August 2025

ShotDeck Drop: Fat City (1972)

The visual research resource ShotDeck recently examined Fat City (1972), shot by Conrad Hall, ASC for legendary director John Huston (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Wise Blood, Prizzi’s Honor). The film’s ironic title — a slang term for “the good life” — takes its name from the novel upon which it’s based, which in turn was taken from the town where it’s set, Stockton, in California’s central valley. Stacey Keach is Bill Tully, a 29-year-old drunk trying to resurrect his short but promising boxing career, and a fresh-faced Jeff Bridges plays Ernie Munger, a young, hopeful boxer whose star is on the rise. Hall’s gritty, naturalistic cinematography captures the melancholy of its setting, a world of poverty and despair, where any kind of...more