He moves in and becomes her lover and drinking partner. Jan ( Lili Taylor), like Chinaski, is an alcoholic. The first woman Chinaski meets in a bar becomes his most consistent companion throughout the film. In the course of sampling the smorgasbord of short-lived occupations, he meets up with assorted eccentric, frequently alcoholic characters. The film follows Chinaski as he works at, and gets fired from, various jobs, which include cleaning a massive sculpture, delivering ice, working at a pickle factory, and at a bicycle supply warehouse. Henry 'Hank' Chinaski ( Matt Dillon) is working toward becoming a writer while struggling with alcoholism and holding various menial jobs. Although events in the book take place in Los Angeles in the 1940s, the film has a contemporary setting. It stars Matt Dillon as Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski. When a brief stint as a bookie finds him abandoned by the only woman with whom he is able to relate, a fling with gold-digging floozie Laura finds him once again falling into a morose state of perpetual drunkenness and unemployment.įactotum was adapted into a film of the same name in 2005, directed by Bent Hamer and starring Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei.Factotum is a 2005 French-Norwegian dark comedy- drama film co-written and directed by Bent Hamer, adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by Charles Bukowski. Chinaski begins sleeping with fellow barfly Jan, a kindred spirit he meets while drowning his sorrows at a bar. He is consistently rejected by the only publishing house he respects, but is driven to continue by the knowledge that he could do better than the authors they publish.

Even though some of Chinaski's jobs and colleagues are described with great detail, they all eventually end with him either abruptly leaving or being fired. Much of the novel is dedicated to describing various menial jobs that Chinaski temporarily holds during the USA’s WWII economic boom. After getting into a fight with his father, Chinaski drifts through the seedy city streets of lower-class Los Angeles and other American cities in search of a job that will not come between him and his first love: writing. Set in the 1940s, the plot follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego, who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to the next (hence a factotum). It is Bukowski’s second novel and a prequel to Post Office (1971). Factotum (1975) is a picaresque novel by American author Charles Bukowski.

Factotum bukowski