but there is no answer. In a final meeting with Lipnick, Fink's script is lambasted as "a fruity movie about suffering", and he is informed that he is to remain in Los Angeles; although Fink will remain under contract, Capitol Pictures will not produce anything he writes until he "grows up a little". Dazed, Fink wanders onto a beach, still carrying the package. He meets a woman who looks just like the one in the picture on his wall at the Earle, and she asks about the box. He tells her he does not know what it contains nor who owns it. She then assumes the pose from the picture. Cast John Turturro as Barton Fink John Goodman as Charlie Meadows/Karl "Madman" Mundt Michael Lerner as Jack Lipnick Judy Davis as Audrey Taylor John Mahoney as W. P. "Bill" Mayhew Tony Shalhoub as Ben Geisler Jon Polito as Lou Breeze Steve Buscemi as Chet David Warrilow as Garland Stanford Richard Portnow as Detective Mastrionotti Christopher Murney as Detective Deutsch Frances McDormand as Stage Actress (uncredited) Production Background and writing In 1989, film-makers Joel and Ethan Coen began writing the script for a film eventually released as Miller's Crossing. The many threads of the story became complicated, and after four months they found themselves lost in the process. Although biographers and critics later referred to it as writer's block, the Coen brothers rejected this description. "It's not really the case that we were suffering from writer's block," Joel said in a 1991 interview, "but our working speed had slowed, and we were eager to get a certain distance from Miller's Crossing." They went from Los Angeles to New York and began work on a different project. In three weeks, the Coens wrote a script with a title role written specifically for actor John Turturro, with whom they'd been working on Miller's Crossing. The new film, Barton Fink, was set in a large, seemingly abandoned hotel. This setting, which they named the Hotel Earle, was a driving force behind the story and mood of the new project. While filming their 1984 film Blood Simple in Austin, Texas, the Coens had seen a hotel which made a significant impression: "We thought, 'Wow, Motel Hell.' You know, being condemned to live in the weirdest hotel in the world." The writing process for Barton Fink was smooth, they said, suggesting that the relief of being