Ask the Dust: Bukowski Found Fante in a Library. So Did I. Then Hollywood Made the Movie.
There are books you read because somebody recommends them.
And then there are books that seem to find you.
For me, John Fante's Ask the Dust was one of those books.
I found it in a public library.
That matters because decades earlier, Charles Bukowski found the same book the same way.
Bukowski was a struggling young writer spending his days reading at the downtown Los Angeles Public Library when he pulled Ask the Dust from the shelves. He later described the discovery as being like finding gold in a city dump.
Fante became a lifelong influence on Bukowski, who eventually helped convince his publisher, Black Sparrow Press, to bring Fante's forgotten work back into print.
Bukowski famously summed up his feelings in three words:
“Fante was my god.”
Bukowski has had a profound influence on me as a writer, so there's something wonderfully circular about discovering Fante through the same institution where Bukowski discovered him.
Not Amazon.
Not Goodreads.
Not an algorithm.
A public library.
And when I read Ask the Dust, I understood immediately why Bukowski wouldn't shut up about this guy.
The Book Feels Like a Fever Dream About Becoming a Writer
My memory of reading Ask the Dust isn't really about plot.
It's a feeling.
Fante drops you into Depression-era Los Angeles with Arturo Bandini, a broke, arrogant, insecure young writer desperately trying to become the person he imagines himself to be.
He's ridiculous.
He's romantic.
He's cruel.
He's lonely.
He's convinced greatness is right around the corner.
In other words, he's a writer.
Reading the novel felt like experiencing a fever dream that somehow induced another fever dream.
But underneath all of Bandini's madness, Fante paints the Los Angeles you want to believe exists when you're a young writer.
Cheap rooms.
Cafés.
Dust blowing through the city.
Beautiful people you can't have.
Money you don't have.
Books you're going to write.
An entire city simultaneously rejecting you and promising that something incredible could happen tomorrow.
That's what stayed with me.
Not simply Los Angeles as a location.
Los Angeles as an idea.
And Then Robert Towne Tried to Turn That Feeling Into a Movie
Here's where things get frustrating.
Robert Towne should have been the perfect filmmaker for Ask the Dust.
This is the Robert Towne who wrote The Last Detail.
The Yakuza.
Shampoo.
And, most importantly, Chinatown—one of the great Los Angeles screenplays.
The connection gets even crazier: Towne discovered Ask the Dust while researching Chinatown. Fante's depiction of 1930s Los Angeles influenced Towne's own writing, and Towne eventually befriended Fante.
Towne spent decades wanting to adapt the novel.
Then he finally got his chance.
He wrote and directed Ask the Dust in 2006.
And somehow this may be one of the worst examples of Robert Towne adapting a book to the screen.
Maybe that's because the impossible thing about Ask the Dust isn't recreating the buildings.
It's recreating Bandini's brain.
Book Bandini vs. Movie Bandini
Fante's Arturo Bandini lives inside language.
His Los Angeles is filtered through ego, lust, Catholic guilt, ambition, poverty, racism, insecurity and the absolutely irrational confidence required to believe that anybody wants to read what you're writing.
Colin Farrell can play that wounded romanticism.
In fact, Farrell would later give a much stranger and, for me, much more powerful performance as a lonely man aching for connection in The Lobster.
But here something gets lost.
Movie Bandini is Colin Farrell walking through a beautifully recreated 1930s Los Angeles.
Book Bandini makes you feel like you're trapped inside the skull of a writer slowly going crazy in Los Angeles.
That's a big difference.
Salma Hayek Has Never Been More Fetching
Then there's Camilla.
Good grief.
Salma Hayek has rarely been more fetching than she is in this movie.
Hayek plays Camilla Lopez, the Mexican waitress who becomes the center of Bandini's obsession.
Interestingly, the movie actually gives Camilla more material than Fante's novel does. Hayek said at the time that Towne had substantially developed the character for his screenplay, to the point that she deliberately avoided reading the novel before filming because she wanted to play Towne's version of Camilla.
And that makes sense watching the movie.
Camilla isn't merely Bandini's literary obsession anymore.
She's competing with him for ownership of the movie.
Sometimes she wins.
What Do I Actually Remember From the Movie?
Here's my problem.
When I think about the novel, I remember becoming a writer.
I remember Los Angeles.
I remember dust.
I remember desperation.
I remember wanting to create something.
When I think about the movie?
I remember the flirtations in the café.
I remember the nude swim.
I remember Colin Farrell's full-frontal moment.
I remember Salma Hayek's nudity.
And I remember the waves.
Lots of waves.
Meanwhile the dust feels like a background player.
LOL.
That's probably the fundamental problem with the adaptation.
The novel's title feels existential.
The movie's title feels meteorological.
Wait...Is That Elsa?!
Then this woman appears.
Vera Rivkin.
She's frantic, emotionally unstable and completely obsessed with Bandini.
And the actress playing her is fascinating to watch.
I kept staring at her.
Wait.
Is that—
IDINA MENZEL?!
Yep.
Before an entire generation knew her as the voice of Elsa singing “Let It Go” in Disney's Frozen, Idina Menzel was here playing Vera in Ask the Dust.
And Vera may actually be one of the movie's most interesting characters.
Menzel brings this desperate, nervous energy into the story that feels much closer to the uncomfortable emotional temperature I remember from Fante's book.
Every time she appears, the movie gets stranger.
And better.
The Strangest Part Is That Towne KNEW This Book
That's what keeps bothering me.
Robert Towne wasn't some studio writer assigned Ask the Dust six weeks before production.
He loved this novel.
He discovered it decades earlier.
He befriended John Fante.
He credited Fante's Los Angeles with influencing his own writing.
And he spent roughly three decades trying to get this movie made.
Towne was also one of America's great screenwriters. The Last Detail, Chinatown, The Yakuza, Shampoo, Mission: Impossible—this guy knew how to turn character into cinema.
Yet Ask the Dust became his final feature as a director and essentially his last major produced movie credit.
That's a strange ending to an extraordinary career.
Maybe loving a book too much can be its own problem.
The Movie Recreates Los Angeles. The Book Creates Los Angeles.
And here's the irony.
They couldn't even shoot most of this Los Angeles story in Los Angeles.
Production went to South Africa, where Towne's team actually constructed a large recreation of Bunker Hill in Cape Town. Towne said the climate and quality of light helped South Africa convincingly stand in for Southern California.
Visually?
It works.
Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is beautiful.
You can rebuild streets.
You can recreate Bunker Hill.
You can manufacture 1930s storefronts.
You can photograph sunlight hitting a California-that-isn't-actually-California.
But Fante did something harder.
He built Los Angeles out of sentences.
And somehow that imaginary Los Angeles feels more real to me than the one Robert Towne physically constructed.
Johnny Spoiler's Verdict
I don't hate Ask the Dust.
Actually, parts of it are beautiful.
Salma Hayek is magnetic.
Colin Farrell is searching for something interesting inside Bandini.
Idina Menzel nearly steals the movie whenever Vera wanders into it.
Caleb Deschanel makes the whole thing look like a half-remembered Los Angeles dream.
And knowing how much Robert Towne loved Fante makes me want the movie to work even more.
But the novel made me feel something the movie never quite reaches.
It made being a writer seem miserable, romantic, ridiculous and absolutely necessary.
Maybe that's why finding it in a library meant so much to me.
Charles Bukowski once wandered through the Los Angeles Public Library looking for a writer who spoke to him and discovered John Fante.
Years later, I wandered into a public library and found Ask the Dust too.
Bukowski influenced me.
Fante influenced Bukowski.
And somewhere in that strange literary chain, Arturo Bandini is still sitting in a cheap Los Angeles room convincing himself that the next page is going to make him immortal.
That's the Ask the Dust I remember.
Not the waves.
Not the naked swim.
Not even Salma Hayek.
Okay.
Maybe a little Salma Hayek.
But mostly the words.
Johnny Spoiler verdict: READ THE BOOK. Then Binge Later on the movie.
More Movies, Books and Rabbit Holes With Johnny Spoiler
If you like movies that send you backward into the novel, sideways into Hollywood history and eventually down some completely unexpected rabbit hole, that's pretty much what we do around here.
Binge-Watchers Podcast with Johnny Spoiler digs into cult movies, forgotten movies, horror, strange Hollywood stories and the books and filmmakers hiding behind them.
Sometimes the movie is better.
Sometimes the book wins.
And sometimes you just end up wondering how the guy who wrote Chinatown couldn't quite capture the book that helped him imagine Chinatown in the first place.
