I had a chance a few weeks ago to watch Barton Fink, a strange film by even the standards of the Cohen brothers.
In 1941, Barton Fink has written a Broadway hit. He envisions himself and his work as championing the little man. But Hollywood has come calling for Barton to write films scripts for $1,000 a week.
Barton heads out west and holes up in the Hotel Earle, an edifice of dust, mold and peeling wall paper that's missing only a sign over the lobby, "Abandon hope all ye who enter".
Barton's room is a dismal box with only a small painting of a woman on the beach as decoration. His window offers him a view of another building.
Studio boss Jack Lipnick is enamored with his shiny new writer toy although I would hazard a guess that Lipnick has never seen a Barton Fink play or actually read any of his work.
Lipnick tasks Fink with writing a screen play for a new wrestling movie.
Fink knows shit about wrestling or writing for movies.
His first pass at the screen play starts with opening lines from his Broadway play.
Did Barton Fink only have one good play in him?
Fink gets absolutely not help or guidance from anyone. He is cast adrift in Hollywood and anchored only to his gloomy room in hotel hell.
Barton Fink has only 1 friend and that is Charlie Meadows, a big beefy powerhouse of a man who stays in the room next door. He's a life insurance salesman and boy does he have some stories to tell.
Except Barton never lets him tell those stories, constantly interrupting to focus on his own woes of how no one appreciates writing about the common man.
The irony does not escape me.
(By the way, John Goodman acts the hell out of his role as Charlie. Apparently the Cohens conceived of the role with John Goodman in mind.)
Barton does make one other connection in Los Angeles, Audrey Taylor , secretary to novelist W.P. Mayhew who, like Barton Fink, was lured to Hollywood to write for the movies. Mayhew spends his days draining a parade of liquor bottes to drown his sorrows and his failures. What little writing actually gets done gets done by Audrey.
Audrey comes over to Barton's dingy room at the Hotel Earle to ostensibly help him crack his wrestling screenplay but they wind up having sex.
The next morning, Barton awakens to find Audrey is dead, murdered, awash in her own blood.
Charlie convinces Barton to let him get rid of the body since this looks bad for Barton.
Later Barton gets a visit from some cops and finds out Charlie Meadows ain't Charlie Meadows.
Charlie is actually Karl "Madman" Mundt, a serial killer with a penchant for decapitations.
Mundt slaughters the two cops and burns down the Hotel Earle. Barton Fink escapes with his completed screenplay.
Studio boss Jack Lipnick hates it, dismissing it as "a fruity movie about suffering". Even though it's basically a pastiche of the stuff Barton Fink put into the big Broadway hit that allegedly made as Lipnick fall in love with his talent in the first place.
As punishment for delivering "a fruity movie about suffering", Lipnick tells Fink he will continue to be employed by the studio and paid $1,000 a week but the studio will not make one movie about anything he writes.
"Well, gee, thanks for the recap, Dave-El. Now I don't have to watch this movie."
Well, about that, nothing happens in this movie that you don't see coming. Even the revelation that Charlie is a serial killer is not so much a shock as it is a confirmation of our worst suspicions about him, the coiled rage under the jovial surface.
What makes Barton Fink compelling is how it's told, how the screws on Barton's tortured psyche are tightened relentlessly. Barton is just a shiny new toy for a Hollywood film studio boss to play with. Whether or not Barton is actually any good as a writer is almost beside the point. Jack Lipnick has a hot Broadway writer on his payroll. Good for bragging rights with the other moguls at the Brown Derby for lunch.
Barton Fink's screenplay for Lipnick's wrestling movie regurgitates a lot from Fink's Broadway play. The play may be the thing that led Lipnick to lure Barton Fink to Hollywood but he really has no interest in Fink or his writing.
Something similar played out in the TV series Episodes. A TV network executive lures a pair of BAFTA winning writers to write a TV show for his network. For all his fawning admiration for his British writers, it's clear he's actually never seen or read any of their work.
Barton sews a lot of the seeds of his own misery, his constant naval gazing at his own foibles even as he purports to be a voice of the common man. His head is filled with the sound of his own voice, it's a wonder he can hear the voice of the common man.
The only discordant note in this film is the murder of Audrey Taylor, mostly because Audrey's character is the only significant female role in the movie. Her role as literal cannon fodder to the plot is a bit disconcerting.
This tragic death is echoed in the comic book series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillps, The Fade Out about a struggling writer ground up in the Hollywood movie machine who has a dead woman in his room he can't quite account for.
A major player in the movie is the Hotel Earle, a drab and dusty edifice that stands in moldering contrast to the rest of Hollywood's clean lines and sunny environment. The hotel is a dark shrine to loneliness and despair.
Barton Fink is a strange movie that moves at it's own distinctive pace and rhythm. It's thought provoking with a strangeness of the human condition that is still somehow recognizable.
