OSCARS '91: Barton Fink

Macintosh & Maud Haven't Seen What?!

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CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of murder, alcohol, drinking, racism, antisemitism, fascism, Nazis, gunshots.

We continue our Oscars ‘91 series this week with yet another dark movie about Hollywood. Though this version has a twist: it’s the Coen brothers, and they’re making things incredibly weird, as they’re known to do. For a movie written about writer’s block by two writers dealing with writer’s block, it happens to be a fairly decent movie. It’s just that the Coens hadn’t struck that balance of digging up obscure references and making them instantly relatable. John Turturro and John Goodman give truly incredibly performances, but the Coens seem to have internalized the story a bit too much. Roll in some paper and get to typing as we watch Barton Fink on Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!

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Intro and outro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Excerpt taken from “Fade Out - The End” from the soundtrack to the motion picture Barton Fink, composed by Carter Burwell. Copyright 1991, 1996 TVT Records.

Excerpts taken from the film Barton Fink, © 1991 Circle Films, Inc.

Excerpt taken from “The Red Knight Suite” from the soundtrack to the motion picture The Fisher King, composed by George Fenton. Copyright 1991 Tri-Star Pictures, Inc.; MCA Records, Inc.