Hailed on its release as director John Huston's comeback film, Fat City is based on Leonard Gardner's novel (Gardner himself wrote the screenplay) of the “seedy, sweaty boxing and derelict milieu of Stockton, California.... Huston is in his element here simply because his realistic affectations have always been merely a cover and an alibi for his romantic affection for the compulsive losers of this world.” Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice. The losers in Fat City are two prizefighters (Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges), a sherry drinking bar-fly (Susan Tyrrell), the small-time fight managers, the other boxers, migrant lettuce pickers, assorted countermen, etc., who are “presented with such stunning and sometimes comic accuracy that Fat City transcends its own apparent gloom... full of the kind of dialogue that movies usually can't afford, that defines time, place, mood and character while seemingly going nowhere.”