This week, Nikki and Jon talk about the winding plot and provide different interpretations of the symbolism and meaning of this movie, we talk about the slow build up to the fiery ending and cast performances; also more pop culture and forgotten TV shows that were released at the same time as this movie.
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Speaker 0 (0s): Welcome to 1991 Movie Rewind a podcast where we watch and review every movie released in 1991 from the all-time greatest classics to the critically panned and everything in between. We will rediscover, forgotten fan favorites and uncover hidden gems. As we explore the depths of director video, join us in our celebration of the fun and unique and diverse films from the highly underrated year. This week, we watched Barton.
This is Nikki. This is John, and thank you for joining us on 1991 Movie Rewind Barton Fink as a playwright who recently found critical acclaim with his New York stage show almost immediately after Hollywood comes calling reluctant at first, Barton decides to take up residence in a rundown LA hotel and get to work on his first assignment. But can't get past the first paragraph screenplay by Ethan Cohen and Joel Cohen directed by Joel Cohen and released on August 21st, 1991.
Speaker 1 (1m 13s): Have you seen Barton Fink before? No, I have not.
Speaker 0 (1m 18s): I don't know if I have, okay. I know I've seen naked lunch and I sort of get those two confused, I guess, in a way, because they're both like dealing with writers in isolated spots who are dealing with some level of paranoia, but I'm going to lean towards that. I have not seen it if I had, I didn't really remember much.
Speaker 1 (1m 44s): I've seen this cover a million times. I just never thought to watch it.
Speaker 0 (1m 51s): Yeah. I mean, even though it's like Cohen brothers too, like Cohen brothers has this prestige or this I'm not exactly cult following because they're big enough to sort of beyond be beyond that. But you know, they're filmmakers where virtually everything that they watch aside from, like, let's say lady killers is worth watching.
Speaker 1 (2m 11s): I mean, there, there are other, you know, there are, there are others lady killers.
Speaker 0 (2m 17s): I just remember we're seeing that in the theater and hating it, but some other movies are really hard to describe. So like when I was trying to come up with how to do this summary, it was pretty difficult as you, anyone who's seen the movie knows I was being extremely vague and basic with what I just said in the opening paragraph. And part of that is like, I don't want to go beyond like the first act when writing a summary, even though in these podcasts, we spoiled the whole movie, you know, that's just part of the natural thing.
But my inclination is like, treat it as a I'm writing like a box back and you don't want to give away the whole thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (2m 58s): Yeah. I knew nothing. This movie, I just knew the name and it was cool. So
Speaker 0 (3m 4s): With that in mind, like what did you think of the whole thing? Cause I, I went into it with a certain expectation, I guess, and it didn't meet that. So coming in as someone, without any sort of preconceived notions, what did you think? I
Speaker 1 (3m 23s): Liked it more than I thought I would.
Speaker 0 (3m 27s): Okay. Because you seem bored to me when I was like, anytime I was glancing over at you, you like using like you're completely checked out.
Speaker 1 (3m 36s): I think when we were watching this, I was like, I was very like, I was looking cause when we're watching these movies, I'm Googling like, is this a real, I was like, is this a real story? Is this based on like real life? Is this, this is this that like I was looking at, like I had like 20 different tabs open. Okay.
Speaker 0 (3m 55s): So it wasn't that you were checked out, you were immersed in the Lord, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (3m 58s): I, I was trying to find out, is this a real story?
Speaker 0 (4m 5s): Yeah. I got the impression that you were bored to tears and waiting for it to be over. I was more on the side of like, I kind of want more to happen because I think again, I was probably confusing it somewhat with naked lunch. And I was assuming that things were going to get crazier and wackier a lot earlier than they did, because it really only kind of ramps up to that level in the last, what, like 15 minutes or so of the movie.
But they allude to things throughout the whole thing. Like there's the Erie vibe of the hotel, you know, there's, you know, the wallpaper peeling, there's the mosquito. That's like tormenting him in the room, you know, the kind of consistent like wave crashing and like the picture of the girl, it seems like he's going through some sort of like a mental breakdown. And I thought that the manifest itself visually or in the plot at some point, and it
Speaker 2 (5m 4s): Just does it except
Speaker 0 (5m 6s): For maybe the last 15 minutes. Cause it's really hard to know what's real and what's not in that portion. And even when you get to the, the death in this, which I, you know, I know we'll kind of spoil, but I don't want to like dive too deep into that yet. But like even when you get to the death, I wasn't a hundred percent sure. Is this real or not? Or is this where the crazy what's what's in his mind and what isn't happening? So I wasn't even sure if that person was really dead at the time.
And I think also partly what's moving my expectations a bit is like the taglines for the movie. Cause you know, when I, before we even started these things up, I'm looking up like a box office information. I'm looking at taglines, I'm looking up awards and some of the casting crew information and here are the taglines for this movie. Right. We got between heaven and hell. There's always Hollywood. That's probably the most accurate one of these. Another one is what's in his head.
Okay. And then the third one is, there's only one thing stranger than what's going on inside his head. What's going on outside. So both like those taglines lead me to believe, oh yeah, we're going to go into like the psychosis and the paranoia and like craziness of things. We're going to see bat shit, crazy stuff happening. We're going to see wackiness. And it doesn't happen. It's just this dude staring at a picture and then like staring at the words on his typewriter or, or lack thereof and then just being bothered by it.
So I don't know, that's sort of where my mind went is, you know, I was looking for more and maybe that was just unrealistic. So from my perspective, not a lot happens, but you have a lot of interactions, right? So Barton Fink is kind of thrown into this whirlwind, played by John Turturro. It was like Eraserhead type hair. So he's kind of thrown into this whirlwind where like he has like you're greeted at the very beginning of this movie is New York city in 1941.
And the war plays a very minor, like role. It's mostly like setting the stage of what era of Hollywood you're looking at. And some of the people in this were real people were represented real people from what I could tell, but he's off on the side of his stage play was just ending and it's like, he's brought out for a standing ovation. And then like immediately as agents like LA wants to hire you for a thousand dollars a week to be a studio picture writer, you know, you can always do your art on your own time, take the money, take this opportunity when you can.
Right. And he has like a couple of little meetings in some fancy highfalutin restaurant. And like the whole time he's basically, poo-pooing the whole thing hacking like he's, you know, the tortured artist type, you know? And it's like, oh, well, all this stuff doesn't appeal to me. I can't listen to what the critics say. I'm writing for the every man and all this kind of stuff, but he's still, you know, he's still at some point goes to LA obviously, because that's where the movie takes you. And so very quickly he moves to the hotel where things really where all the important characters come into play.
Well after chat, chat's not really important in terms of the story, but the hotel is important because that will tell you is very creepy, very eerie. I forget what they call it in this one
Speaker 2 (8m 48s): Movie. It's the Earl hotel, Earl hotel
Speaker 1 (8m 51s): Hotel. Earl or Earl hotel. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (8m 54s): So it's, you know, very big wide open. You never see anybody aside from three people in that hotel.
Speaker 2 (9m 5s): Right? Like
Speaker 1 (9m 7s): Chet who's the bell hop slash front desk. Everything Shiner. Yeah. He does. He's kind of like, does everything kind of like then would be four rooms if you seen that? Like sure. Like he just does everything. I've
Speaker 0 (9m 26s): Heard that this was sort of inspired by like the shining and in a sense as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (9m 30s): Yeah. With the shot, with the long hallways and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (9m 35s): So you have Chad played by Steve was semi by the way, who in 1991 was also seen on Nickelodeon in that first, you know, as Ellen's dad and the Pete and Pete shorts that was in 91 as well. So that's how I knew him first.
Speaker 2 (9m 56s): It was
Speaker 0 (9m 56s): From the Pete and Pete shorts. So that was also happening around the same time as Barton Fink. But yeah, like you have this big old, oh, the other two people you see in the hotel are the elevator person, the elevator operator, I forget his name. And then you have John Goodman's character, Charlie Meadows, which we'll get into later. But those are the only three people you see. So like when he walks through this very long open lobby, there's nobody, it's a completely empty hotel.
It looks run down. There's plants everywhere, which makes it look nice. But it's like this big open thing. And it just looks like, it looks like it's halfway to the level of rundown that we saw in double impact. If we want to reference another movie we've watched and the hallway is like, basically the same thing too. It's just like looks kind of dirty and nasty. And then obviously once you get in the ho the room, it's very, very shoddy.
The wallpaper is peeling because it's so incredibly hot in that room. Or at least as the reason I just given is that it's just so hot that the wallpaper is peeling off and just, everything looks so gross, but adds a lot of character. It's where you spend half the movie.
Speaker 2 (11m 20s): So like the luster
Speaker 0 (11m 22s): Wears off and you can only see wallpaper appeal so many times before it gets repetitive and kind of boring to me. So anyway, he goes from that into the studio heads office. He's he's meeting with Jack Lipnick of Capitol pictures and everything think says is amazing. And he's like, you know what you
Speaker 2 (11m 48s): Would expect from a studio head. Yeah,
Speaker 0 (11m 51s): Absolutely loves him once. You know, everything you say is perfect. I'm all, you know,
Speaker 1 (11m 56s): Whatever you want to do is whatever I think is great.
Speaker 2 (12m 1s): Just whatever, just like all for him, I'm
Speaker 0 (12m 4s): Talking a million words a minute. He's like this mix of like hyper and like angry and, you know, going off on random tangents, all this kind of stuff that you kind of would expect to see from like a studio head, a character from the 1940s. And he's given the assignment to write this wrestler picture starring Wally Beery. And he needs to have his first draft by the end of the week. And then off he goes, while of your, I believe is a real person, Walter Berry, a real wrestler, real actor.
Oh, okay. I didn't go too deep into it, but I believe he is a real actor that they're referencing there. And then John Mahoney's character, WP Mayhew, I believe was based off of
Speaker 1 (12m 55s): William Faulkner. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. These are the things that I was trying to look up. And that was the Lori you were looking at. Yeah, there was a lot more, I mean, so these two writers, Barton Fink is loosely based off of a writer called Clifford Odets. He was a playwright in the thirties and pretty much what trajectory, the same trajectory to directory is what Barton Fink is. He was a playwright and then novelist.
And he, I, well, I didn't want to say idolized, but it's inspirational writers was William Faulkner, which yeah. What we see in the movie, like how Barton Fink, or is very moved by WP Mayhew as a novelist. And then I also learned that Faulkner was the one that was supposedly had to write a book about a wrestler as well.
So these are just kind of loosely based off of this, off of their real lives, I guess.
Speaker 0 (14m 11s): Yeah. And I think that probably helps the people who really have a knowledge of history of old Hollywood appreciate. But yeah, so Martin's tasked with going to right. And he is immediately met with constant distractions, whether it's the wallpaper or the mosquito or most noticeable at this moment is the noise coming from next door. And so he complains by, you know, through the phone to chat, but Chet channels on him.
And so the next door neighbor comes over, knocks on the door, basically barges in apologizing for the noise. And we meet John Goodman's character, the insurance salesman, Charlie Meadows immediately. I could tell that John Goodman was going to be the best part of the movie.
Speaker 1 (15m 3s): I don't know. Oh yeah. I mean, I think John Goodwin is usually the best part of most of these Cohen brother movies that he's in. That's probably true. I think he always plays this character, like the eccentric character and always in a different way. Yeah. I
Speaker 0 (15m 21s): Don't know. I think John Goodman is probably one of the best actors. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like he's obviously appreciated and beloved, but he's not like celebrated critically in the way that I think he probably should be. Oh, now granted, we're not going to see that type of performance in king Ralph when we get to that in 1991, but
Speaker 1 (15m 46s): Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking like, oh, we're going to have to watch him and king row. I remember.
Speaker 0 (15m 54s): So we'll get to that at some point. But I mean like, you know, he, okay, just talking about awards really quickly, just as sort of like a sidebar, he won an Emmy, but not for Roseanne. He won an Emmy for a guest spot on studio, 60 on the sunset strip, like so late in his so much later, I feel like that was sort of like a, we're sorry, you didn't win for any of the 10 times you were nominated previously for this award. Like seven of those were for Roseanne.
We're sorry. You didn't get to any of those. Here you go. Have this guest spot one by me, you know, in 1991, he wasn't that same level of actor, but this allowed him to show a little bit more range than what he was showing. And Roseanne, up to this one, he had done stuff like bit parts and like Chuck and revenge of the nerds, right. He had done raising Arizona with the Cohen brothers, which was probably is media's role in terms of, you know, acting chops. And then he did a record, a phobia, which was probably as big as like box office before this and king Ralph of course was bigger box office wise.
But yeah, honestly like he's, since then I'll talk about his past 1991 stuff. Once we get to king Ralph, and he's just like so incredibly like charming and slick and you know, you can do whatever he needs to do. And then you give a moment here. And in this moment he's trying to one kind of play Kate Barton by saying, I'm sorry, I caused this mess while still looking obviously annoyed that that complaint was levied against him. And then to
Speaker 2 (17m 32s): Try to make a friend. Yeah. Be charming. Try
Speaker 0 (17m 35s): To make a friend in three in sort of like a subtext, try to like weasel in and try to make an insurance sale. You know, like he has that little aspect too is like trying to bring everything back to the concept of insurance. So that Barton maybe like get into that, but Barton's often his own head and he's ranting and raving about how important he is and ignoring Charlie's comments like nonstop. Like several times Charlie in that conversation says, why could tell you some stories and Barton, like, I bet you, you could, but let me tell you about how I need to like focus in on how the, every man works while he hasn't every man sitting on his bed right there, that he's completely ignoring.
Speaker 3 (18m 20s): So it's really, I used
Speaker 1 (18m 22s): To write his movie about this wrestler and he doesn't want to focus on this guy story. Yes, he
Speaker 0 (18m 29s): Can't be busy. He can't be distracted by anybody who might actually legitimately help him with these things. He has to rant and rave about how important he is. And you kind of just realize in this moment, and also in other spots and other conversations that basically just everyone in this movie is bullshitting everyone else. Right? They're just talking in such a way that they want to increase their own self worth. And that's their whole purpose in the movie.
You know, they're just bullshitting and making themselves, you know, give them the, the inflated ego. And that's why they're there. That's why they exist. So after the interaction with Charlie, we get introduced to, do you think Geisler,
Speaker 1 (19m 17s): Tony Shalhoub, Tonitia
Speaker 0 (19m 18s): Lubes character, Ben Geisler, Tony Shalhoub of monk. Marvelous. This is Maizel. And of course at this time wings, which started in 1991, or at least he started on that sitcom in 1991. That's how I do them. He plays basically the producer of the movie. And so Barton goes down for advice saying I'm having trouble getting started. I don't know what to do. And you know, Geisler is basically just like a lower, wrong version of the studio head, but just with more attitude and contempt.
Speaker 1 (19m 52s): Yeah. He's just like, I don't know, get it, get it done, figure it out. And you know, maybe consult with someone who can help you.
Speaker 0 (20m 1s): Yeah. Like this whole restaurant is full of writers, throwing her off. Fine. Yeah. Find one
Speaker 1 (20m 6s): And ask them how to write this movie for you or helping you with these problems. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (20m 14s): And that's how he gets in touch with WP. You, who he meets in the bathroom of is it of that same restaurant. Yes. We think. And may he was throwing up and the stall company arranged to meet together in the afternoon. But when he arrives may Hugh is ranting and like yelling about like honey and you know, like I need my honey, where's my honey. Like, he's obviously
Speaker 1 (20m 44s): Like, it's not a good fit. You don't see it. You hear him.
Speaker 0 (20m 48s): Yeah. Yelling and crying off screen. And Audrey opens the door, which is played by Judy Davis, making her a second week in a row appearance on this podcast after impromptu, please Audrey Taylor, who is basically his assistant slash secretary slash
Speaker 1 (21m 9s): Lover
Speaker 0 (21m 14s): And Audrey let Spartan know what's up with him. Just like saying when he's not writing he's he's drinking
Speaker 1 (21m 20s): All day. Yeah. Which is, it seems like he's not writing much because we find out that she's like his ghost writer yeah. Later on when she pretty much wrote most of his books. Yep, exactly. Which is, I don't think what happened in real life with Faulkner. I don't think Faulkner had this relationship with anyone. Yeah. Maybe not, but
Speaker 0 (21m 47s): Probably are some famous people that did have that title. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (21m 52s): I just don't. I just don't think this happened with Faulkner. Yeah. And then I'm going to correct myself, like Faulkner, he worked on a wrestling film called flesh, which was starred Wallace Beery, the actor. So yeah. It's, they're loosely taking these stories from they're alluding to things that yeah.
Speaker 0 (22m 15s): People have probably older persuasions or just who are more in tune with like the 1940s cinema scene we'll know than us. But it's also kind of interesting that Judy Davis basically plays a writer in two weeks in a row on this podcast too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22m 33s): But I liked her in this movie more than impromptu. I mean,
Speaker 0 (22m 38s): Yeah. Her character is more likable. There's like, I don't know. I just didn't, I didn't find her character in impromptu to be too redeemable. I don't know. She didn't, there's no like characteristics to latch on to in impromptu here she's, you know, just like a normal human being who is like trying to, she's kind of stuck in this situation
Speaker 1 (23m 9s): Because I think what she says is that he gets jealous. I mean, this is later on and you know, she has to wait until he goes to sleep or pass out for her to just leave the apartment. Because if she leaves without him, he's like, where the hell are you? Type of thing. Yeah. They're just, I don't know. It seems like she's just his companion for every single thing. Yeah. She's kind of trapped. Yeah.
And partly because
Speaker 0 (23m 42s): He's also her conduit for the right. So like he comes up with like maybe like the outlines and ideas is what she says, who knows how much of that is true. And then she basically creates everything still there. Like she does the story or the script. So they kind of need each other in that professional level as well. Obviously he needs her more than she needs him, but you know, she still feels like she's oh, is the, I don't know, it's a complex relationship that doesn't really get to pan out in front of our eyes too much, but you can still get the glimpse of what's going on.
But yeah, like all the time that this is happening, there are several scenes that are in the hotel room where something happens, the wallpaper peels, or he's just staring at the thing. And then
Speaker 1 (24m 32s): Yeah, he's staring at the picture. It's
Speaker 2 (24m 35s): A picture of a woman or a beach
Speaker 0 (24m 37s): From behind any, heres the waves crashing against the rock,
Speaker 1 (24m 41s): But he's hearing noises through the walls. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 0 (24m 46s): But he's also imagining the waves crashing and you see the visuals of that
Speaker 1 (24m 51s): And yeah, this is where it's, this is where I was thinking, like, when he's in this hotel, I started thinking of like, oh, is this like some sort of purgatory? Is this like heaven wanting, not having, but like hell or purgatory and he's just stuck there. And do you know, all of this is in his head, like even the peeling of the wallpaper, like is all of this true.
Okay.
Speaker 0 (25m 22s): I think that's valid. And I think that's sort of what I was trying to think too. It's like at this point, we're pretty much at the halfway mark in the movie. So are we going to start to see them go crazy? And I think purgatory is probably exactly what column brothers are looking for, you know, especially with that tag line between heaven and hell. There's always Hollywood. Right? So, you know, that's obviously something that I think you're correctly latching onto, but we don't get the answer soon enough, in my opinion.
So like there's like little tiny hints that keep on floating in. So we got the Miskito, you got the, the wallpaper. And at this point we also had the shoes that are too big. Remember like, so every day there are a lot. So even though we only see three other people besides Barton and this hotel, there are tons of other people because every day you see a line of shoes in the doorway because Chet says that, you know, they offer a shoe shine service. And so he's returning all the shoes that he's shying along in and placing them and all
Speaker 2 (26m 27s): The doors in front of the doors and
Speaker 0 (26m 30s): His shoes get switched with Charlie's, which you learn after he puts on his shoes and sees that they're too big. And it kind of makes me, you know, oh, is this where he's gonna start going crazy? Like, is this like a visual
Speaker 1 (26m 44s): Thing? I mean, I was thinking that metaphor into deep. Yeah. I don't know. I was thinking that, I wonder if John Goodman or Charlie Meadows did that on purpose, like took his shoes on purpose just to have another interaction with him that could be too. Yeah. Or was it really just a simple, because they did have similar shoes, but who knows?
I don't know. Yeah. It could be a simple
Speaker 0 (27m 16s): Switch up or yeah. Or Charlie could have used that as an excuse
Speaker 1 (27m 19s): That, because the, I mean, what is happening near the end of the movie? I was like, oh, is he using this guy for something
Speaker 0 (27m 28s): Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27m 31s): Have to latch on to him to become friends with him.
Speaker 0 (27m 37s): Did then take advantage of it in some way. Yes. Yes. That's that's a good theory. I like that theory in my mind when I was watching the movie though, I was like, oh, the shoes are too big. Okay. It's finally happening. We're going to see some crazy shit. And then it just doesn't happen.
Speaker 2 (27m 52s): And I was like, okay. I was thinking
Speaker 1 (27m 55s): That that was done on purpose.
Speaker 0 (27m 57s): It could be, I was thinking it was like a mental breakdown thing. So yeah, that happens. And then shortly after that, Audrey has called in to help. Right. Because you don't, even though,
Speaker 1 (28m 14s): I mean, however, I think like two months go by and he still has written like a paragraph and then the producer, Tony Shalhoub or Ben Geisler is like, how like, how's it gone? Yeah.
Speaker 0 (28m 29s): It's like, Hey, you're supposed to present something to Lipnick tomorrow. Right. And I told them it was great.
Speaker 1 (28m 35s): Yeah. So can you give me, you know, outlines or whatever you have right now? And that's when he, yeah. He starts freaking out
Speaker 0 (28m 43s): Because he absolutely has to have this meeting where he talks about something tomorrow morning and he has nothing except for this paragraph. Right.
Speaker 1 (28m 52s): Right. And it's been a couple months. Cause I think they say it's been eight or nine weeks or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (28m 59s): And he's like, you're just getting started. So he enlists Audrey to come and help because he needs anything, something, and WP Mayhew is worthless.
Speaker 1 (29m 11s): Right. Or just doesn't really well. Yeah. He, well, they meet, they meet at like an outdoor setting, like in a picnic or something. And to talk about, you know, this movie and WP Mayhew is too drunk to even say anything or whatever. He just walks off and starts singing a song and like almost gets hit by a car and yada yada, and you know, Audrey has to follow him just to bring a bag.
He like pushes her down and then she comes back. She comes back. But then that's when she tells Barton, you know, I'm the ghost writer. Yeah. And then that's when he asks her to come over.
Speaker 0 (30m 3s): I actually, no, I have it written down the New York. He's the, she admitted that at the,
Speaker 1 (30m 9s): At the hotel. Oh. I thought she admitted it after they met up outside and the, she alluded to
Speaker 0 (30m 18s): It. But at the same, cause I have, I have that. He gets incense and Audrey writing Bill's books and scripts. So maybe she did say that at the park, but then
Speaker 2 (30m 29s): He just sort of goes off on situations. Hey,
Speaker 0 (30m 33s): It's like, yeah, everyone needs help. And I did this and I did this, I did
Speaker 1 (30m 37s): This. And when they after, cause it, yeah, it was at the hotel
Speaker 0 (30m 41s): Where he's like, did you write like, did he even write his own books? And she's like, oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1 (30m 48s): Me. I think that was the second time he went to the hotel. He goes to the hotel twice. The first time to meet him after they meet in the restaurant. I guess when that's, when he's screaming about honey and she's like, you know, when he's not writing, he's drinking and she pretty much says, Hey, I'm the secretary, Sam like just closes the door. She doesn't say anything. Like, like I'm his writer.
Speaker 0 (31m 14s): No, no. I must say, I'm saying like when, when he gets insensitive, Audrey writing the books and the script that was in his hotel room, because the after like immediately after he gets like, you know, go service rant, he just switches to a straight face. Well, we don't have much time. Let's get to work. You remember that? Like he's like, he doesn't even write his own books. Like you wrote the books too. Like he doesn't need to write anything. What a fraud. And then he looks at her like, okay, well help me out here. We don't have much time.
You know? It's like, it's, it's him not realizing that he's being hypocritical, that he's doing the exact same thing as his idol that he's now upset with. And so that took place in the whole
Speaker 1 (31m 56s): Time. She, so like when she says that, you know, he does all these isle outlines and I pretty much do the rest. That's when he he's like, so you are actually the cause he idolizes her he's mad at me. You know, he idolizes her. Yeah. Kind of, yeah. She is the brains behind the books that are being written by Mayhew.
Speaker 0 (32m 25s): Yeah. I'm pretty sure he brought Audrey over to his room and she had to sneak out just to get like some sort of inspiration or help because that's, you know, what the secretary was doing for Mayhew. And then he had that revelation or learned that. Yeah. May you basically never wrote any of this stuff. It was all her. And he got all crazy and he's like, well, we don't have much time. Let's get my script done. Let's go. But
Speaker 1 (32m 48s): That doesn't even happen because then after they talk about that, they sleep together. Right?
Speaker 0 (32m 55s): Yeah. The actual outline work does not actually have, it was just saying that that's when that interaction happened in the movie is at the hotel. So yeah. They go into this as they're getting into their sexual encounter, the camera moves off from them in the bed and it pans over to the bathroom door, which is open pushes in and up and down into the sink drain.
Speaker 1 (33m 22s): Yeah. And you hear the moaning and kind of like screaming too. This is where I was also thinking we can go back because when Barton Fink initially made the complaint about the noises through the walls, he was hearing like sexual noises. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (33m 41s): From the person like on the other side of him, not Charlie's side. Yeah. Not sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33m 46s): And I that's what I was starting to think. Is this him hearing himself? Like the person in the future? Yes. This is where, okay. He heard the sexual moaning and the beginning of the movie or when he first moved into the hotel and then, you know, he has sex with her. She's making that same moaning sounds as he hears through the walls.
That's when I started thinking, is that him hearing himself from the past?
Speaker 0 (34m 27s): I like that theory. I never, I have a hard time usually thinking about movies in that deep type of way. The,
Speaker 1 (34m 34s): This is where my mind was going. I'm glad one of our minds is gone. That you were like, you're the one who was getting bored. And I was like, thinking hardcore deep into this. I mean,
Speaker 0 (34m 44s): Th that kind of makes me want to like revisit certain scenes of this movie. And like, when we see the shoes in the hallway, how similar are they? Right. Because if they're the same color, same color. But like, maybe it's more than that. Because if the room next to him was him in a different time period. That would probably mean that that endless hallway is really just his room repeating him
Speaker 2 (35m 10s): And Charlie repeating over and over again. And we can see a pattern. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35m 13s): It's just them with their shoe. Maybe it's their same shoes. It's the daily shoes in a row down this hallway. Cause that hallway is a really long hallway. Kind of like the shining where it just extends yeah. To infinity. So if this is like some weird long hallway that extends infinity, maybe it's just like one room across another room and it's their room extending into infinity.
Yeah. It could
Speaker 0 (35m 47s): Be. What I got out of that scene was just that, that just means his career is like going down the drain. Like literally, you know, cause like the camera's like literally going down the drain,
Speaker 1 (35m 58s): Like I got that from him. I didn't think that I was thinking, oh, is this like some weird warp from time? It's like time and space.
Speaker 4 (36m 9s): Well, that's why we have these conversations and this is, this is why the podcast is good. At least in my opinion, it's, you know, you
Speaker 0 (36m 15s): Get these different perspectives and we're looking at it, different things.
Speaker 1 (36m 19s): But I mean, after that happens, well, I mean, we find out that she's killed. Yeah. He wakes up, wakes up because
Speaker 0 (36m 29s): Of the mosquito again and it lands on her skin
Speaker 1 (36m 33s): And she's not even flinching or anything. So he kind of smacks the mosquito and you know, kills it. Yeah. And it bleeds there's blood. This is the another thing or there's blood on his hand.
Speaker 0 (36m 47s): And it turns into a big old
Speaker 1 (36m 50s): Block. Even though it's a mosquitoes, when you smack of the mosquito, you're not going to get like a whole handful of blood. That's where I, and then that's where my mind went wandered, but he turns her up because he did like a really big smack and she didn't even flinch or anything. And then he tries to wake her up and just pulls her over. And she's like gutted.
Speaker 0 (37m 13s): Yeah. He's horrified by the amount of blood. And then he looks back and he sees the blood like draining from underneath her
Speaker 2 (37m 20s): As well. It's like, oh my God, what's going on in terms are over.
Speaker 0 (37m 23s): And she's like, been gutted, killed an open somehow.
Speaker 1 (37m 27s): And he, yeah. And he freaks out.
Speaker 0 (37m 29s): And so this is where I'm like, okay, this is where the fantasy stuff is happening because when you smack a mosquito yeah, you're right. Like, you know, you shouldn't have like a big, huge pool of blood in your blood in your hand from just the mosquito. So now we're starting to see the crazy masks. Is she really dead or not?
Speaker 1 (37m 47s): Yeah. But then I was thinking that he killed her. Did he kill her? And he didn't know about it cause he started to go crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (37m 55s): So this is where the movies like starting to actually pick up and get interesting again. And it took a while. This is like, you know, two thirds in. So you have to really kind of slog through a lot of set up to get to this point, in my opinion. And like some of the stuff is just repeated too many times, but now we're into the interesting stuff. So he enlists Charlie to help because he's the only friend at the only practically, well, first
Speaker 1 (38m 21s): Person, he knows like the only person he's talked to really besides his, you know, his producer or like whoever on the movie.
Speaker 0 (38m 29s): Exactly. And Charlie's like, well, I have to leave for New York. But like he, he takes, he, he he's like, okay, going to take care of this, but I have to leave for New York, go about your normal routine, do your normal business. And I'll be back in a few days, hold onto this box until I get back. And so Barton goes and meets Lipnick at his house and he's supposed to have this treatment, which didn't happen because they decided to have sex.
Instead, they didn't work. They just had sex and fell asleep. And two, she was then murdered. And so no writing was done. And so he's sitting there,
Speaker 1 (39m 16s): He thinks he's going to get his ass chewed out, but
Speaker 0 (39m 20s): Catatonic. And he just makes up a bullshit, excuse of like, well, as a writer, I don't want to reveal anything until it's done. I have thoughts in my head. I know it it's all planned out. You just have to put on paper, but I don't want to ruin anything by saying it. And lip Nik eats it up. But the Lackey is like trying to say, no, this is, this is, this is clearly a bubble. But
Speaker 1 (39m 43s): Live Nick is like that. You're a true artist or whatever.
Speaker 0 (39m 48s): Yeah. The Lackey Lou breeze played by John Polito, who also is a frequent Cohen brothers collaborator. He gets fired for saying, look, you're the boss. You know, you're the studio's property. You got to tell us what's in your head. And yeah, looking it's like, no, nevermind. Well, I mean he,
Speaker 1 (40m 8s): I mean, but he goes back to the hotel and he writes like a madman and he finishes this script.
Speaker 0 (40m 15s): And at the end, Lou is still employed. So he was temporarily fired. Yeah. Yeah. He finished the script. But is that before or after the detectives come into play
Speaker 1 (40m 30s): During I think, well, because the detectives read the final script and he's like,
Speaker 0 (40m 36s): Wow, you must've met the detectives before hand.
Speaker 1 (40m 39s): He goes back. He writes like a mad man detectives show up once because they show up, show up at the hotel. You
Speaker 0 (40m 48s): Know, they show up at the hotel because they know about the death. They know what happened like in the vicinity or is it just that they're looking for, they're looking for Charlie.
Speaker 1 (40m 59s): No, they, cause he goes down to the lobby. The detectives are down there. He thinks he's going to get arrested because of the death of Audrey. Yeah. I mean, Charlie said he was going to take care of it. He just took her body. But you don't know what happened, but I mean, Barton Fink bed is still bloody and I'm like, he didn't get rid of that. Or I don't know.
Speaker 0 (41m 27s): I call Chuck for that I guess.
Speaker 1 (41m 29s): Yeah. But yeah, he goes down to the lobby, meets with these. He thinks he's going to get arrested immediately. But the detectives are like, Hey, do you know who this guy? And it's a picture of Charlie Meadows, but he is known as Carl madman, munch, who is a serial killer. And his like his modus operandi, I guess is beheading his victims. Mostly women. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (42m 0s): And they said that Audrey was found was the body, but not ahead. Yeah. So yeah. He's asked him a few questions. He gives them relatively honest answers. He says, yeah. He told me that he was an insurance sales man. He told me that he had to go out of town or whatever, like use, you know, being relatively honest. But you know, didn't tell him, didn't tell them the full thing. I guess didn't tell them all.
Speaker 1 (42m 26s): Yeah. Yeah. He didn't tell him, he's not gonna tell them about what happened with Audrey. Cause then he'll get in trouble. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 0 (42m 33s): And then he goes about his day, he reads the script and whatever else
Speaker 1 (42m 37s): Like finishes it. And I don't know, they, they come back, he goes out Barton, present his script and he's like really happy.
Speaker 2 (42m 49s): Yeah. He's done with the script.
Speaker 1 (42m 51s): And that's when he actually goes out, out to go dancing. Cause he's like, I am done. So I'm going to party or whatever.
Speaker 0 (42m 58s): Oh, you know what? Before that even happens though, probably one of my favorite scenes of the movie happens. This is before he meets the detectives or maybe on the way to, to see them Barton's in the elevator with Pete, because this is like where he's really starting to go crazy. Right. And so like, he's looking at the Bible in his room and he sees like his, you know, the one paragraph that he's written in the book of Genesis in the Bible. So you can see that his mine's like sexually starting to go.
And so after he leaves his room, he goes and meets up with, you know, he goes down to the lobby and he's in the elevator with Pete. And he's like, do you read the Bible, Pete? Pete's like the holy Bible. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Anyway, I've heard about it. He was like,
Speaker 1 (43m 47s): I don't know may he's like, I think so.
Speaker 4 (43m 49s): I think so. I've heard about the holy Bible. I've heard of it. It's such a good interaction.
Speaker 1 (43m 60s): Yeah. That was on his way down to meet the
Speaker 0 (44m 3s): Yeah. That's when he got to the detectives and so yeah. Yeah. And then he,
Speaker 1 (44m 9s): So yeah. And then he goes and parties and he's dancing and
Speaker 0 (44m 14s): At the USO and like, again, inflated, ego, he's like, I've just created, you know, the script over Maine.
Speaker 1 (44m 23s): Yeah. He's dancing with a woman and then some sailor comes in, cuts in or he wants to dance with this woman. And Barton Fink is like, no,
Speaker 4 (44m 34s): Man. It's like, don't, you know who? I am
Speaker 1 (44m 37s): Like my mind it's my mind.
Speaker 4 (44m 41s): You're like, you should be
Speaker 1 (44m 43s): Like, cause you know, the guy is like, Hey, I'm a sailor. I'm going to be shipped off to war basically tomorrow. Can I dance with this lady? And he's like, no, don't, you know that I'm a writer and I'm God basically. Yeah. So he's like, I create things. I am like, oh God. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (45m 4s): And grand old time until all of the, the different military men beat him up for that interaction.
Speaker 1 (45m 12s): Yeah. He gets, well, he just gets punched in the face once and then he kind of just falls to the ground and then the whole room gets into a fight. Yeah. They swarm into him. Yeah. And I don't know where he comes from, but
Speaker 0 (45m 27s): It comes back and they just texted her in his room, reading his script, kind of shitting on it. He's like, eh, this is garbage. And the ones like, oh, I kind of like, so like he has this mind, you know, mindset of like, this is the greatest piece of cinema ever created. And then detectives are like immediate critics. Like yeah, it was okay. Yeah. But they're there because they found the WP Mayhew is also been founded. Yeah. And they see the bloodstain on
Speaker 1 (45m 56s): His bed. And then so then they they're like, okay, are you working with this guy? Are you working with Charlie Meadows? And then they're asking you where to go, where is he? What did he do? Blah, blah, blah, all these things and Burton doesn't know. Right. And they handcuff him to his bed. Well,
Speaker 0 (46m 21s): Yeah. They handcuff him to the bed because
Speaker 2 (46m 23s): Charlie, Charlie comes back. But they don't notice that first.
Speaker 1 (46m 28s): Okay. You don't notice that because the room slash whole hotel gets really, really hot and starts to go up in flames. Yeah. Yeah. The wallpaper
Speaker 0 (46m 38s): Is peeling in the hallways, which had not happened before. There's, you know, the goop from the glue coming everywhere and you start to see smoke and flames at the end,
Speaker 1 (46m 48s): Like coming down the hallway with just flames coming through the door walls. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (46m 55s): And then Charlie is slash month appears. And then
Speaker 1 (46m 59s): This is, I was also thinking like, this is a heaven and hell thing. Like is Charlie the devil? Like I started thinking of all of these things.
Speaker 0 (47m 11s): Yeah. I don't know if I would consider them to be the devil or
Speaker 2 (47m 14s): I was like, or some sort of
Speaker 1 (47m 16s): Like, yeah. Demonic creature. And then
Speaker 2 (47m 20s): I was thinking like,
Speaker 1 (47m 22s): Is Charlie really real? Is Charlie? Like, I started getting, you know, like fight club type mentality, like is Charlie Barton is Barton Charlie. And like, are they one in the same?
Speaker 0 (47m 40s): I kind of think about those types of things in here and you don't get good, clear answers most thoroughly, but yeah, Charlie, you know, the detectives, you know, say freeze, put the case down cause he's holding a briefcase and he does. But then he opens it up and takes out a shotgun and immediately starts shooting the detectives and kills them while the flames rage along the hallway beside him.
And then he freeze Barton explains why he did what he did. Cause basically the whole thing was that this was somewhat of a, a revenge against Barton for complaining about the noise levels, that first interaction like, that's why I'm picking on you. And that's why you're involved in all this stuff because I couldn't make a little bit of noise and it's, you know, it was a very interesting situation.
Meanwhile, obviously the hallways are still burning, but the rooms are fine all the recently very hot, but they're not burning up because this isn't, you know, the fire doesn't act like a real fire, you know, acts like a fake fire, you know? Cause it's like concentrated just in the hallways, just in those little areas, it doesn't spread to the entire hotel like a regular flame would. And so yeah, Charlie slash month is explaining everything to Barton. They have their final confrontation.
Charlie frees Barton from the handcuffs and walks out while the hall is still burning Barton also just basically he leaves with the box. I think the next scene is him meeting with Lipnic again where Lipnick tears his script apart saying it's the most
Speaker 2 (49m 33s): Basic it's, it's terrible garbage. And
Speaker 0 (49m 35s): You're a terrible person. We fired their producer for lying to us. We're not going to fire you. You are stuck under contract, but we are not going to publish a damn word for you. You're not free to do your own thing. You have to work for us for all time, but your words will not see the light of day. That's your punish.
Speaker 1 (49m 56s): Yeah. This is more like heaven and hell type. And then it also just reading other like random facts about this movie. It's kind of like, I think the Cohen brothers were just also trying to say that this is what writer's block is about.
Speaker 0 (50m 16s): I do, I did see that they wrote this movie to sort of combat their own writer's block, which I can kind of see, you know,
Speaker 1 (50m 28s): They're taken how Hollywood is with. I mean basically how writers are being treated or like maybe that's how they were treated. You know, they came up with a script and then they get shit upon and they think, you know, in their minds they're like, this is really great script, but then they take it to a producer or whoever. And it's
Speaker 0 (50m 51s): Like, we just wanted a wrestling picture. We didn't want heart high art.
Speaker 1 (50m 54s): Right. We just want some simple thing. We don't want Tom and Terry on the plan. Don't give me yeah. And they get shit on. And then you just, you feel like shit. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (51m 7s): So yeah. I mean, this is a very meta movie in that way, right? Like it's, you know, it's their own writer's block sort of manifesting itself also, you know, munch slash Goodman who was a wrestler back in like his high school days or whatever he is basically the wrestler that Barton's writing about. Whether you realize it or not like, you know, so like he is, this is the wrestler picture, you know, there's a lot of parallels of, of what you know is being written.
So it has that inception is the keyword that most people would, you know, relate to now there's that type of layer of like constructs within constructs, see everything kind of just like falls in collapses into itself in some form or fashion because yeah, the, the criticism of the movie at the end is, you know, it's about this movie that we're watching, right? Like we don't want to watch a person who is wrestling with their soul. We want, we just wanted a simple wrestling picture. We don't want wrestling with the soul.
We want an actual physical wrestling. And obviously here I am saying, I kind of wanted more physical wrestling in the beginning. Yeah. Like at the end I got what I wanted, but I didn't want it to see him wrestling with his soul for that long in such a repetitive manner. So I'm being the Lipnic in this session,
Speaker 1 (52m 28s): Going back to when Charlie Meadows is appears in that hallway, he's screaming at the two detectives, look upon me. I will show you the life of the mind. So it's more of the mind again.
Speaker 0 (52m 47s): So that, that line made you think, well maybe this is Barton manifesting something or it's injecting something. Yeah. It's,
Speaker 1 (52m 57s): That's what I was trying to look up. I mean, is there some sort of connection between the two? Are they the same? Sure. Was Barton Fink actually the serial killer. Did he go, but I don't know.
Speaker 0 (53m 15s): Yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of things that don't really fully get resolved in this for obvious reasons, I guess. Right. I mean,
Speaker 1 (53m 21s): Cause I mean, Barton just takes that box and his script and leaves this hotel, but does that hotel go down in flames because Charlie Meadows goes back into his room while this hotel is still have inflamed?
Speaker 0 (53m 36s): I don't think so. Because like, again, like the rooms are not burning and yeah. That entire hallway
Speaker 1 (53m 42s): Is going up in flames.
Speaker 0 (53m 44s): No, but the flames are like dying down by the time Barton was leaving. Like you could see like the charred remains and it wasn't like a raging fire anymore. It was like smoldering. Like it just happened. And then it was concentrated in and it's done now. And so like, it was already starting to go out while he was walking. But
Speaker 1 (53m 59s): I mean, I still just want to know how that, like how
Speaker 0 (54m 4s): I wish we would come back to the hotel to see if it reset. Yeah. Or it would have been like, is this
Speaker 1 (54m 12s): Was the hotel hallway even up in flames.
Speaker 0 (54m 16s): Right. And we don't get to know that. I mean, obviously there's no physical scientific reason for it to go up in flames. Right. So that's the only include that we have going for us is that the flames followed Charlie as he ran down the hall with the shotgun, they formed alongside of him. So that's the only clue that we got. All right, hold on. And then there's just like a lot.
And then the last shot or the last scene is when he's at the beach because he's, you know, he's under contract forever. Nothing's going to happen. So he goes to the beach, he goes to that rock that he's been dreaming about. And he sees a woman walking by and she becomes basically the picture that was on the wall. She poses like him. And she talks to him. She's like, oh,
Speaker 1 (55m 11s): It's a nice day.
Speaker 2 (55m 13s): It's like, oh, what's in the box. But this is where I started
Speaker 1 (55m 17s): To think, okay, we're gone back to like more bread Pitt movies. I started thinking about seven of course. And I was like, is this pre seven? Is someone's head
Speaker 0 (55m 27s): In it? It's definitely pre seven. I know what's pre seven, seven.
Speaker 1 (55m 32s): Take this from Barton Fink. Yeah. I wonder I that's another thing I was trying to look all these things up and like I was like, is Barton Fink. I'm like, that's what, that's what I was doing throughout this entire movie. Like, is this connected with this? I mean the, the obvious she
Speaker 2 (55m 50s): Really saw so much answers. Yeah. Right.
Speaker 0 (55m 55s): At one point Barton rattles it around and he's, you know, here's the thuds. Yeah. It's someone's head. It's almost definitely. It makes you think someone's but is it, it can't
Speaker 1 (56m 6s): Be Audrey's head because Charlie, but Charlie gives him the box. Why? While he's taking Audrey's body away. Isn't that
Speaker 0 (56m 16s): After, so, okay. Charlie took the body, he told Barton to go in the bathroom, passes out. He passes out. And then in that time, yeah, he could have easily beheaded her, carry the body out after he dropped off the package because
Speaker 2 (56m 34s): There was enough time where it could definitely be. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56m 37s): Yeah. Cause I know they, they show him pass out and he's kind of glazed over and you don't know for how long it could. He could have been sitting there in that room for days or hours. It doesn't, you don't know how much time lapsed. So all I'm saying is it's definitely
Speaker 2 (56m 52s): Possible to be the head because you don't see the Audrey's head. You don't
Speaker 0 (56m 55s): See the head, you just see him carrying out the body. And that was like a separate, it was separate from when he carried the body out from the room. It was him carrying the body from Charlie. Charlie was carrying it from his room past the hallway. Anyway. That's how the movie ends is, you know, I still have so many
I think that's fine. Especially in a movie that's meant to mess with your mind and like make you question whether or not things are real, like even something like total recall, right. Where you could easily make an obvious decision to say, yeah, everything wrapped up completely nicely neatly. And yes, there was some weird, you know, Mindfox along the way, but this does have a definitive resolution, but you could also think of it and say, Hmm, no, there's actually some lines or questions if you want to create them for yourself.
So like any sort of like mind bending type of thing is going to have that. So I just wish a guy into that territory a lot sooner or that it gave us more stuff to think about besides the mosquito on the wallpaper for so long, that was my main gripe is like, it was like two thirds of the movie was just wallpaper mosquito, wallpaper, mosquito.
Speaker 2 (58m 29s): It's just like a slow burn
Speaker 1 (58m 32s): To what was going to happen. Like a slow build. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (58m 37s): It was a very slow build up. I just wish it had more of a progression. That was my major complaint with it. So let's quickly go through a little bit of the cast and crew that we hadn't talked about so far, we talked about most of the cast already, but Joel and Ethan Cohen, we got to talk about them. Cause this is their only 1991 movie. Of course they had four Oscar wins Davis. They have the same four Oscar wins three for no country for old men, best picture, best director, best writer or screenplay.
And then also the screenplay for Fargo got them. Their first Oscar, this movie was the first one to be nominated for academy awards of theirs. Okay. So these are part of their 11 nominations they have, besides those four wins, they had Oscar nominations for costume design and best art direction slash set decoration. Both of those went to Bugsy instead. And then the other Oscar nomination for this movie was for a supporting actor, Michael Lerner, who played Lipnick.
Okay. And that was weird to see. Cause he has like three scenes. Yeah. You send them a movie for 10 minutes and sure. He's, he's fine. Decent enough character, but he's also, but why not? Like John Goodman? Yeah. Why not? John Goodman? That's what I'm saying. Like John Goodman is like a great actor who just does not get the critical recognition. Now John Goodman did get a golden globe nomination. Okay. Michael Leyva did
Speaker 1 (1h 0m 14s): Not to detective guys more. I mean like their, their, the way they interacted with each other and with Barton was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 0 (1h 0m 26s): Yeah. Very true. Richard Portnow and Christopher Marnee were those two detectives beyond Michael Lerner was not nominated for a golden globe. John Goodman was both of them lost to Jack Palance though. In terms of the supporting actor category. We also got a, we have to talk about Carter Burwell and Roger Deakins because they're involved in virtually every Cohen brothers movie. This is Roger Deakins, the cinematographer's first collaboration with the Cohen brothers and he's done, I think every single movie of theirs, since he's also done, he's won two Oscars.
He's known as like one of the greatest cinematographers of modern history, right? He's won two Oscar is most recently for 1917. And then also he won for blade runner 2049, but he's been nominated 13 other times, twice in one year where he was nominated for both no country for old men, as well as the assassination of Jesse James. He also did the cinematography for the 1991 movie, homicide, Georgia by David Mamet, Carter Burwell.
Like I said, he's done the score for virtually every single Cohen brothers movie, except for inside Llewyn Davis, which I liked more than you did. Yeah. He has two Oscar nominations, one for three billboards in, he also did the score for doc Hollywood in 1991, which I didn't catch on Missouri. Ebbing, Missouri. Thank you. Yeah, I'm stupid. I should've wrote down the full title. I'm like, yeah. I'll remember it. Nope, no. And then you make me try to figure it out.
Yeah. He also did the score for the 1991 movie Scorchers, which I don't really know, but we'll learn at some point. The other award that I have not mentioned yet, there's a couple of things at the Cannes film festival where this a couple of months before the August 21st wide release that we are using for these purposes, it won the trifecta of best actor for John Turturro best director for Joel Cohen, who at that time was not sharing credit.
Was Ethan Cohen probably because of director's Guild regulation reasons, or maybe they didn't actually share the directing duties at that time. But now they usually typically have both of their names attached to the directing side and then also on the Palm to, or in one of the best film for at can. And then lastly, 1992 MTV movie awards. Okay. It's one of those montage things that doesn't have like a burning hallway, supposedly, according to IDB, it was, there was a clip shown in the coats, montage.
I don't know what quota would be, perhaps the I'll show you the life of the mind, perhaps. And then also it was shown as one of the non awarded, you know, like interstitial things, best inanimate objects. Okay. Which inanimate object? I don't know. Was it the box? Was it the typewriter?
Speaker 1 (1h 3m 39s): Was it the mosquito? What, while it's animate? Was it the wallpaper? It wasn't the wallpaper.
Speaker 0 (1h 3m 48s): Was it Pete elevator operator? Was it, it was probably, it was probably the box, I guess. I don't know. So anyway, at some point, hopefully we'll find a copy of the MTV movie awards and we can like watch this stuff
Speaker 2 (1h 4m 1s): And like take notes.
Speaker 0 (1h 4m 4s): I, I, yeah. If anybody out there happens to have a copy of it, taped off the TV, please, you know, consider reaching out to us and letting us know. So those are the awards, that's the cast and crew onto true crime slash pop culture.
Speaker 1 (1h 4m 22s): I was going to, so also looking up in this mad stupor of information, I, so this hotel reminded me so much of the Cecil hotel, which I asked you, do you know the story of the Cecil hotel? You said, no,
Speaker 0 (1h 4m 46s): I know I've heard the name. It just blows my
Speaker 1 (1h 4m 49s): Mind that you don't. So, and then
Speaker 0 (1h 4m 52s): You're, you're so much more like interested in the true crimes
Speaker 1 (1h 4m 55s): And like, like the people that I know and I'm friends with, when you say, when you mentioned the word Cecil hotel, you're like, oh, okay. I know that I was going to talk about this baseball team or like, oh, I know, I know you don't know they're starting pictures. I know it's just, we don't have the same different interests. So I looked up, you know, was this base the Cecil hotel because you know, the Cecil hotel is in LA and it's known to be, you know, the quote murder hotel.
And I looked up, you know, the Cohen brothers basis off of the Cecil hotel, I found like a list of random facts. And it is not, they took this hotel from a scary hotel that they stayed at while filming blood simple in Texas, they didn't give a name of the hotel. So I am not going to talk about, I'm not going to talk about no, if it was based off the Cecil hotel, then I would, I would have gone into like the history.
But there that there's a lot that that's like an extra hour, honestly, of talking about the history and depths of the Cecil hotel. And then if you want to hear about the Cecil hotel, there are honestly documentaries on Netflix about it. And there are a million podcasts about the Cecil hotel. Like I cannot do it justice. So if there is another movie in the year, 1991 that base anything off of the Cecil hotel, maybe I will go off into it.
There could be, there's a lot of horror stuff, especially in the directive
Speaker 0 (1h 6m 44s): Video realm that we haven't even touched yet. That could very well have some inspiration there.
Speaker 1 (1h 6m 54s): So I'm going to move on to TV. I did look
Speaker 4 (1h 6m 59s): Up, I looked on the
Speaker 1 (1h 7m 1s): Music, but this is summer of 91 was Brian Adams. So I, there is no top songs, nothing new. It's the same song, top song for forever. I looked up some TV listings and I found some new TV shows that I'm going to ask if you have seen or heard of these.
Speaker 0 (1h 7m 23s): Well, first we should say that we are, I want to say that we were going to watch an unsolved mysteries, but it was like the last summer week before the new season started basically. So we didn't want to, we could have watched an August 28th episode, but we did not want to steal the thunder from our shakes, the clown
Speaker 2 (1h 7m 39s): Episode. There's a,
Speaker 1 (1h 7m 41s): Yeah, there's an August 28th release. So I was like, look, and I think we've, cause I knew we were going to talk a lot about this movie. I was like, let's not watch and solve mysteries right now. Yeah. So on ABC, these are all repeats cause it's summer time. So it was a repeat of dinosaurs. The wonder years, Doogie Howser. There is a show called Davis rules. Do you know this show or have you heard it? I have
Speaker 0 (1h 8m 9s): Heard of it. Oh gosh. Do you want to know her?
Speaker 1 (1h 8m 13s): Do you want to guess, or do you want me to you? Is
Speaker 0 (1h 8m 17s): It a standup comedian starring in, it was the last name of Davis. Wait, wait, wait, is that the one that's like based off of Dave Barry's life? No,
Speaker 1 (1h 8m 27s): I mean, you got comedian, right? But it's
Speaker 0 (1h 8m 31s): His last name was not Davis and real life. Oh, well then I don't know. Okay.
Speaker 1 (1h 8m 36s): Davis rules is a series star starring Randy Quaid is Dwight Davis. He is a widowed elementary school principal who is raising his three sons with the help of his wacky father, gunny Davis, who was played by Jonathan Winters. Do you know who that is?
Speaker 0 (1h 8m 57s): Okay. From Mork and Mindy. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (1h 8m 60s): He did a lot of, I looked him up. He did a lot of voice acting for a lot of like, like he did pop a Smurf and the smirk and he was also like a up comedian, like, like the Bob Newhart type of era. But yeah, like
Speaker 0 (1h 9m 13s): He was, he played like, oh gosh, it's been so long since I've seen Mork and Mindy, but he played like the little kid in more committee, even though he was like 20 years older.
Speaker 1 (1h 9m 24s): Yeah. It had Randy Quaid, Jonathan Winters. And it had the, his wife was played by Bonnie hunt. Oh. And one of the teachers that he works with is Deborah Jo Rupp. She plays Ms. Higgins. She's you know, from the seventies show, Patricia carte Clarkson was in that is like a neighbor. I think her name is Cosmo Juergen. And another neighbor is played by Vani Ribisi AKA Giovanni Ribisi.
He was known as Fonny Ribisi. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 2s): So he like tried to like switch out his, his vibe. Cause I mean,
Speaker 0 (1h 10m 9s): Like he, he started like my two dads, right?
Speaker 1 (1h 10m 12s): Yeah. He was kind of like the love interest, but was he known
Speaker 0 (1h 10m 16s): As Vani? Ribisi in his, my two dads days. I thought it was like the full-on jail. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (1h 10m 21s): Giovanni, I don't know if he was trying to like be hip and cool. Cause I know he was in like blossom too for like an episode. That's an interesting case. It's kind of surprised. I mean,
Speaker 0 (1h 10m 33s): Obviously it must not have been that funny, but good seasons. Yeah. Oh two seasons is more than I would have
Speaker 4 (1h 10m 41s): Thought so yeah. For one I'm over one
Speaker 1 (1h 10m 44s): For one the after that was anything but love, which we talked about before, that was the TV show with Jamie Lee Curtis and Richard Lewis.
Speaker 0 (1h 10m 55s): The one that I still got confused with Jay Thomas is Jay Thomas, Andy Potts show.
Speaker 1 (1h 11m 1s): And after that was another show called married people. Do
Speaker 2 (1h 11m 5s): You know? That sounds familiar, but I don't
Speaker 0 (1h 11m 8s): Know. I don't think I would have watched it, but the title I definitely do recognize
Speaker 1 (1h 11m 12s): I have not. I've never heard of this Xanax. No one that I know. It's just, it's a series following three couples in different stages of their relationships who live in the same building in New York city. So it's about a newlywed. Couple one is played. The husband is played by someone by the name of Chrissy young. I tried to look up anything that would, I mean, he's in a lot of random stuff.
He was in the warlock and the movie PCU. I was like who? He was like in friends, he's in like one he's in like random, small roles, but I still can't put a face to a name. So they were all on. Like, it was like a first, second, third floor and then like department. So each yeah, each age group. So they were the third floor attendance on the second floor where the Meyers and they were, you know, like a, a lawyer and a writer and they were about to have a kid.
So it's just, you know, like an older couple, a couple that's newly married, a couple that's been married. They're about to have a kid. And it's about their lives that only lasted one season. But they won this show, won an Emmy for outstanding technical direction, camera and video. Maybe they did some interesting stuff
Speaker 2 (1h 12m 42s): Between the floors and stuff. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1 (1h 12m 46s): But it made me think, I don't know if you know of this video, Michel Gondry, he did like a massive attack video it's through like it's is it on that
Speaker 2 (1h 12m 59s): DVD? Yes.
Speaker 4 (1h 13m 3s): I'm sure I've seen it. I mean, I
Speaker 1 (1h 13m 5s): Know it because I used to watch that DVD a lot and I liked that video and song, but it's just, it's a British apartment building and it's just the camera's moving up and down the floors and you see what people are doing in each apartment. So that's what I'm wondering. That's what this was.
Speaker 0 (1h 13m 25s): Yeah. Maybe he might've had something like that, at least in transitions. I don't know. Well, we have, we found some, we got a stack of TV guides from 1991. So we can maybe like, see if we can find some like promotional images for some of these shows that we can jog our memory. At some point we didn't have a TV guide to reference for this particular week, but we did raid my parents and grabbed a stack of them for future episodes. Stay tuned. Right. So under rankings and ratings, where would you put Barton Fink on your one to five star scale?
Speaker 1 (1h 14m 1s): I am going to give this movie of four. This is your second four,
Speaker 4 (1h 14m 7s): Four. This is my third, third, First third floor.
Speaker 0 (1h 14m 15s): It's fun of me for not remembering how many ratings even though I monitored the ratings page on the website. I still don't remember anything. Yeah. My zero to four star scale. I'm actually gonna say it's a three again. I think like
Speaker 3 (1h 14m 32s): Who
Speaker 0 (1h 14m 33s): I think talking through with you helped me quite a bit. Like honestly, when I, when we stopped watching the movie, I was thinking like, I don't know if I liked this movie. Oh, I don't know if I did or not. Like I needed some time to kind of resonate, like let it resonate marinate in my head because you know, was it that I was expecting the wrong thing? Was it that just, it doesn't hold up the way I think it should or that, you know, or is it just like one of those middle of the road Cullen movies that people loved at the time?
Maybe just doesn't, you know, whatever. But no, I, I, yeah, I'm going to say it three out of four.
Speaker 1 (1h 15m 13s): Well, where are you going to? I don't
Speaker 0 (1h 15m 15s): Know. I probably would have given it like a two and a half or so. And so it's not that much different, but like some I convinced you, you convince me to raise it up like a half, at least a half again, I do think the opening like ours too slow to go beyond that. Plus a lot of the characters just aren't that memorable to me other than John Goodman. I mean, they're decent enough. They're just not that memorable, but every movie is worth watching once. Would you watch it again?
I would
Speaker 1 (1h 15m 47s): Because I still have questions. And then I just, maybe this is just kind of that type of movie that just doesn't have answers. Like, you know, a David Lynch movie.
Speaker 4 (1h 15m 60s): Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1 (1h 16m 2s): I would just watch over and over to try to find meaning and different symbolism and stuff like that. Right?
Speaker 0 (1h 16m 8s): Yeah. I think if I were to watch it, like, again, almost like a commentary or like some sort of a film historians perspective that would help a lot, but it's definitely that type of movie where you get to the end and you realize, oh, there might've been clues all this stuff earlier on that I missed.
Speaker 2 (1h 16m 24s): And going back to watching, watching
Speaker 0 (1h 16m 26s): It to try to find those clues, like more time travel type of stuff that you're talking about there. Like how many other instances did we not catch that might have existed? So if you want to watch Barton Fink as of this recording in June, 2021, it's only available on digital rental, VHS or TVD, but as always check your local listings that could change as for our podcasts, you can listen to us on all of the major podcasting platforms.
Please rate, review, subscribe, tell your friends, you can email us at 1991 Movie Rewind at gmail.com. Of course you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and letterboxed just search 1991 Movie Rewind or go to 1991 Movie Rewind dot com for the full list of 800 plus movies. How long was show notes and more next week we'll be watching only yesterday, which is available on HBO, max and D no digital rental
Speaker 5 (1h 17m 29s): Or VHS for that one. We'll see you then. Thanks.