Barton Fink
Short description
Barton Fink is a 1991 film written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1941, it follows a New York playwright whose Broadway success with a play about ordinary people brings him an offer from a Hollywood studio. He reluctantly moves to Los Angeles to write a wrestling picture, takes a room in a rundown hotel, and finds himself unable to produce the script. His neighbor, a talkative insurance salesman named Charlie Meadows, becomes a strange presence in his stalled life.
The Coens wrote the screenplay together, with Ethan producing, and the film stands fourth in the directing careers of both brothers, arriving after Miller's Crossing and before The Hudsucker Proxy. John Turturro plays Barton Fink, with John Goodman as Charlie Meadows, Judy Davis as Audrey Taylor, Michael Lerner as the studio head Jack Lipnick, John Mahoney as the writer W.P. Mayhew and Tony Shalhoub as Ben Geisler. The production involved 34 credited cast members and 54 credited crew.
Made for about 9 million dollars, the film returned roughly 6 million worldwide, so its theatrical run did not recoup its budget. Audience scores sit close together, at 7.6 out of 10 on IMDb from around 135,000 votes and 7.5 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of voters. A critics' rating of 8.2 out of 10 from 67 reviews places it above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The ending with the bird diving into the sea happened by chance. Joel and Ethan Coen said that the bird unexpectedly flew into the frame, and they liked it so much they decided to keep it.
- This is the first film to win three main awards (the Palme d'Or, Best Director, and Best Actor) at the Cannes Film Festival.
- Joel and Ethan Coen stated that the idea for the screenplay about a screenwriter in a creative crisis came to them when they were suffering from a creative crisis while working on the script for "Miller's Crossing" (1990). Furthermore, the film is considered to be partially based on a story that happened to screenwriter Clifford Odets.
- To prepare for his role, John Turturro attended secretarial school, learning to type. Between takes, he typed the draft script of the romantic comedy "Love and Cigarettes" (2005), which he also directed, with the Coen brothers serving as executive producers, as they did on this film.
- The typewriter used by the main character is an UNDERWOOD Universal.
- This is the first film by Joel and Ethan Coen not shot by Barry Sonnenfeld (Roger Deakins served as cinematographer, and the film became his undeniable success). Sonnenfeld himself appeared in a cameo: he bumps into Barton Fink in a restaurant.
- The roles of John Turturro, John Goodman, John Polito, and Steve Buscemi – frequent actors in Joel and Ethan Coen's films – were originally written specifically for them.
- Karl Mundt (the enigmatic killer) is the name of a former head of the commission that created the “Hollywood blacklist” during the McCarthy era. This commission ruined the careers of screenwriters, actors, and filmmakers suspected of socialist sympathies, such as Barton Fink.
- The character of William Mayhew was based on Nobel laureate William Faulkner, who early in his career wrote a screenplay about boxing and, like his character, struggled with alcoholism.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
