Barfly (1987) Bukowski Skid Row L.A. Bio Noir

Directed by Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female). 

Written by Charles Bukowski. Beautiful cinematography with a Hopper-esque color palette by Robby Müller (Repo Man, Paris, Texas). Music by Jack Baran. 

Charles Bukowski has been called the "laureate of American lowlife." (Time)

The film stars Mickey Rourke (Angel Heart, Body Heat, Sin City, The Wrestler) as Henry Chinaski, Faye Dunaway (Bonnie & Clyde, Chinatown) as Wanda Wilcox, Alice Krige as Tully Sorenson, Jack Nance (Eraserhead, Hammett, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks TV, Wild At Heart, The Hot Spot, Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway) as Detective, J.C. Quinn as Jim, Frank Stallone as Eddie, Sandy Martin as Janice, Roberta Bassin as Lilly, Gloria LeRoy as Grandma Moses, Joe Unger as Ben, Harry Cohn as Rick, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Joe, Fritz Feld as Bum, Charles Bukowski as Oldtimer, Albert Henderson as Louie, Julie 'Sunny' Pearson as Hooker in Bar. 

Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski

Faye Dunaway as Wanda Wilcox

Alice Krige as Tully Sorenson

Jack Nance as the Detective

Frank Stallone as Eddie

Charles Bukowski as bar patron

Barfly was the first film about Charles Bukowski that I watched. It was way before I even knew who he was. Since then I've read a handful of his novels, watched videos of Bukowski on YouTube and have seen 1981's Tales Of Ordinary Madness, and, I've since found out about a film from Belgium directed by Dominique Deruddere called Crazy Love (1987), so I watched that also. 

Each film is sort of loosely based on a different book by Bukowski, in Crazy Love  the story is part biography,  the book is primarily The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California, character is called Harry Voss. It relates his sexual awakening, his high school days plagued with pus-filled cystic acne, and his disillusionment as a young adult. 

Tales Of Ordinary Madness, uses the short story The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and parts of the 1972 collection Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Here, the character is Charles Serking a variation of Bukowski's autobiographical character Henry Chinaski. This one, as you would expect focuses of the characters relationship to woman, elevating the "most beautiful woman in the town to goddess status with Ornela Muti.

Barfly is based on a screenplay by Charles Bukowski of some of his experiences in Hollywood and probably some from back East, written through his partly truth and partly fiction autobiographical "filter character" Henry Chinaski. I've read enough to know that between 1946 and 1956 he went on a 10 year bender. These years are sort of what is being chronicled in the film though he held various jobs (a fill-in letter carrier, a pickle factory employee, etc., etc.) in the late fifties and he published in Gallows a small poetry mag and Nomad an avant garde literary mag.  In the 60's, 

Bukowski upon reflection "in an interview in the 2003 documentary film Born into This, Bukowski said that Rourke "didn't get it right... He had it all kind of exaggerated, untrue. He was a little bit showoff about it. So, no, it was kind of misdone." (John Dullaghan (director) (2003). Bukowski: Born into This. Magnolia Pictures. (wiki))

For me the above manifests itself in Mickey Rourke's Henry Chinaski's voice.

Now like I mentioned earlier, I have since seen video of Bukowski, and Mickey Rourke is not doing Bukowski. He doing a riff of both a cartoon voice from my childhood the original Snagglepuss character (voice by Daws Butler) and that of a late night 1960s comedian named Jackie Vernon, "The King of Deadpan." Anybody my age is gonna remember both.

As soon as I heard Mickey open his mouth I had a hard time taking him seriously. The other thing that I took for granted then upon first seeing the film, but now doesn't quite ring true (at least in all the writings of Bukowski that I've read), is the fighting between Chinaski and Eddie the Bartender. I don't remember him mentioning any knock down drag out fights. Everything I've read is mostly about drinking and screwing. lol. 

The basic story is Chinaski gets drunk, writes his prose, is tracked down by a PI for a publisher, fights Eddie, gets 86-ed from the Golden Horn, heads into the Kenmore Bar and meets soul mate Wanda. They get drunk, screw, he moves in with Wanda, writes his prose, gets drunk, fights Eddie, writes his prose, meets Tully who wants to take him away from skid row, screws Tully, gets drunk, Wanda screws Eddie, writes his prose, Wanda meets Tully, girl fight, writes his prose, fights Eddie, and repeat.

The real treasure of the film for folks tuned in to Noir Visuals, is all the on location work. The immortalization of L.A's various dive bars, some with their interiors, and the skid row resident hotel's and flops. It's a slice of a universal "Noirsville."

Noirsville

"Santa Clause Was Drunk in the Ski Room" Tom Waits

     

The film is basically biographical vignettes of one phase in the life of Charles Bukowski filtered and polished through his alter ego Charles Chinaski then filtered through Mickey Rourke's interpretation of Chianski. So twice removed from the real deal. None it happened in the time (the present of 1987) or in any of the bars depicted, i.e., a lot of his binge drinking stories happened between 1946 and 1962, and if I remember right, not all in the City Of Angels.

Barbet Schroeder and Robby Müller captured some beautiful archival footage of some long gone skid row bars and flops of L.A. and vicinity. Its a real treasure for that fact alone. It's obviously not factual history take it with a grain of salt. Its entertaining 8/10.