Is the alcoholic Southern writer depicted in the movie Barton Fink based on Faulkner, and is it an accurate portrayal?
The Southern writer in the movie Barton Fink (played by John Mahoney, who went on to play Martin Crane on the NBC television show Frasier) does bear some relationship to the real-life Faulkner, who did “whore” himself by going to Hollywood and writing screenplays to earn enough money to live. Like Faulkner, the movie character drinks a great deal and has an affair while in Hollywood but ultimately, the movie version is a caricature of Faulkner. The title character in Barton Fink also shares some characteristics with Faulkner: like Faulkner upon his first trip to Hollywood, Fink s first assignment was to write a “wrestling picture” starring Wallace Beery. The Coen Brothers, who wrote and directed Barton Fink, seem to like to inject Faulkner references in their films. In Raising Arizona, the escaped convicts (played by John Goodman and XXX) are the Snopes brothers, and in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Penny s fiancee, Vernon T. Waldrip, is the name of a character referred to in The Wild Pa
