For the purposes of complementing my portfolio and most importantly my weaknesses, my Barton Fink will be a meticulous period adaptation true to 1940s Downtown Los Angeles. 

 

My main inspiration for the exterior of Hotel Earle will be the Cecil Hotel. Though there are many historic hotel buildings in Los Angeles, most of them are inspired by the Beaux Arts tradition, which I do not believe is suitable to the descriptions of the hotel that the script provides. For the interior, I will take inspiration from the lobby of Hotel Roosevelt, because despite its Spanish Renaissance Revival style, the colonnade structure provides a weird sense of both an open and closed space, which I believe is essential to my design. 

 

Barton Fink is first and foremost a story about writer’s block. As a creative myself, I am aware of what a creative block feels like. Though it is easy to simplify writer’s block as being trapped in a box, my impression of a creative block is more of a void. There are no walls or definition that provides a glimpse of a hint into what may become a storyline; there is only nothingness. My challenge would be creating a space that is true to the period while accentuating that suffocating nature of an empty space that seems to point to no visible way out.