There’s a moment towards the end of JR Moehringer’s 2005 memoir, “The Tender Bar,” when the writer realizes he’s bypassing the drain. The owner of his favorite bar, Steve, died of an alcoholic, overused himself, fell, hit his head and fell into a coma. In search of solace, young Moehringer, fresh out of Yale, turns to his most alluring companion: alcohol.
“I no longer pretended to drink to bond with men, to blunt the worries of the day, or to participate in male rituals,” writes Moehringer. “I was drinking to get drunk. I drank because I didn’t know what else to do. I drank like Steve drank at the end, to reach oblivion.
“The Tender Bar,” which was adapted into an Amazon Prime movie, directed by George Clooney, is not strictly about alcoholism. It is about the community and the family and the void left by an absent father (alcoholic). But Moehringer’s words would make a standard drunk at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which I attended many. “Forget” is a popular word there and a popular destination among alcoholics. That’s one of the smartest things about Moehringer’s memoir – they skillfully capture that moment when the party ends, when it’s no longer fun, and it’s time to sink or swim. (Moehringer quit drinking at age 25.)
But that moment never happens in the movie, mainly because JR, played by Tye Sheridan, drinks harmlessly, like everyone else at the Long Island waterhole where his bartender uncle, Charlie (Ben Affleck), dispenses drinks. words of wisdom with his dry martinis. The film that comes closest to acknowledging alcoholism is when JR’s rascal father (Max Martini) comes on the scene. Classic deadbeat dad, he disappears for years, shows up to advertise his sobriety, but explains that he can actually have a cocktail every now and then because he’s not really an alcoholic. Then he beats his girlfriend. He is the film’s designated alcoholic and also its villain.
“He’s someone who values their sobriety, and it’s like, ‘I’ve decided I can afford a cocktail,'” “Tender Bar” screenwriter William Monahan said over the phone. . “Then this cocktail is like 10 million of them, resulting in domestic violence.”
Other than JR’s dad, however, no one in the movie appears to have a drinking problem, despite spending all of his free time in a bar.
“George Clooney didn’t hammer,” Monahan said. “But JR’s character certainly has a point where he realizes he has to straighten up.”
Well, yes and no. In the film, JR comes to Charlie worried that he will end up like his old man. Charlie’s tip: Cut down on your alcohol intake. And this is it. We don’t see JR slamming cocktails at Penn Station and picking up a few Budweiser tallboys for the ride to the bar, like he does in the book. Instead, his uncle told him to cool down a bit. Does he heed this advice? You never really know.
Moehringer, who went on to write novels (“Sutton”) and other books (“Open”, with Andre Agassi), considers drinking to be an inherently difficult subject to describe in a film.
“It’s so tightly woven into the fabric of society, and it’s such a central part of many rites and rituals, holidays and special occasions,” he told me via email. “Alcohol can be wonderful, fulfilling, stimulating for the mind, so it’s hard to think – nasty to think – that it can also be dangerous, and sometimes deadly. It doesn’t seem right, that thing that makes us feel so good can also make us feel so bad. The paradox makes discussion difficult.
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Yet this paradox has also provided the backbone of enough films to make alcoholism cinema its own genre. Many of these films speak eloquently and thoughtfully about the essential features of the disease, from self-loathing to basic dishonesty to ravenous envy.
Some of these films are quite recent. For example, “Flight,” the 2012 film starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot who lands a daredevil landing under the influence, talks about the ease with which alcoholics lie to themselves. and everyone. Others belong to classic Hollywood. “The Lost Weekend” (1945) tells the terrifying story of a desperate drunkard who fights in vain the all-consuming obsession with alcohol consumption that defines alcoholism. These are courageous films which cut the price of alcoholism as quickly as possible.
Some of these themes emerge in Moehringer’s book, which is careful to highlight the good, bad, and bad sides of living on a bar stool, even if it’s not specifically about alcoholism. But the movie doesn’t even bother to separate one of Moehringer’s barflies from another. Most of them are just simple faces in the crowd, even when they say a line here and there. The book makes it clear that Moehringer loved these guys. On screen, they barely exist.
It is sad. People in a bar give character to the place, even when they make you want to turn away from it, like the book regular who half-chokes JR just because he’s tired of hearing him speak. Tender bars have blowers who need to tell you about whatever they’re planning on doing, and drunks who love to tell you how drunk you are. Bars have personalities. These personalities don’t have to be tragic, but sometimes, say in Steve’s case, they are.
“The Tender Bar” is a warm and fuzzy little film, a first sip of a light beer. But for a movie with the word “bar” in its title, it contains remarkably little information about alcohol, where it is consumed, and what it does.
It is quite tender. But he could use a little tenacity.
