John Turturro wears an Elgin

The Hotel Earle is rotting from the inside, its wallpaper peeling, its corridors empty, Steve Buscemi working the front desk like a man trapped in purgatory. Joel Coen's Barton Fink (1991) puts John Turturro in that hotel and keeps him there, a New York playwright hired by a Hollywood studio in 1941 to write a wrestling picture and slowly losing his mind as the walls close in. John Goodman plays the insurance salesman next door who may or may not be a serial killer.

On Barton's wrist is a vintage Elgin, its octagonal Art Deco case and cream dial caught in close-up, with the Elgin name legible below the twelve. Elgin made watches in Elgin, Illinois, from 1864 to 1968 and was one of the largest American manufacturers of its day, the kind of affordable, domestic timepiece a New York playwright in 1941 would plausibly wear.