Matt Dillon Q&A

Ben Walters interviews the star of the forthcoming adaptation of Charles Bukowski's 'Factotum'.

Nov  4 2005

After making his debut aged 15 in 'Over the Edge' (1979), Matt Dillon rose to stardom in Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Outsiders' and 'Rumble Fish'. He has acted for Gus Van Sant ('Drugstore Cowboy', 'To Die For'), Cameron Crowe ('Singles'), the Farrelly Brothers ('There's Something About Mary') and Paul Haggis, in this year's 'Crash'. Dillon plays author Charles Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski, in Bent Hamer's new adaptation of 'Factotum'.

Chinaski isn't quite Bukowski, but there are clearly elements of his personality in your performance.

It's a paradoxical situation. On one hand I'm relieved that I don't have to become a carbon copy of Charles Bukowski, which would require a lot of make-up and all that kind of stuff, and that was not the kind of film we were going to make. For whatever reason Bukowski decided he needed an alter ego, so he obviously didn't want it to be exactly him, which was liberating. But then once I agreed to do it it was all Bukowski again – I went back into reading his books. I'd read almost all of the novels and short stories in my early twenties. At that time I was into the iconoclast, the rebel – you know, 'fuck you' to society – and the irreverent humour, and the hangovers. In my twenties, and even in my thirties, I would drink more like Bukowski and I'd read some of this stuff out loud after a night of drinking with my friends, who were not literary guys at all, and Bukowski was really fun, he really speaks to the everyman. But [coming back to him now] I got this vulnerability.

Bukowski is associated with a barfly lifestyle, but 'Factotum' is largely about his worklife.

You don't think of him as a guy who was a worker but he showed up for these miserable jobs. That I totally identify with! The wretchedness of waking up with a hangover and having to go to work and being goddamn angry about it – there's something very human and endearing about that.

Have you often turned up on set with a sore head?

I have to tell you, I'm not that much of a masochist. I learned early on that that is just too painful for me. But I remember a friend of mine was working off Cape Maine, New Jersey – he went out on a scallop boat, way out there in rough seas, and I said, 'This is like your Jack London experience!' And he goes: 'Nah, man, you don't understand. It was fuckin' horrible out there.' He said the smartest guy on the boat was a Swede with his green card number tattooed on his arm and it was just miserable. But it made me think of Bukowski 'cause these guys make a lot of money for two weeks of work, but when they get off that boat they drink it and shoot it in their arm within the first weekend.

You met Bukowski's widow Linda while preparing for the film…

She was very helpful to me. She said, 'Oh, he could be a son-of-a-bitch,' to the point where he could go through the mirror, when he was drinking, when he would become this dark guy. But I don't think she took any shit from him. She gave me a drawing that he did – interestingly enough, it was a guy sitting in the kitchen drinking with the blinds drawn down. An unusual thing for Bukowski to draw…

Do you think the relationship between drinking and creativity is romanticised?

You see so many people around in that bohemian atmosphere that think: Oh, I can put away a case of beer a night and drink whisky and it's going to make me a great writer like Bukowski, and I can live to a ripe old age like Keith Richards and William Burroughs. I think the graveyards of the world are filled with people who thought they could get away with it. The reality is those people were talented, had immense gifts, and they were lucky. And they showed up! Hemingway was a very disciplined writer.

Burroughs was in 'Drugstore Cowboy'. What was he like?

He seemed very jaded and bored and usually people like that are uninteresting to me, but he was a fascinating guy. He always sent me a Christmas card.

So you have a drawing by Bukowski and Christmas cards from Burroughs? Not a bad collection.

It is kinda cool. And I have a cheque written to a liquor store from Jack Kerouac.

'Factotum' opens on November 18.

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