MOVIE · 1987

Barfly

ComedyDramaRomance100 min

Henry Chinaski is a broke Los Angeles writer who spends his days drinking, fighting, and haunting skid-row bars. Mickey Rourke is Henry, Charles Bukowski’s alter ego on screen, a man more comfortable trading insults with bartenders than chasing stability. His routine shifts when he falls in with Wanda (Faye Dunaway), another hard-living regular, and when a publisher takes an interest in his writing. Written by Bukowski, the film stays close to Henry’s world of rented rooms, bar stools, and battered notebooks, where romance, self-destruction, and the possibility of literary success keep colliding.