David Lavery Television Creativity: The Imagination at Home on the Small Screen La Trobe University, 18/11/08

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Barton Fink (1991)
The Coen Brothers
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Barton Fink (1991)
The Coen Brothers
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•  Coen Motifs
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• Howling Fat Men Charlie Meadows in the flaming
  Earle hallway
• Blustery Titans Jack Lipnik
• Vomiting Mayhew vomits, as does Charlie Meadows
  upon seeing Audrey
• Violence Audrey decapitated Charlie Meadows
  with his shotgun serial killing
• Dreams The whole film is dreamlike
• Peculiar Haircuts Bartons absurd haircut
• Lost Hats None, but heads are lost (including
  Petes in a filmed but not included scene)

From Tricia Cooke and William Preston Robertson.
The Big Lebowski The Making of a Coen Brothers
Film. New York W. W. Norton, 1998 16-23.
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Barton Fink (1991)
Clifford Odets (1906-1963)
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Barton Fink (1991)
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Barton Fink (1991)
Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957)
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William Faulkner(1897-1962)
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Roman Polanski (1933- ) Polanski was President of
the jury at Cannes that awarded Barton the Palme
d'Or.
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Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by
John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that
looks designed by Edward Hopper.Roger Ebert
Edward Hopper, Office at Night (1940)
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Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by
John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that
looks designed by Edward Hopper.Roger Ebert
Edward Hopper, Hotel Lobby (1943)
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Fink, played with a likable, dim earnestness by
John Turturro, checks into an eerie hotel that
looks designed by Edward Hopper.Roger Ebert
Edward Hopper, New York Movie(1939)
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The name of Bartons new play, the opening night
of which begins the film Bare Ruined Choirs
William Shakespeare Sonnet LXXIII That time of
year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves,
or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which
shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where
late the sweet birds sang.
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The Coens mean this aspect of the film, I think,
to be read as an emblem of the rise of Nazism.
They paint Fink as an ineffectual and impotent
left-wing intellectual, who sells out while
telling himself he is doing the right thing, who
thinks he understands the "common man" but does
not understand that, for many common men, fascism
had a seductive appeal. Fink tries to write a
wrestling picture and sleeps with the great
writer's mistress, while the Holocaust approaches
and the nice guy in the next room turns out to be
a monster.Roger Ebert
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The story ends with a surprising coda in which
Fink walks on the beach carrying the box. Like
the box, the film is an enigma that elicits
strong feelings. Though the Coens have clearly
shared with Fink the temptation to betray their
ideals in order to get the next word on paper,
they are still more interested in provoking
audiences than pandering to them. "Barton Fink"
is stimulating entertainment, as rigorously
challenging and painfully funny as anything the
Coens have done. But it's necessary to meet the
Coens halfway. If you don't, "Barton Fink" is an
empty exercise that will bore you breathless. If
you do, it's a comic nightmare that will stir
your imagination like no film in years.Peter
Travers in Rolling Stone
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The Minnesota-born Coens are most frequently
hoisted on the petard of their own curriculum
vitae. Joel Coen, 36, is a graduate of New York
University's film school. Ethan Coen, 34, has a
degree in philosophy from Princeton but shares
his brother's lifelong obsession with genre
movies. "Blood Simple" was their take on film
noir, "Raising Arizona" the screwball comedy and
"Miller's Crossing" the gangster epic. Coen
bashers consider this raiding of Hollywood's past
to be grounds for dismissing the brothers as
clever showoffs trying to hide the emotional
emptiness of their films.Peter Travers in
Rolling Stone
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When it's over, Barton Fink feels like a
sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at
anyway for fear of looking stupid.Desson Howe
in The Washington Post
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If the Coens are heavy on style, they weigh far
lighter on substance. That picture of the beach
girl, for instance, is given a deep significance
at the movie's conclusion. But it feels more like
a punchline for punchline's sake, a trumped-up
coda. Things reach a definite high point -- an
incendiary one at that. But it all adds up to
something small. Like the mysterious, bound
package Goodman gives Turturro (the contents are
never revealed), the Coens isolate a small area
of interest, bind it with psycho-atmospheric
finesse, then wait for something significant to
emerge. Even after a second viewing of this
movie, it doesn't.Desson Howe, The Washington
Post
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The winner of an unprecedented three prizes at
the Cannes Film Festival this year, Barton Fink
is certainly one of the year's best and most
intriguing films. Though it defies genre, it
seems to work best as a tart self-portrait, a
screwball film noir that expresses the Coens' own
alienation from Hollywood. A cineaste's landmark
on a par with Blue Velvet, this is an experience
to savor over and over. Rita Kemply, Washington
Post
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Ethan We wanted the audience to share the
interior life of Barton Fink, and his point of
view. But there's no need to go further. It
would've been silly of he woke at the end into a
larger reality than that of the movie. In the
sense that it's always artificial to speak of the
'reality' of a fictional character, we didn't
want people to think he was more 'real' than the
story. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (49)
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Joel Ethan always described the hotel as a ghost
ship set adrift, where you get indications of the
presence of other passengers without ever seeing
them. The only cue would be the shoes in the
corridors. You can imagine it peopled with
traveling salesmen whove had no success, with
their sad sex lives, crying alone in the their
rooms. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (52)
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Joel This was a simpler movie to make than
Millers Crossing, and the budget was a third
less, as was the shooting time eight weeks
instead of twelve. --The Coen Brothers
Interviews (53)
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Joel We knew that Barton Fink wasnt going
to be Terminator 2, you know? So we werent
surprised that were not in twenty-two hundred
theaters. --The Coen Brothers Interviews (58)
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Joel We got a letter from ASPCA on Barton
Fink, or some animal thing. Theyd gotten hold
of a copy of the script and wanted to know how we
were going to treat the mosquitoes. Im not
kidding. Its true. --The Coen Brothers
Interviews (59)
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