Barton Fink tells the story of a New York theatre writer in the 1940s, who gets an opportunity to run off to Hollywood within the first ten minutes of the film. The titular character is played by John Turturro, and man is he good. He set his bar really high in Miller's Crossing, but does a good job at playing eccentric and insecure here.
Fink is a quiet writer who warily accepts the assignment to pen a film about a wrestler, and checks into a hotel in Los Angeles. The bellboy is played by Steve Buscemi - a little treat for Coen fans. What I loved about the set up of this move to Hollywood is that you really get to see how Barton Fink reacts to the eccentricity and strangeness of the place, and the characters he has to interact with to accomplish this task of writing a wrestling picture. Everybody around him is like a bizarre alien to him, and there is some great comedy to be found in that - which somebody like Joel Coen really knows who to play up.
John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Tony Shalhoub, and Jon Polito, all directed by the Coen Brothers. What more could you ask for?
