Barton Fink

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.