Tales of Ordinary Madness aka Storie di ordinaria follia (1981) Lost Weekend goes Hollywood with STYLE

"The laureate of American lowlife." (Time)

Directed by Marco Ferreri (La Grande Bouffe (1973). 

Written by Marco Ferreri and Sergio Amidei and based on Charles Bukowski's "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories" originally published as "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness." Additional adaptation was by Sergio Amidei, Marco Ferreri, and Anthony Foutz. The excellent Cinematography was by the master Tonino Delli Colli (The Good The Bad and The Ugly, Once Upon A Time In The West, Seven Beauties aka Pasqualino Settebellezze, and Once Upon A Time In America) and the Music was by Philippe Sarde. 

The film stars Ben Gazzara (The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie) as Charles Serking, Ornella Muti (Flash Gordon, The Girl from Trieste) as Cass, Susan Tyrrell (Fat City, The Killer Inside Me, Bad, ) as Vera, Tanya Lopert as Vicky, Roy Brocksmith as Barman, Katya Berger Girl on Beach (as Katia Berger), Hope Cameron as Hotel Proprietor, Judith Drake as Widow, Patrick Hughes as the Pimp, Wendy Welles as Runaway, Stratton Leopold as the Publisher. 

Sort of a Lost Weekend brought up to date where the Italian filtered alter alter ego of the Laurate of American lowlife only has a drinking problem when he can't find a drink. 

The film is based on Bukowski's originally titled "Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness." The operative word is "tales." The tales are highly stylized stories that contain elements of fantasy and surrealism about Bukowski's alter-ego, Henry Chinaski. So it's partly truth and partly fiction to begin with. The film takes these tales and reinterprets them again into highly stylized Visual sequences about a Henry Chinaski alter-ego named Charles Serking. 

"Two things kept me from suicide – writing and the bottle” (Bukowski)

For me it clicks. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. My afterschool playground was Times Square, and you saw everything there. The drunks, the hookers, the con artists, the midnight cowboys, the hot dog-  Orange Julius/\ Pina Colada- 25 cents Pizza by the slice vendors, the strippers, the topless dancers, the live nude girls, the 24/7/365 going out of business hucksters, the down and out. The I spent the 70's in Missoula, Montana getting acquainted with the Western  "skid row" version doing adventurous pub crawls and hanging out in various dive bars rubbing shoulders with miners, ranches, loggers, bikers, hippies, Jesús freaks, college students, strippers, drunks, gamblers, crazy women, hobos, and losers. I see bits and pieces of a lot of people I've met over the years in this film. 

If you grew up happy and cloistered with your life all planned out, it may not relate. You may write a review like Janet Maslin did for the New York Times, she totally missed the visual aspects that captured beauty juxtaposed with sleaze, calling it an "unworkable blend of pretension and pornography" Oh my god, how fucking Noir of director Marco Ferreri! lol. To paraphrase Jeff Lebowski Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, Janet.

The Tales

It looks like one of the Loews "movie palaces" or “wonder” theaters. 

These were huge theaters. There was one that I could walk to as a kid the Loews Triboro it had 3800 seats. It had a two story lobby of red and gold that looked like the throne room of Louis the 16th. When you walked into the theater itself, you walked into an outdoor Italian renaissance garden. The ceiling was an azure sky blue that svery very slowly darkened to a night sky with twinkling stars just before the coming attractions started playing. It was a magical place. 

The theater used in the film looks like one of these "wonder" theaters. But this one is 1600 miles from Los Angeles and has an Arabian theme. The proscenium curtain has a scene of colorful minarets. The great auditorium is practically empty the audience is tiny. A line of various artists sit facing them. Charlie is one of the performers. He's on.

Ben Gazzara as Charles Serking

Charles Serking: "Ok, let's forget the bullshit and let's get in this so called "art". (He walks to the mic). "Style"....(Takes a swig off a wine bottle wrapped in a paper bag) style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or a dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without style. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call "art". Bullfighting can be an art. Boxing can be an art. Loving can be an art. Opening a can of sardines can be an art. Not many have style. Not many can keep style. I have seen dogs with more style than men. Although not many dogs have style. Cats have it with abundance. (Takes another swig). When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style. But sometimes people give you style. Joan of Arc had style. John the Baptist had style. Jesus. Socrates. Caesar. Garcia Lorca. I have met men in jail with style. I have met more men with style than men out of jail. Style is the difference. A way of doing. A way of being done. Six herrings standing quietly in a pool of water. Or you walking naked out of the bathroom without seeing me."

When Charlie is done he goes back to sit among the artists, a folksinger takes his place at the mike and starts playing. Charlie takes another swig, grabs one of the airline bag he seems to never be without and takes off into the wings. 

First Tale

Alcoholic hallucination, reality mixed with fantasy, who knows. He walks through a closed off dimly lit cavernous balcony lobby done in kitsch Egyptian, he ends up in a waiting room.

It's only furniture are heavy wooden makeup mirrors with connected upholstered benches spaced evenly about. These waiting rooms were outside of a, typical for the day, theater bathroom. 

Here Charlie meets a runaway girl (Wendy Welles) sitting on a bench and starring into the mirror. A work lamp with a caged bulb is the rooms only light. It looks like a theater spotlight shining over her shoulder. She is lost in her thoughts.

Wendy Wells as the runaway

She has a cord clothesline strung diagonally across the corner of the room. Tied off between the unlit sconces on the near sides of two makeup benches near the corner. A sleeping bag is rolled out on the floor. Her space. 

She is small, almost a dwarf. She tells Charlie that she is a runaway and only 12 years old. Charlie tells her he doesn't believe her. It's because she has tits. 

He tells her she's sixteen. He also mentions he's going to home to Los Angeles. "Hollywood" she asks? Yes he tells her. She's always wanted to go to Hollywood. He's next rocking her in his arms, and singing rockabye baby. The light fades out, and when they come back up Charlie is passed out on the rug. Daylight has thrusted into the room.

Charlie wakes up still singing rockabye baby. Was it all a dream? He stands up and his plane ticket and money are gone. His fly is open. Was it a wet dream? lol. She rolled him. On the clothesline is a pair of panties with "love you" lip sticked on them. Charlie laughs and shoves the panties in his pocket. He tells us in voice over that... 

Charles Serking: [voiceover] I came to the conclusion that the touring poet act was a mistake, but then again my life's been one big one... so I've been told. Luckily I had a couple of fifties stashed and bought a bus ticket home. Forty-two hours and sixteen hundred miles of concrete later, I hit the streets of Los Angeles... Some call it "Lost Angels." Me. I was just another one of the lost back where I belonged... Back in L.A... I could have kissed the ground... I resisted the impulse. Besides, it was drink I craved, and I had to be back in my kind of town... Hollywood. Everyone thinks it's the playground of the stars, but they pushed on years ago. Now it's my kind of place... dangerous... with pimps, whores without class, rip-off artists, and other hard-core turf shattered types entertaining fantasies too desperate to mention... just naked reality twenty-four hours a day. I've always had a love affair with the streets.

Home is the Angelina Apartments (now "upgraded" to the "Kingswood" for "low" income housing). It's got your typical neo noir pallet. Puke yellows, carnal reds, intestine greens, dead body blues, shabby dry bone whites, and as Tom Waits might say monkey shit browns. Charlie buys a sixpack of Budd at Carole's Liquors and drags his ass up the stairs. 

On his way down the hall to his door, he hugs a black woman he knows and passes his almost empty can of beer to two little kids. They both get a taste. Nice place.

His flop is painted "on sale" cheap Crayola blue. Spartanly furnished. No lampshades. A bed. A brewski refrigerator. An armchair. A radiator. Another cord clothesline spanning a corner with some sports jackets and shirts. A radio / record player. On a table sits his typewriter and a pile of his books. Home. 

Before he can get down to any work, he has a little dust up with Vicky his ex wife. She comes barging in telling him she's tired of paying his rent and having to cover his bar tabs. he tells her "so don't.' 

Tanya Lopert as Vicky

She grabs what's left of the sixpack and throws most of it out the window and leaves. He finds a stray can that didn't make it down to the street and pops the top. It geysers all over the room. 

Pissed, he guzzles what's left and storms next door into Vicky's apartment. He grabs her by the neck and tells her to pay for his beer. She grabs her bag and starts beating him with it. Charlie falls into an easy chair. He tells her he only wants to borrow a couple of bucks.

Tale Two

Venice Beach. A small children's playground on the sand. A blue bird day. Charlie is sitting on a swing. A blond number he's scoped out is sitting a swing over.

Charles Serking: [voiceover] Waiting on the next tumble of the dice, I made Venice Beach with a six-pack and hit the jackpot when I spotted this blond number. She was that rare kind who gives you an instant hard-on. All sexual sleaze with an ass like a wild animal. My kind of game. She was radiating heat, putting out signals and I was hooked. I followed her. What the hell else could I do? My blood was up...

Its a sequence that reminded me of James Garner following Fiddle in a sequence from Mister Buddwing. A bleached blonde feline in heat. The de facto "Dick" aka Charlie, picking up on the clues, following the signals  and tailing the pheromones. She's even got a good noir name Vera. She has that crazy wound too tight look.

Susan Tyrrell as Vera

Vera leads Charlie to a bus stop and waits. She leans against the sidewalk bench seat. Her hand buttressing her body. Charlie walks closer and scoots in between a brunette in a brown coat and the edge of the bench. 

He leans his head back against Vera's hand, she flinches but then gently strokes his ear. The bus comes. They get on.

They flirt. Vera sits with her legs slightly spread with one hand over her crotch. Charlie winks at her. Vera deflects with twist of her head. She is playing somewhat hard to get. 

You know, she definitely wants to get laid but doesn't want to appear to be a slut. It's fine line she's walking. Charlie shows her his tongue. That excites Vera she drops momentarily the act. She's hooked him. She smiles. 

They get off the bus. Vera wagging her tail, walks up a sidewalk glancing behind to see if Charlie is still in tow. She leads him into a bungalow court, and disappears. 

Charlie, starts asking around. A woman who thinks he's there to evict her tells him across the court second door from the right. 

When Vera opens the door Charlie goes in and clamps his hand over her mouth. She struggles momentarily but stops. He takes his hand away. She starts unbuttoning his shirt.

Vera: Do I know You?

Vera: Do I know You?

Charles Serking: You oughta, I'm the guy that's been following you all over town. [rips open Vera's blouse and puts his hands on her breasts. Vera falls to the rug.] 

Vera: You're killing me. [a mock faint.]

Vera lays motionless. Charlie circles his prey. The phone rings. No reaction. Charlie gets down on his knees beside her and taps her on the cheeks. He's trying to wake her up. I guess he figures She might as well enjoy it too, lol. He opens the rest of her blouse and removes her wraparound skirt.

She wears a garter belt black stockings but no panties. He spreads Vera's legs. Charlie unzips his fly. He touches her breast. No response. He's not going to rape her.

Charlie frustrated gets up walks into her kitchen and looks in the fridge. He takes a chug of wine. And takes a bite out of a banana. 

He hears bells. He goes back into the living room to find Vera standing by the front door. He walks over to her and feeds her his banana. Vera takes a bite of it and asks Charlie "What else have you got?"

Charlie slides the banana down her body Vera reacts by putting her arms around Charlie's neck kissing him while straddling his body.

Charlie carries her over to a daybed and drops Vera on it. Charley tells her to wait a minute. While he gets his pant's off. Vera gets hilariously frustrated. The sequence is a hoot.

I want it!!!

 They make love. 

Afterwards Charlie is standing at a small bar in Vera's house drinking a glass of wine.

Charles Serking: What's your name?

Vera: Vera.

Charles Serking Did you enjoy it, Vera?

Vera: Yeah, like being raped! When I got off the bus, I thought you'd lose your nerve. Most men are cowards in the broad daylight.

Charles Serking Cock-teaser!

Vera: [Smoking a cigarillo] I want you to be mean to me. Next time I want you to... use your belt.

Charles Serking I don't wear a belt. You're gonna have to lend me one.

Vera: [She gives him a wide black belt and exhales deeply on the cigarillo] Come on, Tiger, whip me. I want you to beat me before you stick it in me!

Look at his little gun!

 Vera: [after Charlie comes out from behind bar, he is revealed to be wearing a Speedo brief with a gun and holster imprinted on it. Vera points to it and laughs]

Vera: Look at his little gun!

Charles Serking Look, if we're gonna keep this up all day, you're gonna have to feed me. I'm starvin'.

Vera tells him to take a bath while she'll make him some steak and eggs and afterwards she promises that she'll give him a big surprise.

Cut to Charlie in a bubble bath. A Police officer enters the bathroom. 

Police officer: All right Casanova on your feet.

Surprise!

Vera: That's him! That's him officer. He forced me to have oral sex with him! That sonavabitch! That's him now get him! 

WTF?

Charlie is hauled off to jail. In the holding tank one of the prisoners asks Charlie what he's in for?

Vice. Carnal Violence 

Charles Serking: Vice, Carnal violence. [in Voice Over] Carnal violence, she ate me up like an enchilada and spat me into a police car. The next day Vera dismissed  the charges. Her brand of psychodrama could make a man paranoid.

It was quite the fun date. 

Tale three

The Beer Bar, across the street from The Angelina Apartments. Charlies' local. Charlie is sitting on a bar stool. In walks Cass with her pimp. Cass was destined for the convent but she broke loose physically but not entirely mentally. 

Her pimp wants her to go out and earn some money. She says that she's not working today. Cass walks over to where Charlie is sitting at the bar. She sits next to him. He looks at her. She strokes his hand. 

The pimp comes over to make trouble, he accidently knocks over Charlie's drink. The bartender tells him he's eighty-sixed, and to get out before he calls his parole officer. The pimp leaves, telling Cass that he'll see her back at the motel. Cass hisses at him like a cat  while slashing an oversized open safety pin at him like a golden claw. 

Charlie offers Cass a sip of his fresh drink. She sips from it obligingly. 

Charles Serking: Why did you sit next to me?

Cass: I don't know. Maybe because you're ugly.

Charles Serking: And you're beautiful.

Cass: Maybe. 

Charles Serking: Maybe the most beautiful girl in town.

Cass: Maybe. So you think I'm pretty huh?

Charles Serking: Pretty is not the word. Devastating is more like it. 

Pretty is not the word. Devastating is more like it. 

Cass proceeds to put the hair pin through her cheeks. "Jeezuuzz Christ" exclaims Charlie. The bartender chides Cass telling her that he's told her not to pull that shit in here it's bad for business. Do that again and I'll throw you out. 

Cass: It's my face isn't it.

Charles Serking: You know he's right you shouldn't do that 

Cass: Why shouldn't I 

Charles Serking: Because it hurts me.

Because it hurts me

Cass: So you're one of the sensitive types.

Charles Serking: Yea that's right.

Cass:  Ok buy me a drink and maybe I'll behave.

Charlie takes Cass across the street to his flop. He can't unlock the door. His ex-wife Vicky has changed the lock. He bangs on her door makes the intros. 

They have a drink. Vicky tells Cass that she is a nymphomaniac, Cass tells Vicky that she is a whore. Sisters sort of.  Vicky mentions Cass's accent and Cass tells Vicky that she grew up in a convent. 

Getting impatient with the bullshit small talk, and or horny, Charlie finally playfully grabs Vicky by the neck to get the key. Cass announces that "he wants to fuck." 

In Charlies blue room, instead of fucking, he starts to type tells Cass they'll fuck in the morning. Cass undresses and hops into his bed. 

What follows is sort of interesting riff on Benny from Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia and Salvador Dali's Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (below). 

The whole sequence is set to what radio host and author Jean Shepard used to call "cheap Spanish guitar music."

"Young Whore Sodomized by the Horn of Charlie" by Tonino Delli Colli

Charlie, who has passed out over his typewriter awakens in the blue room. He glances over his shoulder and sees Cass looking out of his window. She has her top pulled up revealing her callipygian curved ass and the entire shapely length of her legs. 

Charlie, his blood "up," gets to his feet but immediately detours to throw up in the toilet. Cass glances back over her shoulder smiling. 

Charlie, done praying to the porcelain god, suavely now, picks up his sunglasses and puts them on. He walks over to Cass. He unzips his fly and beings to slowly and methodically play hide the sausage. 

It's one of epitomes of Neo Noir beauty and eroticism. Charlie exclaims Bravo! We do too.

Charles Serking: [voiceover] Cass had that special look that got to me. Like she'd been blown away by the winds of eternity and was swimming back against the current. There was something mysterious going on and I plunged right in. I was in over my head, my mind kept telling me. I had to come up for some air. But Cass was like fluid fire and her flesh had already sucked me in. I had to get away from her before I got burned. But that was like trying to climb out of a whirlpool...

It all goes Noirsville for Charlie and Cass when a New York City publishing house, over Cass's objections, lures Charlie with the offer of big bucks to Manhattan to ensconce himself a kind of writers creative commune. He tells Cass before he leaves that if it works out he'll send for her....

Noirsville

Tales of a Skid Row Romeo, this Romantic Tragedy Drama Noir was a nice surprise. Too bad it got a lukewarm reception here in the states. You can possibly point to the rise of second wave feminism and the attitudes relating to female sexuality and the sex industry for the pan. As stated before Janet Maslin only saw pretention and pornography. I see an orchid that bloomed out of a dung pile. Where Maslin sees inadvertent howlers, I smile at a knowing, been there, and done some of that, truths.

Gazzara is great. Tyrell is a hoot. Muti is compelling and haunting. The rest of the cast is believable. The soundtrack is good the cinematography excellent.

If you delve into Charles Bukowski's life, stories, poetry, and social media blogs, you'll chuckle when you occasionally stumble upon the various women who claim either that, they identify themselves as one of the women he wrote about, that they weren't as psychotic as he makes them out to be, or that they were much better in bed than he described them to be. They forget that Chinaski ISN'T Bukowski. His works have always been fantasy, fact, and probably wishful thinking blended into fiction. The same goes for "Storie di ordinaria follia" Serking ISN"T Chinaski. Ferreti, knowingly has his Serking character, at various points in the film, pulling out a small mirror and gazing at his own image. In effect its a reflection in a reflection (the film), of a reflection (Chianski in the novel) of a public and private life (Bukowski's).

It's the kind of "NOIR" that can happen to any of us.

In Europe the film was well received and won 4 David di Donatello Awards, Marco Ferreri: Best Director, Sergio Amidei & Marco Ferreri: Best Script, Tonino Delli Colli - Best Cinematography and Ruggero Mastroianni - Best Editing. 

It also won a Nastro d'Argento award for Best Director. Screencaps are from an online streamer 10/10

More reviews

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981)

Based on the life and work of Charles Bukowski Tales of Ordinary Madness is a little slice of strangeness starring Ben Gazarra as a Bukoski like writer who staggers through relationships and drinking sessions. Along the way he takes up with a hooker played by Ornella Muti and finds his soul mate who is even more self-destructive than he is.

Dark tale that is frequently funny, and slightly quaint, is a walk on the dark side. Gazarra’s character is, like Bukowski himself, a functioning drunk who seems best when he is drinking. He is also a man who reveals little so it’s hard to see what he is thinking and feeling, though it’s clear that he is falling for Muti just as she falls for him. If we care for the deeply internalized writer, its simply because Gazarra is such a good actor that we feel for his plight because of his performance’s small nuances lets us in on his emotion despite it not being big and showy. 

Muti, who came on to my radar with her performance as Princess Aura in Mike Hodge’s Flash Gordon reveals just how good an actress she could be with its open rawness. She is clearly a broken girl despite her show of strength. 

I’m not quite sure what I think of this film. I had always been aware of the film when it came out back in 1981 because I was intrigued by Muti who I had only recently discovered. I never managed to see the film, which kind of slid from view until recently when I picked up a used DVD copy. It’s certainly a film with acting tour de forces, but I’m not sure of much beyond that. Films based on Bukowski works tend not to work well because stripped of the language the films reveal the central weakness of the plotting, or lack thereof. Bukowski is describing life and without his organization and coloring the films collapse. This film doesn’t really collapse, but after a certain point you wonder why you are being told this. Additionally the films attempt at kinky sex, ass kissing and fat girls is no longer kinky, rather it’s just quaint.

While it’s definitely worth taking a look at I’m not sure how many people will fall madly in love with it because it seems to be aiming at a very specific audience. If you think you might be of that audience go for it.

Posted by Steve Kopian at January 23, 2013

Time Out says

'When Hemingway put his brains on the wall, that was style...' drones the gutbucket poet (Gazzara) to a dozing audience in New York, before retreating home to LA among the 'defeated, demented and damned' to stagger through his quotidien tales of ordinary madness. A groan from the lower depths, this is adapted from the autobiography of leftover-beat poet Charles Bukowski. The problem is that Ferreri's grip on the English language seems too infirm to inject the necessary irony into a phrase like the one above. Gazzara is fine as the grizzled soak of a poet, his snake eyes forever gloating on some distant private joke, but his portentous pronouncements would look better in subtitles. And among the various madonna/whores that people his circle of purgatory is a sloe-eyed seraph (Muti) given to such acts as closing up her vagina with a safety-pin (presumably the corollary to Depardieu carving off his own prick in The Last Woman). For all that, there is a final scene on a beach which proves that Ferreri is the equal of Antonioni when it comes to spatial beauty.

 

by CPea.

PFI Magazine

Tales Of Ordinary Madness (1982)

reviewed by Nick Burton

Published in Issue No. 27 ~ August, 1999

 

The late Charles Bukowski was the Charles Baudelaire of the gutter, the great poet of skid row who found tenderness and beauty in the most squalid of surroundings while blocking out the pain of life as much as he could with an excess of sex and booze. Some find Bukowski’s dispatches from the underground highly overrated, but Bukowski’s poems are extraordinarily vivid and often bitterly funny observations of people living on the very edge of oblivion. His poetry, in all it’s glorious simplicity, was accessible the way poetry seldom is – a testament to his genius.

Tales of Ordinary Madness, loosely based on Bukowski’s book

Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, was written and directed by the late Marco Ferreri, the great Italian master of black comedy. While it was widely reported that Bukowski hated the film, it nevertheless finds that unique balance between melancholia and despair that fuels Bukowksi’s work. Ben Gazzara, who is absolutely magnificent here, stars as Charles Serking (read Charles Bukowski), a hard-drinking poet living in the depths of Hollywood among the “doomed, demented and the damned – the real people.” The film begins episodically, as we see Serking meet a teenage runaway dwarf backstage of a theater where he is reciting. He lulls the young woman to sleep, but in the morning she has vanished, having stolen bus tickets from Serking.

He meets a middle-aged blonde at the beach (played with incredibly believable mania by Susan Tyrrell in an unforgettable performance) who lures Serking to her apartment for a few bouts of rough sex and rape fantasies before calling the police on him and having him arrested for “carnal violence.” He gets released, and goes to his favorite bar to numb himself, where he meets the doomed Cass (the beautiful Ornella Muti), a prostitute who had been brought up in a convent. Cass sidles up to Serking at the bar, full of world-weariness and self-loathing, and in a scene of Buneulian cruelty, promptly takes a huge safety pin and pushes it straight through both of her cheeks.

Serking finds himself taking Cass back to his blue-walled apartment, where his landlady is his feisty ex-wife (played by Tanya Lopert). At first Cass uses Serking as a way to numb the pain of her existence (“fuck me until there’s nothing left for the others,” she asks him), but Serking soon finds himself falling in love. Scared of his feelings, he launches back into the lower depths of Hollywood with a passion, sleeping in flop houses and acting out a return to the womb with a portly widow.

He returns to Cass, but she has since tried to kill herself by cutting her throat with a broken bottle. He takes her to the beach where they spend a brief idyll on a serene sandbar, but when Serking awakes, Cass is gone. He finds her in his apartment where she has closed up her vagina with the large safety pin. Serking is called to New York by a publisher, but it’s not long before he returns to California, where his inquiry about Cass is met with the worst news possible, triggering a new downward spiral.

This is magnificent, edgy filmmaking that brilliantly matches the savage beauty of Bukowski’s poetry, and I’ll never understand the critical drubbing this film has taken. (That supreme film nerd Leonard Maltin called it “pretentious swill.”) There are gorgeous moments – Muti, bottomless, feeding seagulls on a sandbar is achingly beautiful – and the dingy milieu of the Hollywood dregs is vividly imagined. (Fererri’s co-writer here is Sergio Ameidi, who worked on Open City, Paisan and Strombloi with Roberto Rosellini.) The sex, particularly the scenes with Tyrrell, manage to capture brilliantly the tone of poems like “One of the Hottest” – “you boys can keep your virgins,” Bukowski writes, “give me hot old women in high heels with asses that forgot to get old.”

Perhaps the reason Bukowski hated it is because Fererri’s presence is almost as strong as Bukowski’s, and a single film perhaps is not meant to house two such distinct talents. Ferreri, who died in 1997 of a heart attack, is best known in this country as the man who made La Grande Bouffe (1973), a brilliant twist on De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom in which four pillars of the community retire to a French villa and eat themselves, graphically, to death. Ferreri had been making films since the `60s and gained some notoriety with films like The Ape Woman and Dillinger is Dead, and Don’t Touch the White Woman. His films are often examinations into the nature and myths of masculinity, and Tales fits his style perfectly. That it remains a film with a bad reputation is an terrible shame – it hits the essence of Bukowski head on, much better than Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly.