10 Best Films About Writer's Block

One of the quintessential writer's block films came to be out of, well, writer's block. Seems the Coen Bros. were struggling to complete the script for Miller's Crossing. Always prolific, the brothers opted against stopping work altogether and instead scripted Fink, a film about a hit New York playwright (Turturro) summoned into the Hollywood system to script a low-rent Wallace Beery wrestling picture.

Confined to a low-rent hotel room, Turturro sets about importing his high culture into a decidedly low culture feature. He befriends an insurance salesman (John Goodman) in the next room and, though Goodman appears to represent precisely the "common man" (without actually listening to one) Turturro wishes to explore, he regularly interrupts with his own conjecture and thoughts. "Because you don't listen!" Goodman exclaims toward the film's surreal climax.

The Coens loaded the film with allusions and representations of actual people, most notably William Faulkner as an alcoholic destroyed by Hollywood's sweatshop-like working conditions for writers – John Mahoney's W.P. Mayhew in the film. Faulkner himself worked on a Beery picture in the 1930s. He returned several times, whenever he was desperate for money.