Once upon a time, in 1972, when I was a young(er) film critic at the Post-Dispatch, one of the first movies I wrote about was John Huston's "Fat City." A boxing story set in seedy Stockton, Calif., it resonated with me for its stark honesty, and I remember it often as a comparison with sloppy, careless, overstated movies of today.
So it's to the credit of the St. Louis International Film Festival that we can see it tomorrow, even if it is shunted to the campus of Lindenwood University in St. Charles, where it will be screened at 1 and 4:30 p.m. Stacy Keach, who stars as Billy Tully, and who is receiving an award from the festival, will be on hand, and will be interviewed by Dennis Brown of the Riverfront Times at the latter show. The event is free, but reservations (636-949-4411) are necessary.
The movie is based on Leonard Gardner's gritty novel, and Gardner wrote the screenplay. For Huston, it marked the midpoint of a movie career of glorious achievement as an actor, writer and director. His first directorial credit–he owned 47–was for "The Maltese Falcon" in 1941, his last for "The Dead" in 1987. In between were such gems as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," (1948), "Key Largo" (1948), "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), "The African Queen" (1951), "The Misfits" (1961), "The Night of the Iguana" (1964), "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967), "The Man Who Would Be King" (1975) and "Prizzi's Honor" (1985). And those are just some personal highlights.
One of the most amazing things about the film is the performances that Huston drew from a group of former professional boxers, not usually the most well-spoken of athletes. Art Aragon, once nicknamed "The Golden Boy," Sixto Rodriguez, Ruben Navarro and Curtis Cokes are among them, and Cokes offers a terrific performance in one scene. He and Ona (Tyrrell as a matchless slattern) have resumed their relationship after she ended an episode with Tully. Tully goes to her residence, hoping to move back in. Cokes quietly and carefully explains that Tully will have to go somewhere else, hands him a box of his clothes and wishes him well. It's an impeccable little scene.
Speaking of Tyrrell, who was nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar, she plays a round-heeled drunk in amazing style, throwing caution to the winds and living completely in the part. Watching her is simply scary.
There's also splendid work from Jeff Bridges, just after his breakthrough performance pursuing the uncatchable Cybill Shepherd in "The Last Picture Show." His portrait of Ernie, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is excellent as another would-be boxer who settles for catching Candy Clark in the front seat of his rattle-trap car and later marrying her.
The splendid cinematographer Conrad Hall ("Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid") gives a perfect look to Stockton, from its down-at-the-heels downtown to the shabby quarters of the local gym. He also shows the grimness of stoop labor in the fields as immigrant Mexicans and boxers without prospects gather before dawn and, by the dim glow of pickup headlights, respond to foremen's offers of a day's work in the onion fields or the walnut groves.
Tully, who does all these things, lives from drink to drink, and Keach brilliantly delivers as a man with little past and no future. A sad movie, but a brilliant depiction of the soft, vacant underbelly of society.
Fat City plays at Lindenwood University, St. Charles, a 1 and 4:30 p.m. tomorrow (Nov. 14), as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival.
—Joe