position as studio head, as he explains: "...you can't always be honest, not with the sharks swimming around this town ... if I'd been totally honest, I wouldn't be within a mile of this pool – unless I was cleaning it." In his office, Lipnick showcases another trophy of his power: statues of Atlas, the Titan of Greek mythology who declared war on the gods of Mount Olympus and was severely punished. Barton watches dailies from another wrestling film being made by Capitol Pictures; the date on the clapperboard is December 9, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Later, when Barton celebrates the completed script by dancing at a USO show, he is surrounded by soldiers. In Lipnick's next appearance, he wears a colonel's uniform, which is really a costume from his company. Lipnick has not actually entered the military but declares himself ready to fight the "little yellow bastards." Originally, this historical moment just after the United States entered World War II was to have a significant impact on the Hotel Earle. As the Coens explained: "[W]e were thinking of a hotel where the lodgers were old people, the insane, the physically handicapped, because all the others had left for the war. The further the script was developed, the more this theme got left behind, but it had led us, in the beginning, to settle on that period." The Picture The picture in Barton's room of a woman at the beach is a central focus for both the character and camera. He examines it frequently while at his desk and after finding Audrey's corpse in his bed he goes to stand near it. The image is repeated at the end of the film, when he meets an identical-looking woman at an identical-looking beach, who strikes an identical pose. After complimenting her beauty, he asks her: "Are you in pictures?" She blushes and replies: "Don't be silly." The Coens decided early in the writing process to include the picture as a key element in the room. "Our intention," Joel explained later, "was that the room would have very little decoration, that the walls would be bare and that the windows would offer no view of any particular interest. In fact, we wanted the only opening on the exterior world to be this picture. It seemed important to us to create a feeling of isolation." Later in the film,