Barton Fink

Last night I was watching the film Barton Fink on television. It's a 1991 film from the Coen brothers (Joel Coen directs, Ethan Coen produces and they both write). The film is set in 1944 and tells the story of Barton Fink (played by John Turturro), a pretentious New York playwrite who is fascinated with the "Common Man", and whose play has just caused a huge sensation in New York. Barton is lured to Hollywood and immediately assigned to write a 'B' movie about wrestling, and put up in the decaying Hotel Earle. However, as soon as he sets down to write he finds himself frozen by writer's block. Overcome by frustration and the oppresive heat, he finds distraction by befriending a talkative insurance salesman (John Goodman) who lives in the hotel room next door, and he also meets a famous, but alcoholic, author (John Mahoney) who is also writing for the movies, although Barton soon becomes more fascinated by his much younger secretary, and girlfriend, (Judy Davis). Events take an even more surreal and disturbing turn, when Barton learns that they may be a serial killer on the loose. The script was written by the Coen brothers when they were suffering from writer's block during the writing of Miller's Crossing. The film is kind of a dark comedy and is often really funny, it is also completely bizarre.

Today was another very dull day at work. We were in all day today. Actually, I left much later than I had planned to and didn't manage to get to my class on time, and so I just had to come home. I'd written the story for it and everything and so I was pretty annoyed.