THE BARTENDER KNOWS #8
WHAT IS THE BEST BAR FILM EVER MADE?
It’s a damn serious question. In most movies, a bar is known to show up from time to time. But as a person who’s tended for 20 years, I just can’t shake the nausea I feel when they poorly (or down right laughably) try to represent a true watering hole in the media. Most scenes in some of these TV shows and films are written as if the writer had never ordered a shot or passed out in a bathroom in their lifetime. It’s cheesy. I don’t trust you.
But there are some films that nail it perfectly. My bartender friends and I have argued for years over which films really conjure the feeling of drinking in a tried and true bar. There’s a lot of back and forth, but as you are fully aware: This is The Bartender Knows — so let this list be carved into marble.
Here are the seven most accurate depictions (plus three notable mentions) in all of cinema that depict what it’s like to live with a white rag in one hand and a church key in the other.
#7 COYOTE UGLY
This movie sucks. Well, it’s great if you like watching beautiful girls in cowboy boots and chokers stomp around emasculating idiots. But it does do one thing right — it shows how cutthroat, dishonest, and frankly idiotic some bars really are. Especially themed bars. Based on a GQ article by Elizabeth Gilbert (yes, Eat Pray Love Elizabeth Gilbert) with a final draft written by an uncredited Kevin Smith (that must be why the dialogue is so Oscar worthy), in the end, Coyote Ugly is a story about a young girl with big dreams new to the big bad city. Post-Covid NYC is hardly the land of dreams anymore. Nowadays, you’re more likely to be dancing around looking for your wallet while the ski-mask man has a knife to your face. (NOTE: “Coyote Ugly” is an invented term referring to a one night stand gone wrong. So wrong that when you woke up with your arm under a foul person, you’d want to chew it off to get out of the apartment unnoticed — just like the coyotes do in traps). Man, I miss 2000 A.D. New York.
#6 ST. ELMO’S FIRE
A total 80’s “Brat Pack” classic. I still have no idea what this movie is actually about (but I do know Molly Ringwald was not in it). I know it has something to do with the “series of young friends at a pivotal change in their lives” motif that was so popular at the time. The film is rife with classic character tropes. The budding yuppie politician (Judd Nelson). A saxophonist and reluctant father (Rob Lowe). An international banker and known ‘party girl’ (Demi Moore). The hardworking waiter in law school (Emilio Estevez). The start-up architect who is reluctant to marry (Ally Sheedy). There’s even a subtle gay plot line involving a conflicted journalist (Andrew McCarthy). And they all gathered at their local pub named…well, you can take a guess. Even after reading Wikipedia to brush up, I still don’t have a clue what happens in this movie. But it was cool, man. These actors were at the top of their game — and judging from the poster above, they dress like they lived in Williamsburg circa 2006. (NOTE: Where else would we get the ultimate karaoke song “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man In Motion) by the legend John Parr? Only a coked out wanna-be Breakfast Club could have such gifted inspiration).
#5 ROAD HOUSE
The Swayze. It’s all about the Swayze. This, technically, isn’t a movie about bartending. It’s a movie about a rogue bouncer who takes care of business, wherever he might find himself on that long, lonely road. It’s also about how fucking cool Patrick Swayze is and this film might just prove why he is a National Treasure. The Double Deuce (a pretty shitty roadhouse somewhere in the backwoods of America) is in trouble. And I mean, a lot. I wouldn’t even want to bartend there. I couldn’t handle it. Unless I worked and learned under the Swayze. “Always be nice…always be nice. Always be nice…until it’s time, not to be nice.” This film has everything you could ever want from a late 80’s brazen fight flick. Rampant and random gratuitous nudity. Oiled, shirtless dudes saying awfully latent homosexual things to each other. Ben Gazzara is a total rich douche bag bleeding the town dry. Kelly Lynch plays the hottest surgeon I’ve ever seen — and who doesn’t want a Sam Elliot in his prime as Swayze’s grizzled (and not completely grey, but still beautifully stashed) mentor? It’s the bar fighting gift that keeps on giving.
#4 COCKTAIL
Of course I was going to pick this film. Raise your hands if you didn’t think this film would be on the list? I saw this when I was young and said: “That’s it. I want to throw bottles around, count cash tips and sleep with anything that’s got a pulse.” Then again, I was only 13 years old. My mind apparently must have blocked certain scenes out. I must of have missed the themes of greed and power. I guess I didn’t remember the moments of betrayal, cuckolding, cheating, and confessions of child molestation. Wait — did someone commit suicide in this movie? (Spoiler Alert: yes). I recently watched this film and despite all the glib, showboating tricks and flair that had to happen because they cast Tom Cruise, it’s a really deep movie about real shit. The writer, Heywood Gould, did live a lot of the scenes that were shot in the film. He was quoted saying: “There were a lot of bartenders around like Tom Cruise, younger guys who came on and were doing this for a while — and then 10 years later, still doing it,” said Gould. “It wasn’t as if I was betraying the character. It was a matter of making the character more idealistic, more hopeful — he’s got his life ahead of him. He turns on the charm, without the cynical bitter edge of the older guys.” Ouch. As a lifer bartender, I can relate. And I know some of you can too. (NOTE: Don’t worry about me. I still have to turn this column into a book — then maybe I can date an Elisabeth Shue type).
#3 THE TENDER BAR
An old, dirty bar with old dirty regulars. Check. You can smell the dust from the books lining the crooked shelves of the place. Check. Fun drunks who look like they bought 17,000 lottery tickets in their life and only won $25 bucks once and spent that money on a 40 ounce and a pack of Newport Reds. Check. Family members who are low on income but heavy in heart. Check. This is a film based on J. R. Moehringer’s memoir about growing up in his uncle’s bar and figuring out how to be a writer. I read his book — it’s fantastic. And this film, directed by George Clooney and starring a recently sober Ben Affleck, is perfect. What do I mean by perfect? It shows the day in and day out of what it takes to run a bar. Oiling the creaky doors. Keeping the drunks not too drunk, but just drunk enough to make it believable. I thought I knew these people. I thought I’ve served these people. In the end, it’s a love letter to books, to drinking, to family and to trying to get the fuck out of where you came from. Moehringer did make it out. But guess what was always waiting for him when he came back home: The Dickens Bar (aptly named, obviously). I even pulled a tear down the cheek here and there and I don’t even have feelings anymore. Affleck pulled it off as Uncle Charlie. He was restrained and calm, as if he did actually use a condom the night before with whatever young actress he just got a part for.
#2 TREES LOUNGE
Nobody plays a loser better than Steve Buscemi. Who knew he was actually a NYC firefighter? But he couldn’t get Trees Lounge off his mind, not even when fire or Quentin Tarantino called him up. He ended up directing this passion project about a passionless man and a bar I wished existed here in Williamsburg today. The shots were cheap, the company was mildly aggressive, there was a damn good jukebox (not digital) in the corner and ladies like a highly make-up’d Debbie Mazar wanted to slow dance in the dark, whispering in my ear with a Queens accent. AND Carol Kane is your bartender?!? What more could you want? Again, nothing much happens here. Buscemi’s character, Tommy, doesn’t do much except drink at the bar, get into some kind of trouble and run back to the Trees Lounge. That’s it. This is no Schindler’s List. This is accuracy in cinema. Tommy is a proud drunk. He’s okay with that. Steve Buscemi made a movie about this. Are you okay with that?(NOTE: There’s a depiction of one of the best bar jokes slash come on’s I’ve ever watched in cinema OR in real life. Go watch the film. You’ll know what I mean. It’s brilliant).
AND FINALLY…
#1 BARFLY
The man is Henry Chinaski. He’s played by the great Mickey Rourke (before he really fucked up his face). The lady is Wanda (last name unknown). She’s played by the absolute legend Faye Dunaway. The writer of the script was none other than the famous/infamous writer Charles Bukowski, based on many (if not most) of his actual experiences fighting, fucking and philosophizing across the dirty streets of Skid Row Los Angeles in the early 80’s. Trees Lounge tried to go full desperation — but that film screens like a Disney film compared to Barfly — the greatest and most accurate bar film ever recorded on celluloid. There’s no hero. There’s no tomorrow. There’s only the drink. I’m pretty sure the only plot in the film is that the drunk, Chinaski, wants to fight the bartender who keeps pestering and belittling him (funny enough, played by Frank Stallone. Yeah, Sly’s brother). I once showed it to the drunks at my bar on movie night. Then I realized I could’ve been accidentally staging a coup against myself. I warned all of the slumped men at the bar: “Don’t you get any ideas, you degenerates!” A film like this would and could not be shot today. Chinaski is a poet, secretly, but most of his Muse is lost at the bottom of the bottle. Wanda is, as described, “a distressed goddess”, and Dunaway plays her with such perfect, brittle ferocity. She even punches some entitled trust fund publisher lady when she tries to seduce the sad lump that is her ‘man’. It’s hard not to find the poetry in that. Even if that poetry was soaked in whiskey first. Barfly is the pinnacle of ‘hang-out’ movies. You’re not there to ‘find something out’ or ‘learn things about the world’. It’s a movie you drink to. It’s a movie you drink with. And what better bar movie can you get than that?
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