[cgbg]

The character Ferrie was in the movie—I do not recall who played him.

The movie gave a good idea of what a bizarre individual Ferrie was.

[Steely Tom]

True. But as I understand it, New Orleans was full of "bizarre individuals" at that time, and probably today too.

John Kennedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces is built around that observation. He wrote it during the early sixties (it contains references to a recently-released movie of the Beach Blanket Bingo genre, for example), even though it was published in 1980.