Stacey Keach gets back in the ring in John Huston boxing drama (photo courtesy Sony Pictures
FAT CITY (John Huston, 1972)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
September 18 – October 1
212-727-8110
Genre master and onetime boxer John Huston returned to the ring in FAT CITY, a gritty 1972 drama about a group of has-beens and never-will-be’s struggling to survive in Stockton, California. Stacey Keach stars as Billy Tully, a down-on-his-luck fighter looking to make a comeback at the ripe old age of twenty-nine. He spars at the local Y with eighteen-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) and likes what he sees in the kid, telling him to meet his old manager, Ruben (CHEERS’ Nicholas Colosanto), who decides to take on the unseasoned youngster. While Ruben lands Ernie — who seems more interested in bragging about having scored with his girlfriend, Faye (Candy Clark), than training properly — his first few bouts, Tully gets day work picking vegetables and hangs out at a local gin joint with a seedy, whiskey-voiced barfly named Oma (Susan Tyrrell, who earned an Oscar nomination for the role). Legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall casts a gray pale over the proceedings as dashed hopes and dreams come falling down on these disillusioned perennial losers. In many ways FAT CITY, based on the novel by Leonard Gardner — who also wrote the screenplay — is an update of Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT, but moved to the hard times of early ’70s America, when so many people had no way out. The film, a clear influence on such auteurs as Martin Scorsese, will be at Film Forum for a two week run in a new 35mm restoration. You do not have to be a fight fan to fall in love with this film.