Barton Fink is the main character of the 1991 Coen Brothers film Barton Fink. Actor John Turturro plays Barton Fink and the character is loosely based on the real life writer Clifford Odets. The film is set in the year 1941.

Barton Fink is a successful playwright from New York City. After a successful run of shows, he is offered a job by Capitol Pictures to write scripts for movies. Barton accepts this offer and moves across the country to Hollywood California. Barton hesitates to accept the one thousand dollar a week job for fear that it would remove him from the common man. Fink is very prideful on his working class status and applies this focus to his writing. In order to remain common, Barton checks himself into a less expensive hotel, The Hotel Earle. This drab surrounding will serve as the creative arena for Barton’s soon to be written scripts, and his sanity.

After meeting with the studio executive, Barton is assigned the write a script for a wrestling movie. In keeping with his common man ethos, this type of script should be easy to write and not take too long. Unfortunately, Fink finds himself in a state of writers block and can not get beyond the first few lines of his script. Fink becomes easily distracted by his surroundings and finds it impossible to write with the heat, the wallpaper peeling, and the constant noise coming from the room next to his room. After complaining, the next-door tenant Charlie Meadows comes to introduce himself and the two seem to hit it off even though Barton finds him mildly annoying. Barton’s writers block only gets worse and he finds himself staring at the picture of the woman staring at the beach on his wall. Barton constantly stares at the picture in a dream like manner, often using it as a means of mental escape.

Barton Fink is a complex character. He is a man that contains the same hopes, dreams, and desires as any other man. Fink’s main issue is that he does not realize he full potential. At first, Fink claims he does not know how long he will be living in Hollywood because he has the mind set that he won’t succeed and fail at being a screenwriter. Barton’s writers block is a result of this mind set. He is given a very simple writing task but finds it to be too difficult. How does a common man not know how to write a movie for the common man? Even better, if Barton Fink is truly a common man, then he would have already seen a wrestling picture, a fact that is spelled out when Fink tries to find help with his script. The truth is, Fink is far bigger than the common man and capable of more than he gives himself credit. The common man stigma is what holds him back. Charlie Meadows tries to help Fink with his script. He gives him a an idea of what a wrestling match is like and tries to get Fink to listen to one of his many stories in order to inspire his writing. These attempts made by Charlie are widely ignored by Barton. Barton does not see that the seemingly crazy neighbor knows more about the common man than he does, and Fink does not want to believe it.

In order for Barton to finish his script, he must give up his sanity. After trying to find help from many sources, Barton invites Audrey, the lover and secretary of Fink’s favorite writer, William Preston Mayhew. Audrey offers to help Fink because she claims that she is person behind her lovers writing. When Fink wakes up the next morning, he finds Audrey’s dead body lying in a pool of blood next to him. Barton summons Charlie to help dispose the body. After disposing the body, Charlie tell Barton he has to go to New York for a few days but will be back. He leaves Barton with a box and tells him to watch it until he comes back. After this, Barton writes his wrestling script in one sitting.

Barton Fink finds himself a suspect in the murder of Audrey. He tries to hold it together upon being interrogated by the police. It is then Fink finds out that his friend Charlie is a known criminal and wanted for murder. Charlie returns from New York and shoot the police officers in the hotel. He then sets the hotel on fire. Barton escapes, with the box in tow, and finds himself on the beach talking to a woman who resembles the picture on his wall.