Hollywood characters - full list

roni

roni

hank solo said:
[...] Barfly was a mixture of various periods [...]
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I agree on this. But it's definitely Not a mixture of periods throughout his Whole life.

He merged together his Philly-years with his time, when he was with Jane. That's a wide span, I admit. We're talking about a decade.

Now, Liza Williams falls into a totally different time and period of his life. All the circumstances were different. Plus: I don't see him (throughout the whole screenplay) to intermix ANY other time of his life with the mentioned above.

Liza Williams?
The character would work, yes.
The happenings would work, yes.
It just doesn't fit into the time he's capturing in that screenplay.


p.s.:
hank solo said:
I think you're mixing up his life and his works
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I sure am not. I know that much about literature (and you know that I know).
Evidence shows, that the whole novel 'Hollywood' is based on the very facts. That's what all this searching for the 'real' names is about. We sure can assume, that he was making up what he stated in 'Hollywood' about the character of 'Tully'. Possible. I'm not claiming, that there IS/WAS a real person like her, but IF there was, it can not possibly be Liza Williams
 
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hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
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hey roni, I'm not trying to suggest that you don't know what I know you know, you know?

But do you really believe that it is more likely that he had a relationship with a real-life Tully in the 40s than that he simply created that character for Barfly using elements from his Women period?

What I think you are discounting is this: - in my opinion there is a difference in the ratio of fiction to fact between Barfly and Hollywood.

What I am trying to say is that Tully in Barfly and Tully in Hollywood are not exactly the same. Tully is a character in Barfly but in Hollywood he only uses Tully to refer to the woman who the character is (partly) based upon.

I think that for Barfly, Bukowski took his experience of being published as a young man in Portfolio and expanded it out to include an intimate encounter with a successful female business woman. I don't believe he had that sort of relationship with Caresse Crosby!!

The only mention of 'Tully' in Hollywood is where Bukowski is clearly describing the elements of his relationship with Liza Williams which were transposed to the character in Barfly.

I'm going cross-eyed... Even Bukowski seems to get himself tied up in Hollywood with his references to himself as the scriptwriter and his other self as the character...

Peace
 
roni

roni

ON THE CHARACTER OF 'TULLY' IN 'BARFLY' AND 'HOLLYWOOD'

yep hanksolo. That's not an easy nut to crack.
(and right now, I'm beyond real rational thought due to C2H5OH, so sorry if I'll make obvious mistakes in the logic structure of my following post,)

hank solo said:
do you really believe that it is more likely that he had a relationship with a real-life Tully in the 40s than that he simply created that character for Barfly using elements from his Women period?
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yes, I do.
The reason: throughout the whole novel we don't have a single hint that he as the author has been doing this, (Either in the screenplay Nor in the novel).
I'd admit, it would be Very possible, that he used the later experience with Liza in the screenplay. But the way he descripes Tully in 'Hollywood' - and that's what we're talking about - kills that idea. There's no other part in that novel (to my knowledge) that would have been written this way. He usually sticks to the facts there and only changes names or small issues.

hank solo said:
What I am trying to say is that Tully in Barfly and Tully in Hollywood are not exactly the same. [...] there is a difference in the ratio of fiction to fact between Barfly and Hollywood.
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We agree here and we know it.


What we have as facts about the novel 'Hollywood' are these:
- There are many happenings in the novel, that took place in real life. (I don't know which would NOT.)
- There are a lot of characters in the novel, that represent an actual, individual person in real life. (Most of them)
- Inside the novel he's usually claiming that what he described had really happened. As far as we know, that usually is right.
- In chapter 41 (p.207) he claims that the screenplay-character of 'Tully' was based on an actual person.

The Tully-character in the screenplay may have been enriched by experiences with Liza, as the famous quotation of Crosby was put in the mouth of that character. Sure. But at the moment in chapt. 41 of Hollywood, when he claims, that there had been a real person, he was talking about, we need to take that serious.

That's all, I guess.
For now.
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
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Well we'll just have to disagree roni.

When I read pages 207-209 of Hollywood all I see is a scene from the Women period with Tully/Dee Dee/Liza and Nadine/Bianca. The similarities are just too many to ignore for me.
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
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Founding member
roni said:
I can't deny that. So my solution for the moment was, I didn't exactly identify her in the list, but wrote "based on Liza Williams". That okay?
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Sure, that's fair.
 
Skygazer

Skygazer

And in the end...
Read this recently and sort of pertinent to this debate, not sure if it helps to clarify anything:

[What was the period you drew on for the screenplay?

"Actually, it was two periods and I melded them together. When I lived in Philadelphia, I was a barfly. I was about 25, 24, 26, it gets kinda mixed up."]

[... "This is kind of a mixture of two areas, L.A. and Philadelphia, melded together. Which may be cheating, but it’s supposed to be fictional anyway, right? Must have been around 1946".]

http://www.filmcomment.com/film-comment/article/charles-bukowski-interview
 
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roni

roni

Skygazer said:
"Actually, it was two periods and I melded them together. [...] "This is kind of a mixture of two areas,
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thanks for finding this and contributing, sky.
It's fairly known, that he melted two 'periods' of his life. These were:

- The bar where he seems to be an inhabitant and fought the barkeep was in Philadelphia, somewhere around 1944-46.
- The woman he gets to know in the movie, Wanda, was one Jane Baker in real life. He met her in LA ca 1947 in a bar on Alvarado street.

Though that's a wide span, it doesn't cover anything beyond 1950.
Liza Williams, the woman in question here for Tully, was someone he was seeing in the early 70s at a totally different stage of his life and under totally different circumstances. That's why I refused to 'buy' her.

But Hanksolo is right:
the similarities are obvious.
In fact, they are so obvious and hardfacts, that I would totally identify Tully with Liza without a second though - if Buk wouldn't state, that there was a real 'Tully' in the context of the screenplay (d.i.the 1940s). Sure 'Hollywood's a work of fiction, but I know of no other excample in this book, where he would give such misinformation. That's why I hesitated.

But until we got the slightest glimpse of a 'real' Tully during the time, where the movie is set (1944-1947/8/9) it IS our best bet to name Liza Williams.
 
W

wigwam

great list!

wanted to add a couple things:
Harold Pheasant is Edward R. Pressman who produced Heart Beat abt Kerouac (The Heart's Song in Hollywood)
Lance Edwards is Fred Roos, Coppola's right hand man
 
Pogue Mahone

Pogue Mahone

Officials say drugs may have played a part
Not to make this thread go off course, but does anyone know who the actor is in "The Captain is Out to Lunch..."? I'd like to believe it was Dennis Hopper. It's been bugging me for a while.
 
Otto jr

Otto jr

I think Buk in the '40s had a strange tendency to fixate on his publishers (target publishers to whom he sent all of his work).
He wrote much and obsessively to and about Whit Burnett in both stories and in correspondence with him directly.
Same with Careese.
I think while he was living with Jane he may have had this sort of Tully fantasy scenario with Careese in mind, just the way he wrote it in Hollywood.
I think Liza was where he got the meat on the bones to really flesh out that fantasy for the pages of Hollywood.
As for the list I would put this:
Tully -- Careese Crosby via Liza Williams.
 
Otto jr

Otto jr

I'm pretty sure that the bartender from the bar in Philly (Frank Stallone in Barfly) was named either Tommy or Frank McGilligan in real life. Buk used his name in a few poems.
The other bartender is always Jim, everywhere. Buk liked this guy and always calls him Jim. But in Hollywood he is called Jim anyway.
 
Wine Is Red

Wine Is Red

I personally would have thought 'Lenny' was in fact Chuck Zito - One of Mickey Rourke's best friends, well known Hollywood bodyguard, former leader of the NYC Hell's Angels, and bit-part actor.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
When it comes to characters who he didn't know or have a lot of dealings with in real life with he is less concerned with disguising the names (Frances Ford Lopalla, Lido Mamin, Hector Blackford). So if it were Zito the name probably would have been something that more obviously hinted at Zito. Lenny/Leonard makes more sense in this context.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Zuck Cheeto

zuck.jpg
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Mondo Porras (guy who built the bike), Mark Boone, Charlie Hunnam (Jax Teller in S.O.A.), Chuck Zito.
 
roni

roni

Hey Mr. mjp, I hate you knowing Everything, you wise bastard.

Really, my last hope (if there is any) would be to challenge you about the theories of Relativity. Or maybe something weird like the Qabbalah. But I fear, you'd even know everything about these too.


p.s.:
I despise tongue-piercings, but thanks for the offer.
 
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jddougher

jddougher

Founding member
I watched Barfly again yesterday but this time the version in which Barbet Schroeder provides commentary, and I found it interesting that Schroeder says it was his idea to introduce the character of Tully into the movie (to provide some tension, I think . I found that interesting on one level because I have always felt that the subplot of Tully and the detective was the weakest part of the whole film--weak almost to the point of ruining the integrity of the film because it strained credulity to such a degree. In any case, I do wonder at what point in the process Schroeder suggested the introduction of this subplot and whether that might have a bearing on the discussion of whether Tully represents Liza or some composite figure or someone else entirely. I suspect that if this subplot was tacked on, then Bukowski may very easily have felt at liberty to call upon the Liza that was from a totally different part of his life in order to provide the subplot for which Schroeder was looking.

I'll have to rewatch that part of the film to get Schroeder's exact words about his hand in the Tully/detective subplot.
 
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