Film > Cult

“I had this desire to be unknown, unwanted and unnoticed. I wasn’t about to chase the American wet dream. I’d rather get drunk.” These fighting words from Charles Serking, the lowlife alter-ego of cult writer Charles Bukowski - played here with grizzly charm by the great Ben Gazzara (The Big Lebowski) - encapsulates this cinematic journey into the hard drinking life of America’s beat poet laureate. Passionately directed by daring Italian auteur Marco Ferreri (La Grande Bouffe), this gritty adaptation of Bukowski’s novel, Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness (1972), sees Gazzara tramp the seedy flophouses, bars and backstreets of Los Angeles before a beautiful, self-destructive whore (Ornella Muti) arouses his gentler instincts. Bukowski, whose drinking and womanizing life was immortalised in numerous films from Barfly (1987), starring Mickey Rourke, to Factotum (2006), with Matt Dilon, is portrayed in great method-acting style by Gazzara, making Tales of Ordinary Madness an essential document for fans of the legendary writer.