Ben Gazzara delivers a gutsy, four-barreled performance as skid-row poet and storyteller Charles Bukowski (rechristened Charles Serking onscreen) in Tales of Ordinary Madness, blackly comic Italian director Marco Ferreri's adaptation of Bukowski's roman à clef Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Half soused, with a 2 a.m. shadow and street urchin rags, Serking waltzes through the scummiest neighborhoods of the City of Angels, indulging in booze, poetry, and copulation, and lounging ...
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Ben Gazzara delivers a gutsy, four-barreled performance as skid-row poet and storyteller Charles Bukowski (rechristened Charles Serking onscreen) in Tales of Ordinary Madness, blackly comic Italian director Marco Ferreri's adaptation of Bukowski's roman à clef Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. Half soused, with a 2 a.m. shadow and street urchin rags, Serking waltzes through the scummiest neighborhoods of the City of Angels, indulging in booze, poetry, and copulation, and lounging in flophouses and on grimy public buses. His bedmates are a midget, a string of seedy whores, and various earthy L.A. denizens, played by Susan Tyrell, Ornella Muti, and others; he eventually falls for a prostitute who can express her affection only via self-mutilation. Ferreri lets Bukowski's ribald humor flow throughout and exposes the dark erotic currents at the heart of the author's narratives. Laced with perverse, shocking imagery, this unbridled celebration of life's dark underbelly has been praised by critics such as The New Yorker's Pauline Kael and Playboy's Bruce Williamson for its "genuine audacity and risktaking." Nathan Southern, Rovi
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Add this copy of Tales of Ordinary Madness to cart. $75.00, good condition, Sold by Salzer's Records rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from ventura, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Koch Lorber Films.
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Seller's Description:
Judith Drake, Hope Cameron, Tanya Lopert, Katya Berger, Roy Brocksmith, Susan Tyrrell, Ornella Muti, Ben Gazzara. Good. 1981 Run time: 101. Former rental from iconic video superstore, Salzers Video (1980-2021). Has category and retro video store stickers! All media in excellent condition!
Certain scenes have a cinematography of compelling color and shading, others feature Ben Gazarra's even but hearfelt delivery of impromptu poems of the moment. And Ornella Muti appears as the femme female so ravishing that ancient sailors would be too devasted even to launch their ships in pursuit. The story has no meaning other than to suspend and connect these elements. .
