Fink, Barton

“They call me a madman, but I’m not mad at anybody”
We were talking about video editing systems, when I mentioned something about the Coen brothers editing “Intolerable Cruelty“, with Final Cut Pro.
A little after our discussion of Avid vs. Final Cut Pro and just the power we’ll need for this project, our photographer came up and asked if I was a “Coenhead”. I’m a huge fan of “O’ Brother”, “Fargo”, & “Raising Arizona”, but I haven’t really delved into their other works. So the photog, had a copy of the 1991 movie “Barton Fink” at his desk and loaned it to me for the weekend.
It’s such a different movie of the three I’ve seen, that it’s hard for me to recommend it to anyone who’s use to the flow of the other movies. I like the movie, strange movies are up my alley, but the pace is just so slow. I like the characters, John Goodman & John Turturro always are good let along John Mahoney (pre-Frazier) in the role of the Falkneresque, W.P. Mayhew.
I liked the movie, it’s not my favorite, but it’s something I’ll have to watch again to full understand it and catch the little things I seem to miss on the first watch. I really couldn’t imagine this coming out in 1991, it’s a little ahead of it’s time, but when I think about what else came out that year, I wish my 17 year-old self had seen this movie.

This entry was posted by 2000-2005 on Saturday, July 10th, 2004 at 10:07 am. It is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Fink, Barton”

  1. Reed Gregory says:
    July 10th, 2004 at 11:07 am

    I was 11 when those came out! We watched a good bit of Blood Simple in my film class my final semester and imagery detail for 1984 was just great.
    The Big Lebowski was also a good movie.

  2. I saw Barton Fink when it first came out. (We must be the same age! I was 17 then too.) I had an art-movie nut b-friend who happened to live a couple of blocks away from an art-movie theater. Saw Naked Lunch the same year, god help me…actually, I’d sort of throw both of those into the same category: fascinating movies that I’ll (probably? hopefully?) never see again.
    Tho, oddly enough, I didn’t see Raising Arizona until a few weeks ago….

  3. Reed, after watching “Barton Fink” and hearing about “Blood Simple”, I’ll probably dive more into the Coen movies. I’d like to see just how they started to where they are now.
    Elaine, I’m 30/born in 73. I read Naked Lunch around the same time the movie with Peter Weller came out, didn’t really grasp a large extent of the book, but the movie was so disjointed I lost interest in finishing the book. There was one theater in town that showed these movies, it’s gone now. I went to see Naked Lunch with my girlfriend at the time…she knew the book, so it was her idea.
    If I saw something like Barton Fink at the time, I’d probably would have picked up a camera sooner in life.