Yönetmen : Barbet Schroeder Oyuncular : Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Alice Krige, Jack Nance Senaryo : Charles Bukowski Yapımcı : Barbet Schroeder, Fred Roos

Henry Chinaski, içkinin esiri olmuş bir serseridir. Zamanının çoğunu ucuz barlarda geçirir. Kendisi gibi sefil görünüşlü ama güzel bir kadına tutkuyla bağlıdır.Birgün yazarlık yeteneğini keşfeden zengin bir yayıncı kadınla tanışır. Bu, hayatında büyük bir değişikliği beraberinde getirir. Artık, ya yazdığı öykülere büyük paralar öneren bu kadınla başarının peşinden koşacaktır, ya da bu sefil yaşama devam edip özgürlüğün tadını çıkarmaya devam edecektir. Henry Chinaski never cared for the American dream, the thought of needing to become ‘something' and fit into the system disgusts him. He believes that life is free and yours to live like you see fit, and if that in some cases involves copious amounts of whiskey then so be it. Henry spends his days drinking and listening to the radio, and he spends his nights drinking and fighting against Eddy who he thinks personifies shallowness and shameless self promoting. Sometimes in the middle of this he finds the time to jot down a few lines of poetry or a short story. After fighting Eddy and winning for a change Henry is thrown out of his regular bar where Eddy is a bartender. This leads him to seek another watering hole where he happens to find Wanda who is a barfly, in her own words "if another man came along with a fifth of whiskey, I'd go with him". Henry is not fazed by this thou and moves in with her. Of course Wanda immediately goes off and sleeps with Eddy, but after some clothes.