Barton Fink

“I will show you the life of the mind!” Barton Fink John Goodman Image via 20th Century Fox. Ever since ...

When Barton chose to stay at the Earle to be closer to his working-class heroes, he chose to live in the mind of the Karl Mundts of the world, driven insane by the indignities of everyday life. Her image is a perfect replica of the portrait he had in his room at the Earle, the only good thing in such a hellish place. As he meditates on his situation, a woman sits down on the sand in front of him. Both in his moving to Hollywood and in his forays into the world of the Average Joe, Barton enters the belly of a beast without fully comprehending what it means. The only upside is that the conditions of the Earle seem to have gotten a little better: the heat has become more bearable, the mosquitoes are gone, and the glue holding the wallpaper in place no longer drips, exposing the flesh-like walls of the hotel’s room. Mundt, in turn, refuses to let Barton inhabit his world without submitting him to the same horrors that he goes through. Fink’s door to listen to his endless ramblings about the hardships of being a writer. Motivated by the promise of making a quick buck, Barton moves to Los Angeles and takes up a room at the Earle, a run-down hotel that he hopes will keep him close to the Average Joes that he uses as subjects for his plays. Then, he turns to Barton, handcuffed to his bed by the two detectives who believe him to be at least an accomplice in Audrey's murder. A playwright from 1940s New York, Barton is invited to write for the movies after his first play, a Death of a Salesman-like take on the American dream and the troubles of the working class, becomes a critical and box-office hit on Broadway. His screenplay for a wrestling B-movie starring Wallace Beery isn’t going anywhere, and Barton gets little to no help from the studio execs breathing down his neck. [John Goodman](https://collider.com/tag/john-goodman/)), a self-proclaimed insurance salesman that lives next door to Barton at the Earle.