History Literature / BarneysVersion

The film version, which differs slightly from the novel in a few ways, stars Creator/PaulGiamatti as Barney, Rachelle [=LeFevre=] as Clara, Creator/MinnieDriver as The Second Mrs. Panofsky, Rosamund Pike as Miriam, and Creator/DustinHoffman as Barney's father Izzy.

The film version stars Creator/PaulGiamatti as Barney, Rachelle [=LeFevre=] as Clara, Creator/MinnieDriver as The Second Mrs. Panofsky, Rosamund Pike as Miriam, and Creator/DustinHoffman as Barney's father Izzy.

* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: InUniverse. Solange, an actress in the soap opera Barney produces, is frequently featured in Bulgarian tabloid newspapers. [[spoiler:At least she thinks she is; in reality, Barney pays someone to create them and fax them to her from Bulgaria so she feels she is still popular.]] A book-only example comes when Barney mentions that said crappy soap is popular in Britain, which (given that the lead character is a Mountie) could be construed as a reference to ''Series/DueSouth'', which had a cult following in that country.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Barney sometimes displays shades of this.

* FootnoteFever: Barney's manuscript is littered with mistaken allusions to film, literature, and then-current events, which his son Michael notes and corrects with footnotes. [[spoiler: At least some of the mistakes turn out to have been intentional on Barney's part to make Michael, who he thinks to be insufficiently literate, read all those books. This was actually unnecessary, as Michael had in fact already done so.]]

* RidiculousProcrastinator: Barney, if his memoirs are anything to go by; he constantly diverts from telling his story, and does not get to the event that defined his life (the weekend on which Boogie disappeared) until around two-thirds into the novel. By that point, even Mrs. Ogilvy, who for the most part exists merely in his sexual fantasies, is telling him to get on with it.

* SoapWithinAShow: Barney is the producer of a sleazy, cliched, and long-running soap opera named ''O'Malley of the North'' [[note]] or ''[=McIver=] of the RCMP'' in the book; the name was likely changed for the movie due to [[SitcomArchNemesis Terry [=McIver=]]] being AdaptedOut[[/note]]. Which only survives for as long as it does due to the Canadian government providing funding for Canadian-made television programmes. Which is TruthInTelevision as there are organisations that fund Canadian productions as a means of preventing Canadian TV from being overrun by American content.

* UnreliableNarrator: Barney openly acknowledges taking potshots at various people he doesn't like, but he does try to remember things as best he can, despite his descent into dementia. Michael's footnotes point out when and where he's been remembering incorrectly. [[spoiler: A remark by Kate at the end quite possibly subverts this, though, as she claims that Barney deliberately mis-quoted various authors in an attempt to get Michael to actually read the authors in question, although Michael says that this was unnecessary as he had already done so.]]

* DeathBySex: [[spoiler: Barney's dad]] dies "of a heart attack on the table of a massage parlour in Montreal's North End, immediately after ejaculating."