Event Details
“I’ve always been drawn to the Coen Brothers,” Bong Joon Ho says in the catalog for the exhibition Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho. “Their movies are full of misunderstandings and misinterpretations.” Set in 1941, Barton Fink is the story of the titular East Coast transplant (played by John Turturro) who abandons his playwrighting career to try his hand in Hollywood. During a bout of writer’s block in his dilapidated hotel, Fink becomes acquainted with his noisy neighbor (John Goodman), an insurance salesman whose affable appearance belies his true nature. The fourth feature by the Coens was also the first to win all three major prizes—Best Director, Best Actor, and the Palme d’Or—at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was nominated at the 64th Academy... Awards for Supporting Actor (Michael Lerner), Art Direction, and Costume Design.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
1991 | 116 min. | UK/USA | Color | English | Rated R | 35mm
DIRECTED BY: Joel Coen
WRITTEN BY: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
WITH: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner
Print courtesy of the Ed and Maya Herrera collection at the Academy Film Archive.