Fat City

I had deliberately overlooked Fat City in the past believing it to be yet another twist on the formulaic and Hollywoodization of boxing stories. Was I wrong! I'm so glad that I unexpectedly caught this and was riveted from the get go. Fat City is an amazing film, made even more stellar by the casting of Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, Candy Clark and Nick Colasanto. It is hard to distinguish between these marvelous actors as their performances, under the hands of the maestro John Huston, are incredible. Stacy Keach is the focus however, and he carries the film with the able performances of the aforementioned. I believe this to be one of the most overlooked films of all time.

The characters are a bunch of losers, but they don't know they're losers and keep reiterating their dreams. They operate on a level that is below average and live in impoverished surroundings, always believing that something good is around the corner. There is no big win in this, the wins remain around the corner.

There's basically no beginning, middle and end. It is a study of the underbelly of a town in California, the seedy bars, the dirty restaurants, life in the one room with kitchen-in-a-corner of a walk-up fleabag hotel. Stacy Keach pulls you into this world, he lives and breathes the character he plays down to the last few minutes of screen time when he takes a look around the rathole of a restaurant he's in, surrounded by people like himself and the film freezes for about a minute before it moves on.

You catch his stark awareness at that moment. And all of his life, past, present and future becomes crystal clear to him. You don't think he's going to do much with this newfound insight. It doesn't matter. And that's the point. Bleak and beautiful. All in the same minute of time. 9 out of 10. Thanks once again, Mr. Huston.

Fat City is a small film directed on location in Stockton, California by legendary director John Huston.

It is about small time boxers and small time losers. Stacy Keach is a washed up boxer, a drunk, making a comeback but really not up to it. He is in a tempestuous relationship with Susan Tyrell who is magnificent as his drunk girlfriend. The booze oozes out of her pores and she really cracks that paralytic look in her face.

Jeff Bridges is the up and coming boxer but he immediately loses his early fights, he gets his pretty girlfriend, Candy Clark pregnant and gets some irregular work as a labourer sometimes working with Keach in the fields.

There is nothing grandiose or bombastic about Fat City. It really is introverted dealing with the underclass in the early 1970s. The location filming adds a lot of authenticity and rawness.

Keach who was a noted Shakespearean actor of the American stage is very believable. He plays not a has been but a never was, who wants to have that one final crack of something big but he will get nowhere it as he always gets sidetracked, usually by booze.

Bridges at the time was the young up and comer with a mixture of enthusiasm and wide eyed innocence. He was 23 years old when he made this film and was already a veteran with an Oscar nomination to his name as he was a child actor working in his father's show.

A critic pointed out something novel about this boxing film. These almost desperate people we meet go out of their way to be kind to each other no matter how hopeless their situation.

When Keach argues with Tyrell you expect that he will hit her. When her ex-boyfriend turns up, you again expect that he will get in a fight with Keach. However you find people struggling to be nice and civil to each other.

Boxing actually plays a small part in the film. Fat City is a forgotten gem of 1970s cinema.

John Huston is amazing to me. He defined an entire genre with his foot barely in the Hollywood door, then he kicked the door down and walked in to clear well deserved Oscars as both writer and director, he took his Oscars with him to Africa to get hammered with Erol Flynn and go out on safaris leaving behind him a big production to go to hell, then came back to find they had nailed a new door in place of the one he had torn down so he didn't bother to knock at all this time, he packed his things and went to a small dingy bar where Mexicans and barflies go to kill their time to make movies about killing time, movies about misfits and people who are dead inside, movies like Fat City and Under the Volcano, to adapt Flannery O'Connor and James Joyce, to soar above and beyond what anyone might have expected from any director of his generation. It's 1972 and John Huston is still relevant as ever. How many directors can you name who turned out some of their best material in their fifth decade directing movies? Venerable relics like Clint Eastwood move over, American cinema (not simply Hollywood) already had a patriarch in place long before any of you looked through a viewfinder.

It's also amazing to me how an indomitable absolute badass of a successful director can know failure so well. This is a movie where people box but it's not about boxing. There's no triumph to be had here and the crowd gathered in the small suburban boxing hall in Stockton, California, to pass their time is not there to be pleased. Most of them are probably the same kind of deadbeat with no future and a sh-tty job as the third-grade boxers who beat each other for their amusement. We get the young upstart boxer with the fast legs and a bright future ahead of him if only someone could train him right but this character can only make sense when we see him standing next to Stacy Keach, the aging boxer who won't see thirty again and who maybe had a chance once but blew it for women and alcohol and now he's desperate for one last throw of the dice.

The sad beauty of Fat City is that we're not looking at some kind of last defiant stand, we don't enter the ring for one last moment of triumph with the lights blaring bright and the crowd cheering, this is not The Wrestler anymore than it is Rocky, the lights were not only dimmed long ago but they probably never shone bright enough anywhere except in the protagonist's head. The closest Stacy Keach came to glory some odd 10 years ago was in itself a failure. Were his eyebrows slashed with a razor or not that fateful night down in Mexico we never find out. For most of its duration Fat City is a beaten man with sunken cheeks and a grim unshaven wan face wearing an expression of incredulous outrage.

Then we're inside a rundown cafe, the walls are painted in sickly washed-out colors and old men play cards around tables in felt, and we sit down for one last cup of coffee on the cheap formica counter. We see the young boxer standing next to the washed-up has-been one who can't even be a mentor anymore and an old man, a walking shell of someone "who was maybe young once", comes over to serve us and it all makes sense. "Maybe he's happy" says the young one. "Maybe we all are" says the other, and we know we're not, life doesn't quite work out that way, but it's all we have. The old man turns and smiles a toothless smile (senile or knowing, who's to say) and Fat City fades out into one of the most touching heartfelt endings I've seen. Fatalists cannot afford to miss this one, it's the stuff dashed hopes and broken lives are made of. Rejoice.

John Huston's 1972 production of FAT CITY is a masterpiece of film-making and acting. It's more than just a movie of boxing, it's symbolic of the American Dream gone depressingly wrong. Stacy Keach in the finest role of his outstanding career is symbolic of "every-man". His dreams are based on professional successes, which by gaining money and fame, he will be happy in his life. As we know in so many cases, that obtaining fame and money leads many people down an even deeper road of depression and self-destruction. For without emotional success, without love, a person is empty inside. A powerful film. Not a boxing film at all. Boxing is merely the symbolism here; fighting to succeed. "I win the fight and I get my wife back", says Keach's character, Billy Tully.

A great movie, but one that leaves you feeling sad; pondering your own hopes, dreams, and desires. A remarkable supporting cast, high-lighted by a young Jeff Bridges, make FAT CITY one of John Huston's most memorable films. A Champion of movie-making.

Jeff Bridges is young and charming in this movie about an upcoming boxer who meets another boxer (Stacey Keach) who is going down the drain. First I expected it to be a standard boxer movie portraying a young man who was going to make it big. But soon I discovered this movie was about losing. About drunks and has beens. Depressing. But not so depressing that it isnt great to watch Stacey Keach perform a drunk so well. Another actress got nominated for an oscar, but it should have been Stacey Keach who really deserved an oscar. Never seen an actor perform a drunk so well. Almost couldnt believe that Keach was actually acting sometimes, because he looks so wasted and completely lost.

John Huston directed Fat City in a documentary kind of style. The photography resembles a real life look in the run down bars and boxing halls. Real life bums and poor people are being used as extras. This movie is depressing, even boring sometimes, but nevertheless still fascinating to watch, because of its true to life portrayal of everyday people.

My only criticism is that there is a romantic subplot with a woman that kinda slows down the movie in the middle. There is definitely a lack of dynamic in the middle. But hey, that is the life this drunk is leading. Nothing much happens except for another night with booze. And another... And if you can stumach a movie about losers who are going nowhere than you will appreciate this movie as much as I did.

However depressing the story might be at times, the photography and the acting are way up there, truly excellent!!! And because of these marvellous acting performances the depressing lowlife characters that are being portrayed in Fat City are still very endearing and fascinating to watch.