ShareThisBy DIXIE REID
Charles Bukowski was a novelist, a poet, a short- story writer and a raging alcoholic. He loved women, many women. He lived hard and fast, a low-life kind of life, and wrote exhaustively of it, turning out reams of work in his 73 years. He died of pneumonia in 1994. "Factotum" was his second novel, published nearly two decades earlier.
"I think it's interesting that he lived as long as he did. He outlasted a lot of writers who seemed to drink less than he did," says Matt Dillon, who plays Bukowski's fictional alter ego, Henry Chinaski, in the movie "Factotum."
"I think Bukowski was an enormous talent, and there was a real truthfulness to his writing. The graveyards of the world are filled with people who wanted to be writers or artists, who thought that 'because Bukowski drank a case of beer, I can do that, and I'll be a great writer.' I don't think Bukowski was a great writer because he was an alcoholic, but he became a voice for that world," Dillon says.
The word "factotum" means "to do everything." And the movie "Factotum" is a yarn about Bukowski-Chinaski, a man living on the seamy side of Los Angeles and working at odd jobs that afford him his passions: wagering on horses, wooing women as hopeless as he is and writing the stories nobody wants to publish. Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei play women who fall into Chinaski's turbulent life.
It was directed by Norwegian-born Bent Hamer, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jim Stark, a longtime producer of Jim Jarmusch's films.
Movie audiences first got to know Henry Chinaski in "Barfly" (1987), with Mickey Rourke playing the Bukowski alter ego. Bukowski wrote the original screenplay for that film.
Dillon saw "Barfly" when it came out, and liked it, but didn't even think about Rourke's portrayal of Chinaski when he stepped into the character for "Factotum."
That was largely because he goes way back, figuratively speaking, with Bukowski, whose 45 published works include the novels "Post Office," "Women" and "Ham on Rye."
"I read most of his short stories and novels in my early 20s, and I got hooked instantly," says Dillon. "Bukowski is fun. He's a guilty pleasure. I realized (later) that he gets better and better with time. He's a hugely serious writer and a serious voice and, to me, one of my favorite writers.
"So it's an interesting thing to look at Bukowski again and see this whole other side of him. Looking at him when you're older, you see different things."
Dillon, 42, the New York-born, heavy-browed star of "My Bodyguard," "The Flamingo Kid," "Drugstore Cowboy" and "There's Something About Mary," earned an Academy Award nomination earlier this year for his performance in a supporting role, as a Los Angeles cop, in the Oscar-winning movie "Crash."
He returned to his old Bukowski books from 20 years ago to glean some insight into the author's alter ego.
"I never even thought of him as a worker when I read him when I was younger, but I realize (now) that the guy was like a working-class hero. He becomes a voice for all those people working dead-end jobs. That's how I see it, and maybe a lot of people would disagree with that, but I think there's some truth to it."
Rather than Bukowski's stomping grounds of Los Angeles, Hamer shot "Factotum" in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Shakopee, Minn.
It "isn't exactly Bukowski country," says Dillon.
"You know, I think what Bent was looking for in the landscape, he found in Minnesota, and it may have been a budgetary concern, because this movie wasn't made for much money at all. But he was able to find the old warehouses, and the apartment that Lily (as the character Jan) and I lived in was the hotel Tom Waits wrote a song about, and it was this real Tom Waits-(William S.) Burroughs kind of place. It definitely was that work Bukowski was writing about."
Within months of shooting "Factotum" and "Crash," both low-budget films, Dillon made a couple of studio comedies that brought in bigger paychecks: "You, Me and Dupree," with Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson, and the Disney film "Herbie Fully Loaded."
For so many reasons, "Factotum" was a labor of love for the actor.
"It really reminded me, when we were making the film, that people are there for the right reason. Everybody," Dillon says. "It was independent filmmaking, and it was like the feeling I got on the set of 'Drugstore Cowboy.' And it was great."
(Dixie Reid can be reached at dreid(at)sacbee.com)
