As Lund has written about himself in an indispensable piece for Filmmaker Magazine headlinedOver 100 Cast Members and No Permits: How I Shot Ham on Rye in Los Angeles, the films faceless neighborhood locations were stolen from various spots across that cityso for example Ham on Ryes semi-decontextualized meeting spot Montys is in real life actually Berges, a deli in the La Caada Flintridge area of Los Angeles County. Reaktion Books, London, 2012. p. 146. For example, Henry's parents, like Bukowski's, had met in Germany after World War I. Henry agrees to teach little kid how to play a game and by the end of it he just walks out. We didnt want anything to seem like it was supposed to speak to some general moral or lesson, [but to] just let the mood and the vibe point in those directions instead we couldve very easily ruined the film with just a few lines of dialogue, I think, and Eric was very commandeering about us not doing that.. He has served as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera for years without getting to sing a single note on stage! Director: Tyler Taormina. She was 12, and now shes 18 going on 19 The fun little tidbit I like to say about working with her on these projects is that I only realized during the rehearsals, which was a months-long process, that the character of Haley in Ham on Rye is actually the same character as Poll Flowerpot from Suburban Legends but grown up in Suburban Legends, her curiosity always brings her closer to other peoplethats what her youth afforded to her. Like a hoagie sandwich filled with meat and lettuce, thats a quintessential American suburban item.. Transgression becomes even more unfathomable when an entire global generation seems to share the same path in gentrifying the cities, Taormina wrote for an interview published by Film Comment (also suggesting one of his films many productive contradictionsthat its a lament for the loss of a suburban experience produced almost exclusively in urban spaces). A hauntingly. 7. 65. As recently as four years ago the films now-29-year-old director, Tyler Taormina, maintained a website for his then-new webseries. Brewer, Gay. 6 reviews. Sad, gloomy and angry. Director: Tyler Taormina Ham on Rye is a 1982 semi- autobiographical novel by American author and poet Charles Bukowski. Ham on Rye (1982) is not only a loosely constructed autobiographical novel of Bukowski's distressingly poor childhood during the Depression, but it also qualifies as the novelist's version of. Its late spring in the suburbs, and boys and girls of high-school age are dressing up not quite in prom wear, but in sundresses and ties and jackets, headed to some kind of event. I'd read Ham On Rye, Post Office and Women in that order. At the start of the film, before the dance, you get a sense of the excitement and hope for the future. 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But what once had to burn or perish can now simply vanish between clicks, and without even the slightest hint of ceremony. The post-facto rationalizations they concoct for their hostility, however, involve his inability to play sports and his being viscerally revolted by cruelty to animals, the latter being one of the favorite past-times of neighborhood men and boys alike. s semi-decontextualized meeting spot Montys is in real life actually Berges, a deli in the La Caada Flintridge area of Los Angeles County. Haley (Haley Bodell), the closest the film has to a protagonist, flees the deli ceremony, casting herself off as Amy Irving's character was cast off in Carrie. Not sure why, but I really liked this. So to both make and spruce up the required disclosure, let me say that I not only consider Carson Lund a close friend, but that I also consider myself a dedicated fanof. All the dread and the emptiness is what comes up after the big Monty's scene, when day turns to night, and when most of Ham on Rye's first-half cast disappears from the picture. Whether his thoughts are good/bad, right or wrong, he said them! Like Henry, the rest of the Chinaskis are modeled after Bukowski's own family. Chinaski, growing up poor in Los Angeles during the Great Depression, is shown developing into a sarcastic loner. thats eventually revealed to be a literal ceremony at the center of Taorminas debut feature. Nothing but alienation. , . What defines Ham on Rye insteadoverwhelming all the foreshadowing and other narrative suggestions littered throughout its first halfare its faces (even the youngest ones seem tired and weathered, like kids in films made before our time), its sense of humor (which comes out via strange turns in dialogue and even stranger turns in performance, like a small boys mechanical golf-clap or a moms oversized chomps at lunch), and its numerous motifs, which include picture frames and oblique references to swine. This is a confusing taboo that weighs very heavily on mein fact, I feel it may have in a way forced me away from home. He doesn't repeat a lot of stories in his novels since they all take place at different parts in his life. Thats suggested from the starta scene at a public park that under another director mightve been rendered chaotic but that under Taorminas eye is cut down into digestible insert shots which seem to archive each action or gesture: a hand trying to spark a cheap lighter, another working to retune a guitar, yet another grasping an ad-perfect glass of lemonade. As a prequel to Bukowski's previous novels, Ham on Rye depicts the origin and development of many of the reoccurring themes of his work as well as the persona of Henry Chinaski. With the snow falling heavily, the ride back itself may only substitute one danger for another. I think in the first half the film is trying to make that same impression for the viewer a little bitall of this excess, all of this gravity thats applied to the mundane but ends up meaning so much [later on] that attention to the details of mise en scne was part of what made me interested in working on it. Taormina sets us in suburban America, among high school students, walking through a social ritual of conversation, dance, and food at a local deli. He taught Chinese and American History at the college level, worked with Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Org. Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter. To make matters worse, Chinaski develops horrible acne so severe that he has to undergo painful, and mostly ineffective, treatments, essentially becoming a human guinea pig for various experiments thought up by his uninterested doctors. Press J to jump to the feed. Like his previous works, Ham on Rye is set in Los Angeles where the author grew up. You are using an out of date browser. Bukowski's Ham on Rye and the Los Angeles Novel. To most patient eyes, it will look like a gentle ode to those who seemed part of the crowd in high school, then simply didnt transform into the kind of adults their peers chose to be. 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