Barton Fink. 1991. Directed by Joel Coen

Film

No upcoming events

Barton Fink. 1991. USA. Directed by Joel Coen. Screenplay by Joel Coen, Ethan Coen. With John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis. 35mm. 116 min.

Evoking the Hollywood of Nathanael West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust, Barton Fink follows the titular New York playwright as he heads to Hollywood to write screenplays for Capitol Pictures. The highbrow and somewhat prudish Barton is tasked with writing a boxing picture for actor Wallace Beery. Somewhat horrified with his assignment, he decamps to the Earle Hotel in Los Angeles, an art deco edifice with creepy hallways and empty guestrooms, where he meets his next-door neighbor, Charlie Meadows. Is Charlie real or a character floating around in Barton’s psyche? Is any of what goes on actually happening?

This film accompanies Modern Matinees: The Coen Brothers.

Past events

Thu, Dec 14, 2017, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2
Wed, Nov 8, 2017, 1:30 p.m.

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].