betty dalton 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. It is depressing. Boring sometimes. But still fascinating because of its bleakness and so real life portrayals of everyday people.My only criticism of this movie 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 action in the middle. But hey, that is the life this drunk is leading. Nothing happens except for another night with booze. And another... And if you can stumach a movie about losers who are going nowhere than you can appreciate this movie as much as I did. Because the photography and the acting are way up there, really excellent. And the characters portrayed are loveable because of their vulnerabilities.

PimpinAinttEasy To the fans of Charles Bukowski, you guys might want to check out this film. Its about the boxing scene in Stockton, California - described through the lives of two boxers, their lovers and their common trainer. It is a sad film about the ups and downs (mostly downs) in the boxers lives as they grapple with all the bad luck, the women, ennui and sloth. The characters were extremely fatalistic, seemingly unable to conquer the devil inside their minds or conquering it for a short while before it starts working on them again.Sex is an important part of the film. One of the boxers, Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) cannot seem to get over his wife leaving him. A spiritually wounding affair with an alcoholic woman does not allow him to forget his wife whom he loved dearly. Even when he tries to revive his flagging boxing career, it is in the hope that he can win his wife back. The other boxer, Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) is deeply insecure about his new wife. Another important aspect of the film is its shabby run down small town vibe. I love American films like these with its gas stations, small town bars, long empty roads, side streets, orchards, barren fields, levees and ugly one room apartments. There is something very idyllic yet bleak about these landscapes.The wiry Stacy Keach excels in a role that was offered to none other than Marlon Brando. Jeff Bridges plays a mildly talented but ultimately bland young man without any real personality. Susan Tyrrell is brilliant as an impulsive and alcoholic woman who befriends Stacy Keach's wounded boxer. Nicholas Colasanto steals the show despite the presence of all the other great actors. His turn as a cynical but persistent trainer added so much to this film. I was thinking about some of the Charles Bukowski novels that I had read while I was watching the film. I recommend the book by Leonard Gardner too. Best Regards, Pimpin.(9/10)

NORDIC-2 When he wrote his only novel, 'Fat City' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), ex-boxer Leonard Gardner wrote about two things he knew intimately: his hometown of Stockton, California and the fight game. A taut, gripping tale of broken dreams, 'Fat City' won high praise from critics and fellow writers (e.g., Joyce Carol Oates and Joan Didion) and was nominated for the National Book Award. The book also attracted the attention of director John Huston. Amateur lightweight boxing champion of California in his youth and a life-long aficionado of the sport, Huston could truly appreciate the novel's authenticity and power. He purchased the screen rights, hired Gardner to covert his novel into a screenplay, and tried to interest Marlon Brando in playing the lead role (when Brando equivocated, Huston looked elsewhere.). Filmed on location in Stockton's skid row by Conrad Hall ('In Cold Blood'; 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'), 'Fat City' focuses on two small-time boxers, one just starting out and one at the end of his "career." In the latter category is Billy Tully (Stacey Keach), a thirty-year-old alcoholic has- been, eking out a living as a farm laborer, but unwilling to forsake his delusions of a boxing comeback. His sparring partner and protégé is Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), a 19-year-old with limited talent but big dreams. The characters and early plot trajectory point to a cliché Rocky-like underdog redemption story, i.e., after a slow start, Ernie, with Tully's expert tutoring, should steadily develop until he has a shot at the big time. But 'Fat City' is not "Hollywood"; Ernie is repeatedly pummeled in the ring and his career goes nowhere. Nor do Tully's fortunes improve. Egged on by his barfly girlfriend, Oma (Susan Tyrell), Tully wallows in drunken sloth, at least until a fight opportunity arranged by his longtime coach, Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto of later 'Cheers' fame), prompts him to get back in shape (temporarily). After a two-year hiatus, Tully does win a final victory in the ring but he wins against an already damaged opponent, movingly played by ex- light-heavyweight Sixto Rodriguez. Reminiscent of Rod Serling's 'Requiem For a Heavyweight' (1962) but less mannered and theatrical, 'Fat City' transcends the boxing genre, moves into the realm of genuine tragedy, and also stands as a scathing indictment of the inane vacuity of American Dream ideology, especially when it is pursued by society's downtrodden. Susan Tyrell's harrowing rendition of a drunken, demented floozy earned her an Oscar nomination. A final note: "Fat City" is jazz musicians' slang for an ideal life situation but athletes' slang for being overweight and out of shape: a title that perfectly captures the ironic distance between dream and reality. VHS (1994) and DVD (2002).

Murder Slim FAT CITY begins with Tully, slowly getting out of bed in his crusty, dilapidated apartment. Tully (Stacy Keach) is a retired boxer who wants one last shot at the big time... well, as big as you can get in gyms and halls that only house a few hundred fans. In his first workout for a year, he meets the 18-year-old Ernie (Jeff Bridges) and sees him a rising light in the sport. Eventually both of them hook up with a well-meaning - if completely inept - trainer played by "Coach" from CHEERS (Nicholas Colastano).Despite the boxing in the movie, FAT CITY is refreshingly different from RAGING BULL and ROCKY, and substandard clones of those two great movies. While RAGING BULL uses boxing to the tell an epic story of rise and fall, and ROCKY is about someone working to prove himself to the world; FAT CITY is about the basic struggle that people go through just to make a few bucks. The fights are clumsy, and give a good indication of the lack of technique that must feature in the amateur/low professional scene. Fighters still box even if they're pissing blood the night before... because it's the only way they can make a living.Stacy Keach is wonderful in his role. He isn't sporting his usual moustache, and his harelip gives the indication of a guy who been in too many scraps. He shambles around and keeps repeating to himself that he'll get in shape again... that he WILL rise out of his lousy jobs and return to his - largely romanticised - boxing career. But booze keeps pulling him down, leading to some hilarious - and poignant - scenes of him as a drunk. He shacks up with a gal, and she matches him blow for blow, in scenes reminiscent of BARFLY. In fact, I'd put the movie much closer to a BARFLY than any boxing movie.FAT CITY is often very funny. Susan Tyrell - as Tully's shack-job - brilliantly slurs her way through a great, volatile part. Colastano comes out with some belters of lines, and is as humorous and lovable as his Coach role in CHEERS. But within all the humour, there's a real undercurrent that the movie is actually about isolation and loneliness... a theme beautifully reinforced by a memorable final scene. Whereas Ernie manages to find his own escape routes, Tully just keeps finding dead ends.As ever, John Huston knows where to put the camera. It's a relaxed style but he always manages to pop the camera in a great place. FAT CITY is almost up there with the likes of Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO and WISE BLOOD... a couple of my favourite movies.I'm surprised FAT CITY isn't more renowned - perhaps it got a little lost in a year that also brought people THE GODFATHER and DELIVERANCE. For whatever reason you haven't checked it out before, have a go at checking it out now.