Songfacts®:

• This song is based on the 1987 movie Barfly, written by Charles Bukowski and based on his life. Mickey Rourke plays the Bukowski character, and Faye Dunaway is his love interest. The lyrics are culled from dialogue in the film; the title comes from Rourke's line, "Baby, What we had was just green corn," which he says after Dunaway boils corn unsuccessfully.
• "Green Corn" is the first track from the third NOFX album, Ribbed. Typical of their work, it's a frantic rocker that's less than two minutes long and doesn't have a chorus. NOFX had been touring like crazy for about five years by this point, and were slowly building a fanbase. They were signed to Epitaph Records and produced by label boss Brett Gurewitz, the guitarist in Bad Religion.
  
  A few years later, the punk boom happened, and Epitaph's big act, The Offspring, jumped to a major label. NOFX got offers but stayed put. They eventually left Epitaph to release all their material on Fat Wreck Chords, the label set up by their frontman, Fat Mike.
• According to the oral history NOFX: The Hepatitis Bathtub and Other Stories, a punk fanzine called Half Truth somehow got a copy of the Ribbed album to Charles Bukowski, who sent back this reply: "Thanks for sending the cassette. My wife played it full blast. I said, 'Hey, hey, what the f--k?"