It took them roughly three weeks to write it. Originally taken up as a distraction when the brothers hit a stumbling block in the process of hashing out the script for Miller’s Crossing, and purposefully designed to be a project that would involve John Turturro, John Goodman and a hotel full of ghosts, this acid-dipped valentine to the film industry remains a high point in the siblings’ ongoing ( hopefully?) careers. Both Joel and Ethan claimed they had no real axe to grind with Hollywood - “Our professional life has been particularly easy,” the former said, “which I’m sure is very unusual and very unfair” - yet they managed to come up with a particularly vicious, nightmarish take on the Dream Factory. Thirty years ago today, Barton Fink hit theaters, coming off a triple-win at Cannes and confirming that the Coen brothers were not just formalist genre-film brats but bona fide geniuses. They are bellhops, and elevator operators, and insurance salesman, and cops. And as for the second one? Like his agent says, there might even be a few common men out in the City of Angels. The answer to the first question is that Tinseltown can’t turn Barton into a phony, because he was already a fake long before he stepped on to California soil. Still, Barton doth protest too much: Won’t being out there in La La Land turn him into a phony? Won’t it cut him off from his subject, the average Joe longing to be given a voice by artists like him? The movies need people who understand “the poetry of the streets.” Millions are to be grabbed out here. No sooner has Fink, bard of the common man and the misguided hero of Joel and Ethan Coen’s venomous 1991 masterpiece, scored great opening night reviews for his social-realist melodrama Bare Ruined Choirs than Capital Pictures extends an invite to come west, young man. Such compromises usually come with a price, of course - just ask Barton Fink. This promise of easy money does, eventually, get around. Hecht goes on to become one of the greatest screenwriters of Hollywood’s golden age. Don’t let this get around.” The siren’s call is heeded. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. All expenses paid,” asks the future cowriter of Citizen Kane, before conspiratorially letting Hecht in on the Grand Scam. “Will you accept $300 per week to work for Paramount Pictures. The famed journalist, novelist and playwright was toiling away in New York when he received a missive straight from Babylon, courtesy of his fellow scribe Herman J. But its recipient Ben Hecht quotes it in his memoir, A Child of the Century. It’s an apocryphal Hollywood story, with the actual letter lost to time. “Madman” MundtĮveryone knows about the telegram. “I’ll show you a life of the mind!”-Charlie Meadows, a.k.a. The first time I saw it, it left me drained, mind spinning, hands shaking, barely able to reach for the remote to rewind it to watch it again.“It’s strange, but some movies present themselves almost entirely in your head.”- Joel Coen The last twenty minutes are about the most powerful I have ever seen in anything, at the end of almost every scene I thought it could end there and be an amazing film, yet each further scene only added further depth and poignancy. A lack of any underlying morality, an absence of absolutes of right and wrong, good and bad, give this film a unique feeling that it could go anywhere. Deep insight into the nature of the creative spirit, a plethora of fine performances bringing at first stereotypical characters to full life (despite the unreal, fable-like atmosphere created by the slimy, glistening colours reminiscent of the films of Jeunet&Caro.), and many moments of hilarity make this a perfect movie, one I would not hesitate in recommending to anyone despite the fairly high probability they will hate it. I am absolutely amazed at the fantastic taste of the imdb readership, having loved this film for years and always been told by people I'd told about it and persuaded to watch that it was no good, I finally find some other people out there who love it as much as me, posting (mostly) extremely positive comments.This is a fabulous film, dripping with a brooding, sticky atmosphere that draws you in to the clammy world of Barton Fink, sat in his hotel room listening to the creaking of the wallpaper as it dribbles moistly from the walls, searching for inspiration in his tacky painting and dusty typewriter.Perhaps it is a little dark for some tastes, but as black comedy goes this is the blackest and the most biting there is, the Hollywood system and New York theatrical snobbery lampooned with equal viciousness.
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