Stars: John Goodman, John Turturro, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner, John Mahoney, Jon Polito

Director: Joel Coen

Summary: A scriptwriter who becomes famous on Broadway is hired to write a wrestling movie... but he develops writer's block and has to enlist the help of friends...

BARTON FINK is the Coen brothers' apocalyptic masterpiece about the creative process. John Turturro stars as the title character, an idealistic young man with an ERASERHEAD-like hairdo who believes that writing should be about the living truth, revealing the hopes, the dreams, the tragedies of the common man. When Hollywood comes calling for him to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery, Fink suddenly finds himself in Los Angeles with a severe case of writer's block, unable to combine his deep-seated ethics with Hollywood's desire to just make a quick buck. Fast-talking mogul Jack Lipnick (a terrific Michael Lerner) sets Barton up at the Hotel Earle, where the writer meets up with Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a travelling insurance salesman who is ready to fill Barton's head with tales of the common man--but Fink is too busy espousing his defence of the common man to actually listen to him. So Barton seeks to find the answers in W.P. Mayhew (John Mahoney), a Faulkneresque novelist who has sacrificed his morals for the B-pictures and the bottle. When the disillusioned Fink finds himself part of a murder investigation, all hell breaks loose. Joel and Ethan Coen's BARTON FINK is a multilayered, complex psychological study of the creative mind that is as frightening and bizarre as it is hysterically funny.

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A darkly comic ride, this intense and original 1991 offering from the Coen brothers (Fargo, Blood Simple) gleefully attacks the Hollywood system and those who seek to sell out to it, portraying the writer's suffering as a loony vision of hell. John Turturro (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever) plays the title character, a pretentious left-wing writer from New York City who is brought to 1930s Hollywood to write a script for a wrestling movie for palooka actor Wallace Beery. Fink thinks the job is beneath him, but his desire for acceptance gets the better of him, and he suddenly finds himself holed up in a fleabag hotel in Los Angeles, where he is almost immediately afflicted with writer's block. Various distractions begin to enter his life, first in the form of a famous southern writer (John Mahoney) whom Fink idolises, and then his neighbour in the hotel, a seemingly amiable salesman played by John Goodman (Sea of Love, Raising Arizona). The writer turns out to be a self-loathing drunk whose secretary (Judy Davis) is the one actually doing the writing. And the neighbour, the working-class hero who Fink made his reputation writing about, may have a horrifying secret of his own. Equal parts social commentary and hilarious farce, and winner of the Best Picture, Actor, and Director prizes at the Cannes Film Festival, Barton Fink is a visionary and original comic masterpiece not to be missed. --Robert Lane

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Year:	1991
Release Date:	October 31, 2005
Runtime:	112 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	8226121
Keywords:	Comedy, General, Barton, Fink
Genre:	Comedy