Greatest movie scenes ever # 19

Not quite sure where about The Wrestler will feature in my top ten movies of '09 as of yet (somewhere below both Mesrine movies, District 9, and Inglorious Basterds but above Drag Me To Hell, Moon, Watchmen, The Hangover and Bronson) but, although the great Matt Dillon made a good fist of it in Factotum 5 years ago, Mickey Rourke's depiction of Henry Chinaski in Barfly remains my preferred Bukowski picture, just ahead of Ben Gazzara's Tales Of Ordinary Madness.

The highlights come thick and fast in Barfly, from Chinaksi's many pontifications on life ("Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth") to Hip Hug-Her by Booker T. & The M.G's soundtracking the end credits, but the movie's key scene is Rourke's second fight with his Itchy-esque nemesis Eddie The bartender, played by the one and only motherfuckin' Frank Stallone. Less badass bartending alpha-male and more 80s Liverpool squad member, Eddie finally gets his comeuppance for humiliating Hank in their previous altercations throughout the movie when Hank reverses his whipping-boy status to unleash an almighty can of whup-ass on his Mark Lawrenson circa 1984 resembling foe :



Of course, there has to be some sort of tenuous link to the rap here and, predictably, it's going to be the one to MF Doom. Not because Doom's Born Like This was based around a Bukowski poem, but because Doom's hunched bumbling in his early videos is wholly reminiscent of Rourke's stooped lumbering in Barfly :

MF Doom - Dead Bent



MF Doom ft. Kurious - ?