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YEAR
1991
RUNNING TIME 1hr 57m MPAA
R BBFC 15
BUDGET $9m US BOX OFFICE
$6,153,939 |
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SYNOPSIS:
New York, 1941. Socially concious scriptwriter
Barton Fink (John Turturro) has made it big on Broadway. Now Tinsel
Town is taking notice. Hired by Hollywood to write a wrestling
picture, Barton quits the city smog for movie stardom.
L.A. has got the Barton Fink feeling. Barton Fink has got writer's block. Enlisting the help of able assistant Audrey (Judy Davis) and amiable neighbour Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), Fink finds the real-life inspiration he seeks comes form the most sinister of sources. From the movie makers the Coen Brothers comes the unanimously acclaimed, award winning, offbeat comedy story of Hollywood heartache, faceless movie moguls and headless corpses. |
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NOTES: The Coen brothers wrote this movie, ostensibly a movie about writer's block, while suffering from chronic writer's block themselves during the writing of Miller's Crossing. The surge of writing was allegedly inspired after a trip to the cinema to see the Diane Keaton movie Baby Boom. Go figure! At the 1991 Cannes Film Festival it won all of the major awards, Best Film, Best Director and Best Actor- the one and only time this has happened in the history of the festival. This movie marks the first one that doesn't have Barry Sonnenfeld as cinematographer (enter the most excellent Roger Deakins). However, he does have a cameo as the bell boy who pages Barton. W.P. Mayhew is based on William Faulkner, whose first Hollywood writing job was a wrestling picture! Some people, myself included, think that the Hotel Earle is Hell or, at least, a gateway to Hell. Witness the searing heat. The fact that Chet comes up from under the floor and takes a long time to get to the front desk, is he ascending from Hell? The word "six" is uttered three times in the elevator. Indeed, is Charlie himself, Satan? The building gets incredibly hot when he's "home"... In the November 2005 issue of Empire magazine there was a small feature about John Turturro's Coen-executive produced, Romance & Cigarettes, in which Turturro states that while he was typing during Barton Fink he "wanted to be writing something for real, so I typed this title [Romance & Cigarettes], then said, 'Well, this is interesting." 14 years later the movie is here. |
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AWARDS:
Golden Palm, Best Film, Cannes International
Film Festival, 1991 Golden Palm, Best Director, Cannes International Film Festival, 1991 Golden Palm, Best Actor (John Turturro), Cannes International Film Festival, 1991 Best Supporting Actress (Judy Davis), New York Film Critics Awards, 1991 Best Cinematography, New York Film Critics Awards, 1991 Best Cinematography, National Society of Film Critics Awards, 1991 Nominated for Best Performance By an Actor in a Supporting Role 1991: Michael Lerner, Academy Awards, 1991 Nominated for Best Achievement in Art Direction 1991: Dennis Gassner - Art Direction, Nancy Haigh - Set Decorator, Academy Awards, 1991 Nominated for Best Achievement in Costume Design 1991: Richard Hornung, Academy Awards, 1991 |
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| CIRCLE
FILMS PRESENTS A TED
AND JIM PEDAS, BILL DURKIN,
BEN BARENHOLTZ PRODUCTION |
JOHN
TURTURRO JOHN GOODMAN
"BARTON FINK" JUDY DAVIS MICHAEL
LERNER JOHN MAHONEY JOHN POLITO |
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MUSIC
BY CARTER BURWELL COSTUME
DESIGNER RICHARD HORNUNG PRODUCTION
DESIGNER DENNIS GASSNER |
DIRECTOR
OF PHOTOGRAPHY ROGER DEAKINS
B.S.C. CO-PRODUCER GRAHAM
PLACE EXECUTIVE
PRODUCERS BEN
BARENHOLTZ,
TED AND JIM PEDAS, BILL DURKIN
WRITTEN BY JOEL COEN AND
ETHAN COEN PRODUCED
BY ETHAN COEN DIRECTED
BY JOEL COEN |
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"No, Garland, don't you see? Not the kind of success where the critics fawn over you or the producers, like Derek, make a lot of money. No, a real success - the success we've been dreaming about - the creation of a new, living theatre of, about, and for the common man! If I ran off to Hollywood now I'd be making money, going to parties, meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off from the wellspring of that success, from the common man.".- Barton Fink