![]() ![]() The billionaire was duped by Russian nuclear propaganda, but he’s not the only one in… Unhappy with, and blocked by, the assignment given him by fictitious studio Capitol Pictures, Barton isn’t able to even get started until his own story has gone through its roller coaster of hilarity and horror, at which point inspiration strikes and in one night he writes a mammoth screenplay for an art film tangentially about wrestling. I won’t get into the ins and outs of Barton Fink’s wild plot suffice it to say, Barton Fink (Turturro) is a pompously leftist playwright whose play is such a hit that he’s caught the attention of Hollywood, which wants him to come out to Los Angeles and write scripts for formulaic Wallace Beery wrestling pictures and the like. Until, again, Barton Fink, a kind of horror film set in 1940s Hollywood. As great as it is, after that they found themselves able to work with some pretty big-name actors, and their budgets increased, even if the finished films didn’t always capture the public’s imagination as they could-and indeed should-have. That earlier movie remains the only Coen production that feels truly independent, where the budget was a serious issue they had to keep an eye on. More importantly, Barton Fink, strange film though it is, helped the Coens break through-or at least significantly widened the crack in the wall they’d been pounding against since their 1984 debut, Blood Simple. So the board at Cannes decided to finally write down the rule. Raking in this many awards for one film was unusual for Cannes, which, as an unwritten rule, preferred that its juries spread the love among several films. This is a film that enjoyed unprecedented success at the Cannes Film Festival, winning not only the Palme d’Or, but also best actor for John Turturro and best director for Joel Coen. In 1991, Joel and Ethan Coen released the film Barton Fink.
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