PREVIOUSLY AT FILM

(1972) Two fighters spar in an empty gym; one on the way up: 18-year-old “natural” Jeff Bridges, ticketed for the pros via an intro to manager Nicholas Colasanto (later “Coach” on Cheers); and one on the way down: pushing-30 ex-pro Stacy Keach, mortified by pulling a muscle in his first workout after a two-year layoff. But there are detours along the way, for Bridges his knocked-up girlfriend Candy Clark (in her debut), and for Keach his involvement with (Oscar-nominated) Susan Tyrrell, tearing it up as the Barfly to end all Barflies (“boozed, blowsy, and so good, so out of her mind with hope and depression, so used, so soiled, so lifelike…” – David Thomson). Maybe just one more win for Keach and he could get it all back. But what changes if you actually win? All location-shot by the great Conrad Hall (“with lovely shabby color that looks like paper used to wrap a burger” –Thomson) in Stockton, California at its dustiest, these are perhaps the Losing-est in Huston’s gallery of Beautiful Losers, with terrific if decidedly unglamorous boxing scenes and a cast seeded with actual fighters, most notably former welterweight champ Curtis Cokes in his only acting role, letter-perfect as Tyrrell’s sometime boyfriend “Earl.”
Showtimes: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

Listen to our podcast: Introduction by PETE HAMILL & GEORGE KIMBALL
(Recorded September 18, 2009)
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Click here to read George Kimball's article on Leonard Gardner & Fat City (novel and film) on thesweetscience.com

[five stars - highest rating]
“CRITIC'S PICK! This outstanding drama is an emotional sucker punch. Huston and his performers give the material an elating, transcendental verve.”
– Time Out New York
Click here to read entire review

“CRITIC'S CHOICE! Scenes of street life on the wrong side of
the tracks wouldn’t be out of place in an Altman movie.”
– Mike Hale, The New York Times (September 18, 2009)
Click here to read entire review

“A TOUR DE FORCE by John Huston, the auteur of life on the ropes.”
– Flavorpill
Click here to read entire review

“The rejuvenated director's contribution to the New Wave zeitgeist, Fat City could be subtitled 'The Beautiful Losers of Desolation Row' — it has a lyrical feel... Keach and Bridges give graceful performances.”
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Click here to read entire review

“Fat City remains a masterpiece, not just for Huston's way with actors
but for his faith in screenwriter Gardner's beyond-natural dialogue and hobo pacing.”
– Benjamin Strong, The L Magazine
Click here to read entire review

“CRITICS' PICK!” – New York magazine
Click here to read entire review

“A GEM OF SKID ROW POETRY! STUNNINGLY SHOT AND BEAUTIFULLY ACTED!” – Elliott Stein, Village Voice

“A brilliant and loving portrait of a world of illusions without hope, stunningly shot to look like a blues for the American Dream.”
– Sight & Sound

“Huston’s best… As much as anything, it is the accuracy of this microcosm of the world that is so impressive,
and Huston’s sympathy with his motley characters.”
– Derek Malcolm, The Guardian

“Did Huston ever make a movie as personal and deeply felt as Fat City? Huston gained firsthand knowledge of the tanktown boxing circuit during his itinerant youth, and he uses it to give this late masterpiece an intimately threadbare tone. Working with the great DP Conrad Hall, the old master imbues every frame with the sweet, stale sadness of life on the margins. The cast is amazing, from Keach’s over-the-hill fighter to Bridges’ loser-in-training, from Colasanto’s good-willed manager to Tyrrell’s Oscar-nominated barroom floozie.”
– Kent Jones, Film Comment

“Leonard Gardner’s screenplay (based on his own novel) is full of the kind of dialogue that movies usually can’t afford,
that defines time, place, mood, and character while seemingly going nowhere.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“ONE OF HUSTON'S BEST FILMS… The characters in his movies hardly ever set out to achieve what they’re aiming for [but] rarely does he fit it to characters and a time and place so well as in Fat City. Huston tells his story in a slow, atmospheric way, and characters drift into it and stay because they have no place else to go… If Huston and Gardner had forced the story into a conventional narrative of suspense, climax and resolution, it would have seemed obscene.”
– Roger Ebert

Available at Concession (during run of film) FAT CITY the novel by Leonard Gardner Click here to read National Book Award-winner Denis Johnson's praise for the novel “Gardner has got it exactly right – the hanging around gas stations, the field dust, the relentless oppressiveness of the weather, the bleak liaisons sealed on levees and Greyhound buses... Fat City affected me more than any new fiction I've read in a long while.” – Joan Didion “Fat City is a victory for its author. The work is so careful, the intention so fully realized, that few American novels in recent years can approach it in craft or theme.” – John Lahr, The National Observer