November 10th: BARTON FINK (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991)
NOTE: This film will be projected in the high-definition Blu-ray format.
A socially-conscious New York playwright moves to Hollywood to write for a movie studio, and finds himself inside a waking nightmare.
With their first three films, the Coen Brothers had already covered considerable ground: a seedy neo-noir in their debut Blood Simple, the cartoonish action comedy of Raising Arizona, and the period crime drama and Dashiell Hammett-homage Miller's Crossing. While working on the script for the latter, the two were stuck with writer's block and as an antidote spit out a new script in just three weeks, partially inspired by strange Texas hotel.
Production on Barton Fink picked up quickly after Miller's was completed, and the title role had been written specifically for one of its stars, John Turturro, who met up with the filmmakers to provide some of his own insight to the project. The other lead role was written with another previous Coen collaborator, John Goodman. The remainder of the cast is made up of Coen mainstays (Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub) and other notable actors John Mahoney (Say Anything, TV's Frasier) and Judy Davis (Naked Lunch).
The film was shot entirely in and around Los Angeles in well-known locations such as the Wiltern and Orpheum theatres, Griffith Park, the Ambassador and Park Plaza hotels, the R.M.S. Queen Mary in Long Beach, and Zuma Beach in Malibu. A studio set was built for the art deco-styled "Hotel Earle", where much of the story takes place.
The Coens' regular cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld having embarked on his own directorial career with The Addams Family, they enlisted the help of British cameraman Roger Deakins, beginning a fruitful 25-year collaboration. Returning behind the camera were art director Dennis Gassner and musical score composer Carter Burwell. The editing was done by the Coen Bros under the pseudonym "Roderick Jaynes".
Certain characters are modeled after real-life figures, or amalgamations of such: Barton Fink himself closely resembles the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, Mahoney's alcoholic writer W.P. Mayhew a humorous send-up of novelist William Faulkner, and Michael Lerner's Jack Lipnick reminiscent of legendary studio heads Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Jack Warner.
Other literary, philosophy, and cinematic references and influences abound: the streetwise "Group Theatre" of 1930s New York, Dante's Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, and the 1960s and 70s thrillers of director Roman Polanski. The film's striking imagery and moments of surrealism led many critics to give their own interpretations of the open-ended story and apparent symbolism, much of which the Coens have declined to validate.
Barton Fink premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 and became the first film to win three of the top competitive awards: the Best Film "Palme d'Or", Best Director, and Best Actor for Turturro, prompting a change in festival rules to prevent a single entry from any future sweep. Deakins' photography won awards from the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago critics' groups, and the film received Academy Award nominations for Lerner's performance, the art direction/set decoration, and costume design.
Running time is approx. 2 hours.
A socially-conscious New York playwright moves to Hollywood to write for a movie studio, and finds himself inside a waking nightmare.
With their first three films, the Coen Brothers had already covered considerable ground: a seedy neo-noir in their debut Blood Simple, the cartoonish action comedy of Raising Arizona, and the period crime drama and Dashiell Hammett-homage Miller's Crossing. While working on the script for the latter, the two were stuck with writer's block and as an antidote spit out a new script in just three weeks, partially inspired by strange Texas hotel.
Production on Barton Fink picked up quickly after Miller's was completed, and the title role had been written specifically for one of its stars, John Turturro, who met up with the filmmakers to provide some of his own insight to the project. The other lead role was written with another previous Coen collaborator, John Goodman. The remainder of the cast is made up of Coen mainstays (Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub) and other notable actors John Mahoney (Say Anything, TV's Frasier) and Judy Davis (Naked Lunch).
The film was shot entirely in and around Los Angeles in well-known locations such as the Wiltern and Orpheum theatres, Griffith Park, the Ambassador and Park Plaza hotels, the R.M.S. Queen Mary in Long Beach, and Zuma Beach in Malibu. A studio set was built for the art deco-styled "Hotel Earle", where much of the story takes place.
The Coens' regular cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld having embarked on his own directorial career with The Addams Family, they enlisted the help of British cameraman Roger Deakins, beginning a fruitful 25-year collaboration. Returning behind the camera were art director Dennis Gassner and musical score composer Carter Burwell. The editing was done by the Coen Bros under the pseudonym "Roderick Jaynes".
Certain characters are modeled after real-life figures, or amalgamations of such: Barton Fink himself closely resembles the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, Mahoney's alcoholic writer W.P. Mayhew a humorous send-up of novelist William Faulkner, and Michael Lerner's Jack Lipnick reminiscent of legendary studio heads Louis B. Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Jack Warner.
Other literary, philosophy, and cinematic references and influences abound: the streetwise "Group Theatre" of 1930s New York, Dante's Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, and the 1960s and 70s thrillers of director Roman Polanski. The film's striking imagery and moments of surrealism led many critics to give their own interpretations of the open-ended story and apparent symbolism, much of which the Coens have declined to validate.
Barton Fink premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 and became the first film to win three of the top competitive awards: the Best Film "Palme d'Or", Best Director, and Best Actor for Turturro, prompting a change in festival rules to prevent a single entry from any future sweep. Deakins' photography won awards from the New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago critics' groups, and the film received Academy Award nominations for Lerner's performance, the art direction/set decoration, and costume design.
Running time is approx. 2 hours.
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