Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books. The FBI kept a file on him as a result of his column, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, in the LA underground newspaper Open City. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a "laureate of American lowlife".Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . . [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero."
In this Bukowski poem entitled, "The Shoelace Poem," Bukowski invites the listener/reader to feel less alone in the insanity created by the simple, mundane string of ordinary life events. Sometimes it isn’t massive life tragedies that push someone over the edge. Sometimes it's just one too many broken shoelaces. And we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt, assuming we have likely all broken that last shoelace.
1973, San Francisco. Charles Bukowski, underground poet and punk ahead of his time, reads his poem Love to a wild audience who've come to see the pulp writer's provocative performance. But that day, instead of a punk they find a broken man hungry for love.
One afternoon, Bukowski sat down to record the audio version of his classic, Run With the Hunted. The session took place in his home with his wife by his side. These are the outtakes.
A long night spent drinking, smoking, and talking about sex, literature, childhood and humanity with irreverent writer poet Charles Bukowski in his California home in 1981. A story of video tapes lost, then found, and brought back to life.
BEER is a free interpretation of the poetry “Beer” from Charles Bukowski. The composition is a manifesto of the author’s way of life, this is why we decided to go inside the author’s mind, and it is not a safe journey. A brain solo without filter, a tale of ordinary madness, showing how much loneliness and decadence can be hidden inside a genius mind.
A film by Kayhan Lannes Ozmen, based on the poem "Girl on the escalator" by Charles Bukowski.
Violent youth is a film about a group of children who are struggling in a society. The story takes place in the Nineties years, when Macedonia was at a crossroads in its independence and forming their own way. Period of transition and proof… The story takes place in the capital of its margin, in a small stubburn. The main character is a picture of alienation and a photo forgotten and disbanded youth. Youth - no idea and direction, no time in which it could be priced.
After we've seen war-footage come raining upon us at ferocious speed, the image suddenly shifts into an desolated bar, showing the same footage on an bar-TV, whilst an bartender unknowingly cleans beer-glasses. Charlie, the films protagonist, is then seen driving his car towards this particular bar. The sun is breaking while Charlie parks outside Dick Turpin's pub. After sitting down and ordering a beer, Charlie starts recounting his steps before arriving at the pub.
Based upon Vincenzoni's biography, "Pane e cinema", the documentary traces the story of the screen play writer who invented many stories that became blockbusters throughout the world.
This is the last poetry reading Charles Bukowski gave outside the US. It was video taped in 1979 by local promoter Dennis Del Torre.
This drama centers on Hank Chinaski, the fictional alter-ego of "Factotum" author Charles Bukowski, who wanders around Los Angeles, CA trying to live off jobs which don't interfere with his primary interest, which is writing. Along the way, he fends off the distractions offered by women, drinking and gambling.
A boozy writer hammers away on his Underwood, recalling a childhood in which his abusive father kicked him out of the house for writing short stories. Based on the poem by Charles Bukowski.
Director John Dullaghan’s biographical documentary about infamous poet Charles Bukowski, Bukowski: Born Into This, is as much a touching portrait of the author as it is an exposé of his sordid lifestyle. Interspersed between ample vintage footage of Bukowski’s poetry readings are interviews with the poet’s fans including such legendary figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Fante (wife of John), Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. Filmed in grainy black and white by Bukowski’s friend, Taylor Hackford, due to lack of funding, the old films edited into this movie paint Bukowski’s life of boozing and brawling romantically, securing Bukowski’s legendary status.
A Charles Bukowski poem is put to animation. Four kids who are friends are drawn to a strange house that their parents tell them to avoid. One day they see a man of about 30 step outside, cigar and whiskey bottle in hand. He becomes a symbol for them of all that is strong, natural, and beautiful. What happens later to this man with the beautiful eyes introduces the boys to the gray and uptight world of adulthood that awaits them.
Based on a short story by Charles Bukowski from the collection "Tales of Ordinary Madness."
BBC documentary on the brutally honest writer/poet Charles Bukowski.
America Undercover goes to the Madison Hotel in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles and talks to some of the desperate people living there. It talks to a prostitute and heroin addict named Becky, a drug dealer and traveler names John, and an heavy drinking alcoholic named Jack Woodrow Wilson.
A César award winning short drama based around Charles Bukowski's two novels "Copulating Mermaid of Venice" and "Trouble with the Battery"
The Charles Bukowski Tapes are an altogether more than four hours long collection of 52 short-interviews with the American cult author Charles Bukowski, sorted by topic and each between one and ten minutes long. Director Barbet Schroeder (Barfly) interviews Bukowski about such themes as alcohol, violence, and women, and Bukowski answers willingly, losing himself in sometimes minute-long monologues. Amongst other things, Bukowski leads the small camera team through his parents’ house and his former neighbourhood, but the largest part of the interviews takes place in Bukowski’s flat or backyard. The documentary includes a scene in which Bukowski reacts violently toward his wife Linda Lee.
Three 'Bukowskian' torrid nights in the life of a man in search of love. Harry Voss, 12, is young and naive. Love, for him, is romantic love between princes and princesses demurely kissing each other on the mouth. His father is a hero who kidnapped his mother and married her on a lonely mountain peak... Later on, he'll do the same. But Harry has a lot to learn. He learns about 'being hot' and 'fucking' and about what you have to do when you're alone and 'feel the itch'. He also learns that there are handsome men and ugly ones, that love can be unfair. That one can find comfort in drinking... but above all he learns that man is capable of anything - absolutely anything! - to get his fair share of love.
More than 20 contemporary North American poets recite, sing, and perform their work. Several also comment. Early in the film, Charles Bukowski talks about the energy of poets and of a poem. These poets are energetic performers, and their poems are meant to be heard. These poets are the children of Walt Whitman and of Charles Olson, incantatory and oratorical, radical, sometimes incorporating contemporary political imagery. Black Mountain poets, the Beats, minimalists like John Cage, the wordless Four Horsemen, Tom Waits, and others capture aspects of poets as troubadours. Written by
Poet/lecturer Charles Serking awakens from his alcoholic haze long enough to take a bus back to L.A. and plunge into an orgy of drink and sexual depravity.
The Last Straw is a film documenting the very last live poetry reading given by Charles Bukowski at The Sweetwater, a music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980
In the spring of 1970 Charles Bukowski took his first plane trip for a poetry reading at Bellevue Community College in Washington state. That he was videotaped by two students apparently was later forgotten, but the tapes were recently rediscovered and have been released by Black Sparrow press. "Bukowski at Bellevue" gives us a fascinating glimpse of the man before he had to be concerned with how celebrity and financial security were affecting him. (It is said that this was only his fourth public reading.) This is Bukowski, then about 50, taken straight. No games, no irony, no self-consciousness--just an ordinary-looking guy, maybe hung over, sitting before a small group of students reading his work with gusto, humor and sensitivity. A man who clearly had lived the marginal life he wrote about with passion and at times a lyrical, even mystical beauty.
