Daily Dialogue — November 22, 2016

“Look Bart, barring a preference we’re going to put you on a wrestling picture, Wallace Beery. I say this because they tell me you know the poetry of the streets, so that would rule out westerns, pirate pictures, screwball, Bible, Roman… look, I’m not one of those guys who thinks poetic has got to be fruity. We’re together on that aren’t we? I mean I’m from New York myself, well, Minsk if you want to go all the way back. Which we won’t, if you don’t mind and I ain’t asking. Now people are going to say to you, Wallace Beery, wrestling, it’s a B picture. You tell them: BULLSHIT! We do NOT make B pictures here at Capitol. Let’s put a stop to that rumor RIGHT now!”

— Barton Fink (1991), written by Joe Coen & Ethan Coen

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Enthusiasm.

Trivia: Written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen after a trip to see Baby Boom (1987) while suffering writer’s block writing Miller’s Crossing (1990).

Dialogue On Dialogue: Jack Lipnick, the head of Capitol Pictures, oozes enthusiasm when he first meets Barton, caught up in matching the New York playwright’s intellectual ‘man of the people’ sensibilities with a Wallace Beery wrestling project. His hype in this scene sets up the audience for what we anticipate will be nothing but a disaster.