenes of the 1988 film Stormy Monday. Joel Coen telephoned Roger Spottiswoode, the most recent director to work with Deakins, to ask his opinion of the DP. Spottiswoode had formed an intensely negative opinion of the cinematographer, telling Joel that Deakins insisted on operating the camera himself, refused to film with more than one camera, disliked multiple filming units and obsessively sought naturalistic lighting setups. Once Joel reported these criticisms to Ethan, and after screening other films Deakins had shot, the Coens sent the script to Deakins and invited him to join the project. Though his agent advised against working with the Coens, Deakins met with them at a café in Notting Hill and their collaboration began soon after.