![]() His neighbor (John Goodman) tries to help, but he continues to struggle as a bizarre sequence of events distracts him.Īfter the screening of Barton Fink, guests from the Huntington's new production of Merrily We Roll Along will join in a conversation about these two iconic depictions of the high price of success in show business. The Coen Brothers set their sights on 1940s Hollywood in this acclaimed satire, which won the Palme d'Or as well as the Best Actor (John Turturro) and Director (Joel Coen) prizes at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.īarton Fink (Turturro) is an intellectual New York playwright who accepts an offer to write movie scripts in Tinseltown, but finds himself with writer's block when required to do a B-movie script. More of a grind and less fun.” Apparently, Even the greatest auteurs can suffer some form of burnout.Featuring a post-screening conversation with Playwriting Fellows and Screeenwriters John and Miranda Adekoje, from the Huntington Theatre Company's stunning new production of Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Maria Friedman and featuring music by Stephen Sondheim. And after 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been… It was the experience of making a movie. And then the second movie is loads of fun, almost as much fun as the first. And the first movie is just loads of fun. Everything’s enthusiasm and gung-ho, let’s go make a movie. Then other stuff happens and who knows?” He went on to discuss how the working relationship needed a break after so long, "You start out when you’re a kid, and you want to make a movie. I turned into a big baby and got bored and quit, and then the pandemic happened. I don’t know what my next movie is going to be after this. ![]() They discussed some of the reasons why Ethan decided to take a break from their decades-long career together attributing some of it to the pandemic of 2020, as Ethan noted in 2022, “None of the decisions are definitive. In 2018, after wrapping The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coens decided to go their separate ways - at least for the time being. It seems like a Fink sequel is much more likely than a Quintana one as we're pretty sure that the Turturro isn't nearly as spry as he was for the role in 1998.Īs much as the filmmaking siblings want to bring Barton Fink back to the big screen, it doesn't appear to be coming anytime soon. But apparently, the Coens aren't biting on bringing back the nimbly flamboyant trash-talking bowler any time soon. In fact, Turturro has been pleading with them to bring back another one of his characters, Jesus Quintana from The Big Lebowski for a spinoff. He’s getting there." So how old do they want their muse to be exactly? Here we are in 2023 and Turturro, the 66-year-old man who has collaborated with the directors no less than four times, isn't getting any younger, and while entertaining, Barton Fink is not one of their most memorable characters in the way that McDunnough, Lebowski, Marge Gunderson, and Anton Chigurh are. In a 2016 interview with Variety, the brothers made the surprising admission about bringing back Turturro's character for another run with Ethan saying, "We’re going to do a 'Barton Fink' sequel at some point." And brother, Joel added, "That’s the one movie that we thought deserved a sequel, called 'Old Fink.' But we don’t want to do it until Turturro is quite old. So what is different about Barton Fink, and who is flaming their cigarette lighter for more of him? McDunnough is up to these days or exactly what kind of misadventures Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski has stumbled into, we shudder to think of a reprisal somehow tarnishing their cinematic legacies. And they're chock-full of characters who were never meant to make encores. ![]() They are allegories doused with irony, parables unique unto themselves each earmarked for a particular time and space. They tell a story from beginning to middle to end. The biggest reason the Coens never make sequels is that they rarely allow for loose ends. ![]() It's a beautiful film marked by a masterful screenplay and the deft performances of Turturro, Goodman, Tony Shaloub, and Judy Davis. Fink is a quiet, meticulous man by nature, who takes great pride in the art of expression through writing (He feels very much like a noirish send-up by the Coens of the misdirected idolization of writers.) So when he is struck with a crippling case of writer's block as he unpacks his bags in sunny Hollywood and runs into a series of mysterious, Coen-esque oddballs and eccentrics that stay in the Earle Hotel, he enters into disillusionment and a full-blown existential crisis. ![]()
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