A Day or a Lifetime - Lou Breeze (R.I.P. Jon Polito)

 

Note: This entry is a tribute to Jon Polito, who passed away on 1st September 2016 at age 65, leaving behind a rich and prolific legacy of character acting which includes appearances in five Coen brothers films.  Among them was Barton Fink, where he played the role of Lou Breeze, the quiet and much-abused personal assistant of Capitol Pictures big cheese Jack Lipnick.  The Coens had written the part of Lou Breeze specifically for Polito, but ironically Polito was more interested in the role of Lipnick, which he considered by far the juicer job, and initially turned down their offer.  As recounted by Polito in this A.V. Club interview, it was thanks to a conversation with fellow Coens regular Frances McDormand that he was persuaded otherwise.

Lou, who appears in three scenes throughout the film, is a deceptively subtle character, one who initially appears to be little more than a mumbling dogsbody to a much more powerful and imposing presence, so perhaps it's understandable that Polito worried about the role not being challenging enough.  By the end of the film, Lou reveals himself to be a far shrewder and more manipulative figure than Barton could ever have pegged him for.  One of the recurring themes of Barton Fink has to do with the falseness of Hollywood; the notion that no one whom Barton encounters upon his increasingly disorientating journey is ever quite what they appear, and the more sordid realities which occasionally manage to seep their way through to the surface.  The relationship between Lipnick and Lou is one of the more muted examples of these falsities in action, but also one of the most fascinating.

For much of the time, Lou acts as an obvious foil to Lipnick's excesses; whereas Lipnick is brash, aggressive and overblown, Lou is largely silent and, what with his hunched, shuffling movements and hushed tone of voice on the scant occasions that he does speak, appears timid and uneasy.  What little Lou does say tends to be sensible, observant and to the point.  As Lipnick prattles on endlessly about that "Barton Fink feeling" and how excited he is about it, Lou seems to recognise Barton as being severely out of his depth from the start, suggesting that the studio write a treatment for the Wallace Beary wrestling picture before handing it over to him, a reasonable idea that is immediately shot down by Lipnick.  Lou spends a good chunk of his first and second appearances shuffling back and forth in order to supply Barton with beverages, although his primary purpose is to act as a kind of whipping boy for any displays of incompetence or naivety on Barton's part; someone whom Lipnick can continually rubbish in order to make Barton seem valued and important by comparison.  Lipnick never misses an opportunity to undermine Lou in front of Barton, asking him questions which he then does not allow him to answer, belittling him as a "poor schmuck" who used to have shares in the company but "muscled out" behind his back and openly ridiculing him as having less perspective upon the ins and outs of the picture business than Barton (and poor Lou looks so dejected when he does).  The noticeably rough, wordless manner with which Lou directs Barton around Lipnick's office and later removes him at the end of the scene suggests a very different story, one in which Barton is plainly several rungs lower down than Lou upon the studio ladder, and the studio's inevitable disdain for Barton as a writer is always faintly evident.

Lipnick's apparent maltreatment of Lou reaches its climax during their second meeting, which takes place out in the open beside Lipnick's pool, in another display of colourful grandiosity that comes off as startling compared to the claustrophobic squalor in which most of the film takes place.  Barton, now having to deal with the shock of Audrey's sudden demise on top of his writer's block, attempts to bluff his way through the meeting, and out of having to disclose to Lipnick the details of his non-existent screenplay.  Lou, who seems wise to Barton's floundering, suggests that he let Lipnick know exactly what he has been doing if he wishes to remain employed.  A reasonable injunction, which nevertheless appears to backfire dramatically when Lipnick launches into a furious tirade over his audacity in daring to tell an artist like Barton what to do.  When Lou defiantly refuses to grovel in humility before Barton, Lipnick dismisses him, much to Barton's shock.  The writer, we have been told, is King of Capitol Pictures, and Lipnick is seemingly quite happy to roll the heads of anyone who dares to infer otherwise.  It is, however (and not at all surprisingly), an entirely false gesture, one that Lipnick and Lou are strongly implied to have colluded in on previous occasions with writers who have been similarly non-compliant.  Judging by the look of suppressed fury on Lipnick's face, he isn't buying Barton's "work in progress" ruse, but for now it's Lou who is required to take the fall, in a blatant display of theatrics designed to spare Barton for as long as the studio's interest in him lasts.  Perceptive viewers might have noticed the subtle non-verbal exchange which takes place between Lipnick and Lou before the latter turns to address Barton.  With Barton choking out his feeble defence, we see Lipnick make a sideways glance toward Lou, who nods in understanding.  Having delivered his warning to Barton, Lou turns back to Lipnick, a distinctly knowing twitch in his eye.  To echo sentiments expressed by Barton during his second meeting with Charlie, Lou is a man who truly knows what's expected of him, or "the drill", as it were.  Sure enough, when Barton heads back to Lipnick's office for the final time toward the end of the film, we see that Lou is still present, and still very much in Lipnick's employ.

Notably, Lou's statements to Barton carry the implicit threat that, "the contents of your head are the property of Capitol Pictures", at which point he momentarily dips into Charlie's lexicon, with the head serving as an embodiment both of power and entrapment (it is through the presumed ownership of quite another head, of course, that Barton finds his apparent liberation). Lou's warning is borne out by the end of the film when Lipnick informs Barton that his failure to produce a usable screenplay has stranded him in screenwriter limbo: "Anything you write will be the property of Capitol Pictures.  And Capitol Pictures is not going to produce anything that you write.  Not until you grow up a little."  Having demonstrated that he won't be much of an asset to Capitol Pictures, Barton's fate now is to be completely broken by the system, and Lipnick implements this by ensuring that Barton is perpetually trapped with the contents of his head, which he is told no longer belong to him, forced to continue writing under the studio but with no real means of mobility or expression.  In this sense, Barton's head has essentially been severed from his body, deprived of all agency, and boxed up in a manner that mirrors the more literal treatment given by Charlie to Audrey.

One of the most striking changes to the established order of business at the final meeting is that Lou, who'd previously positioned himself at an almost uncomfortably close proximity to Barton, now maintains a firm distance from him, except for at the very end when he gets to eject him in the usual manner.  There are few more telling signals of Barton's fall from grace than in this supposed dogsbody no longer having to maintain the illusion of being on a close or comparable footing to him, much less run back and forth fetching cups of coffee for this lowly and undesirable writer.  It was Lou, we also learn, who actually read Barton's screenplay for The Burlyman and reported its merits (or lack of) back to Lipnick; Barton's fate has essentially been resting in Lou's hands the entire time, rendering Lipnick's overblown rants about that "Barton Fink feeling" completely meaningless.  Lou may be a bootlicker to the core, to the extent that he's willing to be mocked and humiliated whenever Lipnick is looking to butter up the new blood (when Geisler telephones Lou at one point in the film, he taunts him by asking "how's Lipnick's ass smell this morning?", an insinuation that seems entirely astute), but he himself is no fool, and he ultimately doesn't suffer them (save Lipnick himself, of course) for long.