Charles Bukowski makes a movie.
You can smell Barfly (1987) before you even hit play. That hot, fetid stink of beer sweat and piss-soaked alleyways under a neon buzzing like a swarm of flies hitting a dirty bug zapper. It’s a film that shouldn’t exist – too grimy for prestige, too literary for the Ivar grindhouse scene – but somehow, against all odds, Francis Ford Coppola and Cannon Films managed to shove it into the real world.
Charles Bukowski’s universe exists solely in the cracks of a wet skid row sidewalk. It’s a place where the nicotine-stained wallpaper is always bucking off the walls, the grease pit smell from the diner on the first floor wafts through the broken window, and if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the ghost of Chuck E. Weiss arguing with a lamp post. It’s a dimension that doesn’t easily connect with Hollywood. And yet here’s Mickey Rourke, all slurred poetry and hunched swagger, staggering through a beat-to-hell version of Buk’s alter ego, Henry Chinaski. It’s less an impersonation than a possession. He turns the radio dial past ‘drunk’ into some new frequency – half-mumbling, half-philosophizing, and somehow making it feel like the filthiest, most romantic thing you’ve ever seen. And Faye Dunaway. Hollywood royalty, sinking into the gutter with the kind of elegance only a true legend can manage. She carries the weight of every bad decision on her shoulders, and every cigarette feels like a countdown to something worse.
Yeah, that it came out of Cannon Films – the same outfit that gave us Ninja III: The Domination – is pretty remarkable. The Go-Go boys were better known for pumping out cheapy action flicks and exploitation, but every now and then, they’d swing for the the art house balconies with the likes of Runaway Train and Love Streams. Here, Barbet Schroeder calls the shots and serves the drinks, nothing gets watered down.
Bukowski himself wasn’t much for Hollywood, but for a brief moment, the gutter and the silver screen met at the same watering hole, and Barfly was the result. It’s more than a film; it’s a proper bender.