Ask The Dusk - John Fante: An Unsentimental Look at the Life of a Struggling Writer Trying to Exist in Depression-era Los Angeles

Robert Towne, writer of the masterpiece Chinatown, knows pre-war Los Angeles. He recreates the pre-war Los Angeles of John Fante's 1939 novel Ask the Dusk in the 2006 film of the same name, starring Colin Farrell as Fante's alter ego, virginal writer Arturo Bandini, and Salma Hayek as the Mexican waitress he falls in love with. Fante's novel is a merciless portrait of an inexperience writer seeking fame and fortune in California while living in a seedy hotel with disenchanted Midwesterners. Despite Towne's respect for the author and the novel, his adaptation of the film attempts to be faithful to the novel but its switching of focus undermines the novel's original focus. Instead of showing us the tortured travels through Los Angeles that comprise the journey of Bandini, the film makes the romance between Arturo and Camilla the main story.

The novel Ask the Dusk is an unsentimental look at the life of a struggling writer trying to exist in Depression-era Los Angeles. Living in the vermin-filled Alta Loma hotel, in the novel we see a life of despair surrounds Bandini, who is also being tormented as a poor, struggling writer. As Fante's (46) Bandini says of getting sucked into the Southern California myth of paradise, "You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusky, vermin-infested apartments and hotels but you'll still be in paradise boys, land of sunshine." Spectacularly, Towne's film is faithful to the recreation of this dour version of pre-w

nd finally she was glaring at me with bitter hatred." In the film, Towne tries to reveal this aspect of the relationship. In one of the best scenes in a hotel room, Camilla becomes frustrated with the virgin and writer-blocked Arturo, telling him "You can't write or fuck" (Towne 2006). Yet the focus is on the romance between them in the film and not on the impact of Bandini's masochistic-like development as he meanders his way through the city of Los Angeles. Ironically, the one aspect where Towne is extremely faithful in adapting Fante's novel is in his respect for Fante's dialogue. However, in the novel this sets a languid pace that is mainly narrative and works because of the breadth and scope of the form of a novel. In the film, however, this languid pace and narrative approach seem to conflict with the more visual nature of the medium. Passages in the novel are vivid and alive whereas narrative in the film seems to bog it down. One passage from the novel expresses this vivid and entertaining imagery. We see this when Arturo criticizes Anglo society, "I see them...limping out of ugly little churches, their faces bleak from proximity with their strange gods...I have vomited at their newspapers, read their lite

Category: Literature - A