Comedy · Drama · Thriller
American
1991 · Directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen · 117 min
In 1941 a celebrated New York playwright, convinced he writes for the common man, takes a Hollywood contract and settles into a shabby Los Angeles hotel to write a B-picture. The film is a dark comedy about work, vanity and ideas, and it grows steadily stranger.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of the early-1990s American auteur wave, and a key entry in the Hollywood-on-Hollywood tradition, where the studio system is treated as a place of moral and psychological dread.
Watch with intention
Treat the hotel and the studio as two kinds of pressure on one man's mind, and watch how each is staged.
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