Factotum
Starring: Matt Dillon,
Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei
Director: Bent Hamer
The film: 'If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start.' So says Henry Chinaski (Matt Dillon), the protagonist in Factotum. Of the two options, Chinaski has opted for the latter, as he drifts aimlessly from job to job and woman to woman, his sole endeavour being the writing of short stories, which are continually rejected by publishers.
Those who know about contemporary American pop literature will recognise how much Chinaski is the mirror image of slacker-writer extraordinaire Charles Bukowski. Factotum is an adaptation of Bukowski's novel of the same name: the screenwriting duo of Bent Hamer and Jim Stark moved the novel's original settings (Los Angeles in the 1940s, the terrain in which Bukowski spent his formative years) to the industrial wastelands of Minneapolis today.
