all." Unlike Mayhew's inability to write due to drink and personal problems, Faulkner continued to pen novels after working in the film business, winning several awards for fiction completed during and after his time in Hollywood. Jack Lipnick Lerner's Academy Award-nominated character of studio mogul Jack Lipnick is a composite of several Hollywood producers, including Harry Cohn, Louis B. Mayer and Jack L. Warner – three of the most powerful men in the film industry at the time in which Barton Fink is set. Like Mayer, Lipnick is originally from the Belarusian capital city Minsk. When World War II broke out, Warner pressed for a position in the military and ordered his wardrobe department to create a military uniform for him; Lipnick does the same in his final scene. Warner once referred to writers as "schmucks with Underwoods," leading to Barton's use in the film of an Underwood typewriter. At the same time, the Coens stress that the labyrinth of deception and difficulty Barton endures is not based on their own experience. Although Joel has said that artists tend to "meet up with Philistines," he added: "Barton Fink is quite far from our own experience. Our professional life in Hollywood has been especially easy, and this is no doubt extraordinary and unfair." Ethan has suggested that Lipnick – like the men on which he is based – is in some ways a product of his time. "I don't know that that kind of character exists anymore. Hollywood is a little more bland and corporate than that now." Cinema The Coens have acknowledged several cinematic inspirations for Barton Fink. Chief among these are three films by Polish-French film-maker Roman Polanski: Repulsion, (1965) Cul-de-Sac (1966) and The Tenant (1976). These films employ a mood of psychological uncertainty coupled with eerie environments that compound the mental instability of the characters. Barton's isolation in his room at the Hotel Earle is frequently compared to that of Trelkovsky in his apartment in The Tenant. Ethan said regarding the genre of Barton Fink: "[I]t is kind of a Polanski movie. It is closer to that than anything else." By coincidence, Polanski was the head of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, where Barton Fink premiered. This created an awkward situation. "Obviously," Joel Coen said later, "we have been influenced by his films, but at this time we were very hesitant to speak to