By way of a diversion, I have just been reading what's marked as the shooting script of Barfly. Unusually for a screenplay, more like a stage play, Bukowski gives longish descriptions at the front of the script of some of the bar residents. The piece for Lilly -- she who sits at the end of the bar with a half-drunk beer in front of her -- is particularly acidic:
"LILLY: A thin lesbian, dry-stick ugly, horrible, like a witch without character. She is between 43 and 48. She always wears a brown ankle-length coat, even on the hottest days. She is apparently without function. In her earlier days she might have attracted some women, now even that tiny magnetism is gone. How she survives is probably on relief checks. There is nothing likeable about her. She nurses draft beers endlessly. Each one takes her between 45 minutes and an hour to drink.
One might say she is Death but even Death is more appealing. No, she is tedium. Tedium, tedium, tedium. Even when a good draft beer is put in front of her it loses its good beerishness and becomes a flat yellow substance. She is darkness and drabness, not as good as a yawn. She can't sing, she can't laugh, she can't even fart. One wants to help her sometimes but she is not interested. She is neither interested nor interesting.
Yet she is not entirely without anything: she has a hatred which lays at the bottom and will not leave. It is there all the time, it is constantly there, she is good at that and therefore not entirely useless in the world or in the bar. She probably has normal bodily movements although she has never been seen to go to the ladies room."
Three paragraphs on a minor character that has only a few throwaway lines in the movie. Hank must've really hated her. I wonder who he modelled Lilly on and if she ever saw herself portrayed on the big screen.
"LILLY: A thin lesbian, dry-stick ugly, horrible, like a witch without character. She is between 43 and 48. She always wears a brown ankle-length coat, even on the hottest days. She is apparently without function. In her earlier days she might have attracted some women, now even that tiny magnetism is gone. How she survives is probably on relief checks. There is nothing likeable about her. She nurses draft beers endlessly. Each one takes her between 45 minutes and an hour to drink.
One might say she is Death but even Death is more appealing. No, she is tedium. Tedium, tedium, tedium. Even when a good draft beer is put in front of her it loses its good beerishness and becomes a flat yellow substance. She is darkness and drabness, not as good as a yawn. She can't sing, she can't laugh, she can't even fart. One wants to help her sometimes but she is not interested. She is neither interested nor interesting.
Yet she is not entirely without anything: she has a hatred which lays at the bottom and will not leave. It is there all the time, it is constantly there, she is good at that and therefore not entirely useless in the world or in the bar. She probably has normal bodily movements although she has never been seen to go to the ladies room."
Three paragraphs on a minor character that has only a few throwaway lines in the movie. Hank must've really hated her. I wonder who he modelled Lilly on and if she ever saw herself portrayed on the big screen.
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