Fat City

Plot synopsis:
Billy Tully (Keach), a boxer past his prime, goes to a Stockton, California gym to get back into shape and spars with Ernie Munger (Bridges), an eighteen-year-old he meets there. Seeing potential in the youngster, Tully suggests that Munger look up his former manager and trainer, Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto). Tully later tells combative barfly Oma (Tyrrell) and her easygoing boyfriend Earl (Curtis Cokes) how impressed he is with the kid. Newly inspired, Tully decides to get back into boxing himself.
Tully's life has been a mess ever since his wife left him. He drinks too much, cannot hold down a job, and picks fruit and vegetables with migrant workers to make ends meet. He still blames Ruben for mishandling his last fight.
Tully tries moving in with Oma after Earl is sent to prison for a few months, but their relationship is rocky.
Munger loses his first fight, his nose broken, and is knocked out in his next bout as well. He gets pressured into marriage by Faye (Candy Clark) because a baby's on the way, so he picks fruit in the fields for a few dollars.
For his first bout back, Tully is matched against a tough Mexican boxer named Lucero (Sixto Rodriguez), who is also of an advanced age and in considerable pain. They knock each other down before Tully is declared the winner. His celebration is brief when Tully discovers that he will be paid only $100, which causes him to end his business relationship with Ruben. He then returns to Oma's apartment and finds Earl there. Earl, still paying the rent, assures him that the alcoholic Oma wants nothing more to do with Tully.
Munger is returning home from a fight one night when he sees Tully in the street, drunk. Munger tries to ignore him, but when Tully asks to have a drink, he reluctantly agrees to coffee. The two men sit and drink and Tully looks around at all the people immediately around him, all of whom now seem at an impassable distance. Munger says he needs to leave, but Tully asks him to stay and talk a while. Munger agrees, and the two men sit drinking their coffee together in silence.

Tags: cult

Review:
Fat City is an amazing film, made even more stellar by the casting of Stacy Keach, Jeff Bridges, Candy Clark and Nick Colasanto.
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.
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.
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 down-to-earth tale of two small hall boxers -- at the opposite ends of their careers -- and the blows they take in and out of the ring.This is one of the best American movies ever about normal working class lives where failure is common and the only thing you can do is pretend otherwise or drug it all away to nothing.
But while everyone focuses on (the admittedly very good) more famous works by Scorsese and Coppola, many equally worthwhile movies get little attention - 'Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia', 'Scarecrow', 'Fingers', 'Tracks', 'The Panic In Needle Park', 'Blue Collar', and this one, arguably John Huston's most underrated film.
John Huston's 1972 production of FAT CITY is a masterpiece of film-making and acting.
"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.
Huston's muted study of despairing lives and the escape paths people create for themselves, strikingly shot by the great Conrad Hall, sets these men in Stockton and stands the despair of their lives against the single-minded perseverance of their hopefulness.The Stockton in his film is present in an America we have a propensity to put out of our minds about the more the divide grows between rich and poor.
Such an approach was relief from the stifling boundaries of Hollywood notions of entertainment when I first saw the film on ex-rental VHS and remains so today.The characters in this story are played by Jeff Bridges as Ernie, and Stacy Keach as Billy.
Finally, the Kris Kristofferson ballad 'Help Me Make it Through the Night' is prominently featured to excellent effect, in order to illustrate the desolation and loneliness of the main characters.The lack of a driving narrative is actually one of the virtues of 'Fat City', It makes up for this with lots of atmosphere and interesting and believable people.
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.
Such might be the moral of this very atypical sports movie, starring Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges as aspiring fighters in the lower echelons of the boxing game in and around Stockton, California.John Huston was one of the most commercially and popularly successful of mainstream Hollywood directors, making such major classics as The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and The African Queen, yet most film historians and critics have been reluctant to rank him among the best cinematic artists.
Fat City makes it hard to see why: this gritty, realistic film is one of those great films which surprises you by how much more it seems like real life than like a movie.
Keach and Bridges both give what may be their best performances, and Susan Tyrrell, an actress better known for stage work, gives an unforgettable performance as an alcoholic barfly, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, and she should have won.Fat City is not at all a typical sports film, which by Hollywood convention must show a hero overcoming early difficulties to rise to stardom, nor is it really about boxing, though it includes an extended fight scene which may be the best ever included in a Hollywood film -- the fact that Huston was a prize fighter himself in his youth no doubt adds to the authenticity of the prize ring atmosphere.
In the past, some studios in Hollywood considered themselves to be in a privileged position as they were producing a highly disparate genre of films about boxing and boxers.These films were made by a separate team who would write scripts,choose actors and direct films about success stories being crafted in boxing rings.One such 'boxing film' was briefly described in Coen brothers' "Barton Fink" starring actor John Turturro who is being asked by a studio executive to write a 'boxing picture'."Fat City" is also a boxing picture but it does not have anything in common with boxing pictures of the past.Director John Huston did not want to portray boxers as 'super heroes'.He aimed to present an honest account of boxers as ordinary human beings with their own share of joys as well as sorrows.
Very effectively staged by John Huston.The highlight of Fat City is Susan Tyrell who as TCM was showing this film as its prime time feature was reported to have passed away.
Others of us will just like the great performances and realistic filming that typifies Fat City..
I really like this film but I do want, more than commenting on it, I have a doubt: in the last scene the fighter, whose name I have forgotten,...in the restaurant where he is having some coffee with the other fighter...Jeff Bridges..the first one turns around and he sees something, in the back, people playing some cards..
Her boyfriend is Earl a really quiet black guy who just lets her rant.All the actors are good but it was Susan Tyrell who won the Oscar in a one-of-a-kind performance as the drunken incredibly loudmouthed tramp who drives everyone crazy.Movie is also helped by the great Kris Kristofferson song "Help me make it through the night" played at the beginning and end of the film.Note - this is not a boxing movie.
Instead of a carefully packaged ending where you leave the movie knowing exactly how you should feel about it, the resolutions are more subtle and thought-provoking, as they often are in life.Pay close attention to Susan Tyrell's Oscar-nominated performance (Best Supporting Actress).
John Huston didn't write Fat City, but it never feels shorter of being near or just about vintage work from him: it's about two boxers, one a has-been (or a never was) by the time he's 30, and one not even 20 and already knocking up a girl and a couple of loses in his first fights in the ring.
That's what it's about, but that's really all that can exactly be said save for the fact that Tully (Stacy Keach) is a drunk and Ernie (Jeff Bridges) is just a dumb young kid.
As Ebert noted as a main point in his review, it is a story of losers as many of Huston's films are, and there's a fascination inherent in being able to peer into the lives of people whom other directors would relegate to one or two scenes or at best supporting roles.
Somehow Huston sees more in the characters and makes us care about what might happen to them- if they can continue just one more day in some decent circumstances- which even includes those who become grating (Candy Clark's one-note performance is spot-on if almost overdoing it) or even silent (the one boxer Luciano).While the boxing scenes are filmed fairly averagely, if still excitingly by a professional director amid a low-budget, it's the acting and super-realistic dialog that keep things really good here.
Stacy Keach gives what may or may not be his best performance, at the least in a starring role (he's mostly been relegated to character actor parts or supporting roles like Sgt. Stedenko in Up in Smoke and the Nazi leader in American History X), being never unsympathetic or forcing the audience to feel pity where it's not earned in every punch thrown at him or beer or drink guzzled down; his is a tragic turn akin, and probably equal, to a similar sorrowful drunk Albert Finney in Under the Volcano.
Bridges also does very good in his smaller allotted screen-time, and has a particularly bittersweet moment after getting knocked out a second time and unable to say his name right away.Fat City is a glimpse at the other side of the tracks and the 'dregs' of society, who maybe aren't the nicest people once you get to know them but are never uninteresting or boring.
Fat City (1972) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Huston's grim drama about a washed up boxer (Stacy Keach) trying to make a comeback and the up and comer (Jeff Bridges) who doesn't have much to look forward to.
Bummer movie from director John Huston about two boxers, one washed up and one up and coming, and their refusal to recognize the limits of their talents.Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges give really good performances in their respective roles, but the whole movie is hampered by a screenplay that creates one-note characters for them to play.
John Huston's look at the grim world of boxing, as seen from the lowest possible level of the "sport." Story follows two boxers in Stockton, California.
In fact, if "Fat City" were the only John Huston film you were ever to see you would still know you were watching the work of a great director.
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.
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.
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 only problem is that there is no way to know what it feels like to pick vegetables in the summer sun in Stockton, Ca unless you've done it.The El Dorado Hotel, where the character Tully (Stacey Keach) lives in the movie, was mercifully torn down in the 70's - and not a moment too soon.
It's grim and downright depressing, but has the flavor of real life in its dialog and situations.STACY KEACH is the ex-boxer who thinks about making a comeback; SUSAN TYRELL is a lush who inexplicably attracts his attention at a seedy rundown bar and later becomes his wife; JEFF BRIDGES is a wannabe newcomer who Keach discovers working out in a gym and encourages to enter the boxing game.
Bridges looks as though he was born to play the role of the young boxer.But despite John Huston's excellent, forceful direction, it leads to a climactic fight that is almost painful to watch.There's no Hollywood ending.
Jeff Bridges looked a little too pretty, and "soft around the middle", as Keach remarked, for his role as up and coming boxer in dead end town.The tragedy of the sick and over-the-hill former Mexican star, Ruben, was overplayed.
The Late/Great John Huston delivers a gritty, complex film with 'Fat City'.
It's gritty, disturbing and depressing, but FAT CITY is quite involving and rarely boring.This obscure character drama follows the parallel lives of worn-out Tully (Stacy Keach), a once-promising-boxer-turned-alcoholic, and his young and eager protégé, Ernie (Jeff Bridges).
The final scene, where Bridges reluctantly humors the pathetic drunk by talking over coffee, is poignant and drives home the purpose of the film.Far from a feel-good ROCKYesque effort, FAT CITY chooses instead to tell the story of a boxer who doesn't make it and the vast untapped potential that will be forever drowned in glass after glass of liquor..
Stacy Keach is excellent as an unemployed, out-of-shape former boxer who talks a big deal about getting into the ring again; Jeff Bridges is an eighteen-year old who goes to see Keach's old boxing manager and gets a career started for himself.
Glancing with a documentary eye, John Huston's FAT CITY opens with Kris Kristofferson's lugubrious HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT to accommodate to a downbeat tonality, and concomitantly fills the screen with montages of the story's locale and denizens, a rundown California town called Stockton in the 50s, and then introduces Billy Tully (a cleft-lipped and hair- receding Keach), a divorced, childless peckerwood and former boxer on the brink of turning 30, doing odd jobs from hand to mouth, he aspires to return to the ring, but both physically and mentally he hasn't been conditioned to reclaim his glory.
you know,i kinda liked this movie.i mean,it's definitely well made.it's interesting,for awhile.the problem is that it just moves too slow,and after awhile i had to stop watching.it stars Stacy Keach as a washed ex-pro fighter.he meets Ernie Munger(a young Jeff Bridges)at a local Y,hitting the boxing bag.the two spar together.eventually,Tully(Keach) takes takes Ernie under his wing and teaches him to become a good boxer.he also decides to get back in the ring himself.i didn't get that far(i lasted about 50 minutes)but i read it on the cover.anyway,if you have a lot of patience,you might want to give this one a try.for me,though,i just couldn't sit through it.my vote for Fat City:5/5.
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.
By the time John Huston made Fat City in 1972 his glory as one of the finest directors in Hollywood was fading.
But this character study put him back up on top of the A list with the new breed of filmmakers of the period who were essentially going against the political core of the established movie-making industry.In Stockton California ex-boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) takes a job as a day laborer to make ends meet and takes a break to go to the gym for a workout.
Stacy Keach's washed up boxer Billy Tully is balanced against eager, youthful Jeff Bridges as Ernie Munger and in this comparison the filmmakers make a simple statement of how choices of occupations not only determine a man's character, but his fate as well.The women figures in the film are also designed around a symbolic fulcrum.
Hall is one of only six cinematographers to have his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.The film was based on the boxing novel Fat City (1969) by Leonard Gardner, who penned the script for the movie.
John Huston's "Fat City" stars Stacy Keach as Jimmy Tully, a washed up boxer who befriends Ernie Minger (Jeff Bridges), a young prize fighter whose best years seem ahead of him.
If you like a good movie, you're on the right track.Fat City, 1972, Starring: Stacey Keach, Jeff Bridges and Susan Tyrell, Directed by John Huston, 7.5/10 (B+).(This is part of an ongoing project to watch and review every John Huston movie.
Basically at a gym in Stockton, California, past his prime boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) meets eighteen-year-old Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), they getting into shape and spar with each other.
Keach (whose part was originally offered to Marlon Brando) is good as the prize-fighter going down in the dumps, and Bridges does well as the young contender on the rise, their rocky relationship certainly creates some tension, most boxing movies have more fights, full of blood, sweat and tears, this film focuses more on the hardships on the career side of it, it is slow at times, but overall an interesting enough sports drama.