FAT CITY is part of Jeff Bridges film series at 92YTribeca
FAT CITY (John Huston, 1972)
92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Wednesday, June 20, $12, 7:30
Series continues through August 15
212-415-5500
www.92y.org
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 (an Oscar-nominated Susan Tyrrell, who sadly just passed away a few days ago). 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. You do not have to be a fight fan to fall in love with this film. A clear influence on such auteurs as Martin Scorsese, Fat City will be screening June 20 at 92YTribeca as part of the series “Jeff Bridges, Before the Dude,” consisting of such pre-Big Lebowski works as Stay Hungry, The Fisher King, and Cutter’s Way.