(This is an audio interview with clips from Barfly).
Oscar winner Faye Dunaway was cautioned about taking the role of a drunk opposite Mickey Rourke in Barbet Schroeder’s 1987 grungy, dark-comedy Barfly.
The screenplay was by US poet and screenwriter Charles Bukowski, himself a long-time alcoholic. Her fans feared the film would damage her established elegant image.
It had taken Schroeder eight years to get the financing, so Faye waived a big salary for points in the film… and the dramatic challenge it offered. When the film was released, she won rave reviews for her performance.
The characters meet in the dimness of a downtown LA bar and strike up a drink sodden relationship-cum-romance, interrupted by a woman who wants to make Mickey’s character a literary star, only for her to fall into bed with him as well.
It was certainly a different kind of star-turn for her after Mommie Dearest as Joan Crawford, The Three Musketeers, Towering Inferno, Three Days of the Condor and The Thomas Crown Affair.
And Faye had already won an Oscar for her performance in Network opposite Peter Finch, and had Best Actress nominations earlier for Bonnie and Clyde and Chinatown, opposite Jack Nicholson.
So, Over canapes and coffee, after the Barfly’s screening at the Cannes Film Festival, Faye sat down and chatted openly with myself and four other journalists, about her bar-hopping research for the role, working with Mickey Rourke and how she approached playing a drunk:
Faye, who turned 82 in January 2023, is still working and last year completed the film The Man Who Drew God, opposite Kevin Spacey and Franco Nero, who is also directing the movie.
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6 мар 2023
