Bukowski - Born Into This
by John Dullaghan
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DVD details
Actor: Bono, Charles Bukowski, John Bryan, Linda Lee Bukowski, Marina BukowskiDirector: John Dullaghan
Brand: MAGNOLIA FILMS
Cinematographer: Art Simon
Cinematographer: Matt Mindlin
Editor: Victor Livingston
Producer: Diane Markow
Producer: John McCormick
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 130 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-03-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Magnolia
Product features:
- This documentary looks at the life of poet and author Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), whose bibliography includes "Notes of a Dirty Old Man", "Love is a Dog from Hell", as well as the screenplay for Barfly. Bukowski earned a cult following attracted to his graphic and brutal stories of a life (often his own) lived amidst alcoholism, poverty and violence. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre:?DOCUMENTAR
DVD Reviews of Bukowski - Born Into This
DVD Review: The Postal Worker Who Thought He was a Writer
Summary: 5 Stars
Frankly, I thought I'd outgrown the beatniks, my high school heroes who motivated me to be a geek without apologies. I was initially thrilled to hear and meet in person the likes of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, William Burroughs (never caught Kerouac, though he of course was #1). But by the time I got to graduate school, the primary appeal of the beats was their attraction to jazz and their aesthetic passivity (T. S. Eliot's definition of art--if it moves you to "do" something, it's propaganda), all of which distinguished them from the "group-think" of the '60s flower children, the Dylan (Bob) acolytes, the Woodstock generation--a lot of hair covering empty heads filled with little knowledge of art, literature, the past. Still that distinction didn't earn for their predecessors, the Beats, the respect I'd developed for Chaucer, Shakespeare, Donne, the Romantics and the "Lyrical Ballads," Keats, R. Browning and Pound.
But Bukowski is a seducer, a curious combination of utter, disarming honesty and fascinating, even charming "performance artist." He's not an unattractive man, and he possesses just enough of a lisp to muffle, elevate, and lend a touch of playful mischief to the brutality, sexism, tough talk--and frequent resorting to the scatological and the bottle (the latter an escape, an excuse, a "prop" essential to his "act" when reading in public performance). Like Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, he was a heavy drinker, but had any of America's literary alcoholics been capable of living up to their reputations as drunks, it's unlikely few would have produced the body of work we associate with their names.
The film makes clear that, far from a free spirit, Bukowski was a highly disciplined machine when his survival depended upon it. He could work interminable hours at a mindless post office job. It comes as no surprise, then, to learn about his obsession with writing, his prolific output despite mountains of rejections to match it. Like most writers (and orchestrators) he forced himself through countless hours of writing--unshowered, ungroomed, subsisting on"Payday" candy bars as nourishment--quickly adopting the self-description "dirty old man" (a phrase that seems tailor-made for writers). The man pre-dates and outwrites the beats (forget about the hippies) because of his work ethic, unflinching honesty, and freedom from all illusions. Asked when he "realized" he was a writer, he answers: "You don't realize you're a writer. You think you're writer."
For the amateur psychologizers, Bukowski's insecurity and its possible sources are all too apparent, from his extremely pock-marked face, near-diminutive stature, and frequent beatings suffered at his father's hands (or whip). In one sense, he answered the brutality he had received with his own version of it--a facade that most viewers (and listeners) should have no trouble penetrating. Bukowski mocks the American dream and the illusions it fosters, especially among the young--or the parents of all those gifted children. Life is exceedingly tough in Bukowski's world. He acknowledges it, but then dares you to deal with it. Unlike Steinbeck and the Romantics (including their descendants, the Beatniks, who retained a Whitman-like wanderlust and mysticism toward nature), Bukowski doesn't appear to have left the bars and gutters long enough to discover the world of nature--followed by the inevitable disillusionment. He simply has no illusions.
He likes to reduce life's complexities, including love/sex, to a power game, but the viewer senses it's a game for him, a role he's expected to play and is good at. (Good enough to make the viewer hate him for a few brief moments during the film.) What the film fails to do is reveal the work habits of the writer--from conception to implementation (pen? pencil? typewriter? revisions? time of day? Did he, like Faulkner, go into an alcoholic stupor upon completion of a manuscript?) On the other hand, the movie, despite lots of fuzzy and non-cinematic images, also has lots of Bukowski--and that's enough. None of the acquaintances, friends, women, wives, publishers who are interviewed seem very interesting--but probably because they suffer by comparison with Bukowski himself. And though it tries to fulfill viewers' expectations of Bukowski the filthy animal, the evidence argues to the contrary. The man's "poetry" is admittedly prosaic (the comparison of him, in the movie, to Wordsworth is not completely off the mark), but it's original, imaginative, and it's more about straight-talk and truth than self-aggrandizement. Which is not to say that he doesn't come off as potentially dangerous--especially to women seduced not by his vulnerability (that's Chet Baker) but by his power and apparent virility along with his capacity to be self-aware and, yes, vulnerable as well (we hear him singing to his beloved the old standard "Mean to Me").
If you want the story of a sexual libertine, go to Lord Byron or Larry Flynt; if you want the scatological, check out "The Aristocrats." For Bukowski, sex is a metaphor--moreover, it's his only one, allowing him to avoid the painful subject of love. At one point, the metaphor fails him. While reading a poem about a woman, he chokes up and curses the interviewer for getting him to read it. He also cries at his wedding. And by now he at least has the good sense not to blame the officiating minister.
One caveat, or warning: Best ignore the sophomoric attempts by some of the film's talking heads to explain Bukowski's "art." The film's director attempts to bring closure through the use of a scrap of a poem, a didactic one at that, representing Bukowki as significant because, above all, he somehow liberated spirit from the restrictive limits of poetic form (tell that to Shakespeare or Keats). But putting the scrap of paper aside, the movie allows us to see that Bukowski himself was, no less than his published works (or, in his case, his "effluence") an avatar, a work of art by virtue of his not merely writing about life but living it. It's unlikely the viewer will find much that's "spiritual" in the film or its subject. But you will meet a spirited man--carnal, profane, scrappy but also courageous, unflinchingly honest, and inarguably talented. I'll risk one last thought that came to mind while watching Bukowski in this film: he's the common man's Henry Miller.
DVD Review: Elegy To A Los Angeles Man
Summary: 4 Stars
Back in the early 1970's, well- before he became a cult figure of some stature, someone, somewhere directed me to some articles written by the king of "gonzo" journalist, the late Doctor Hunter S. Thompson for the then radical political/musical "Rolling Stone" magazine. Readers of this space are well aware of my affection for the writings of the good doctor. Around that same time the same person who "turned me on to" Thompson, as the expression of the day went, also mentioned that if I liked Thompson then I would definitely go for the then emerging Los Angeles literary cult figure under review here, Charles Bukowski.
I then read some of Bukowski's stuff, mainly poetry from the various "little" presses like City Light but I was not that impressed. Later, in the late 1980's, when the movie "Barfly", starting Mickey Rourke as Bukowski, came out I again tried to read his work, this time mainly the novels. Still no sale. Now, however, with this rather well done documentary that details the ups and downs of this literary figure who may have had the same kind of feel for the dispossessed, the "street people" of L.A. that his near contemporary Nelson Algren had for Chicago I think I have to take another look.
This documentary puts together the various aspects of Bukowski's life (and incidentally demonstrates how tough it is to be an avant guarde artist in America) from his broken childhood to his struggle to find work, but most importantly, his struggle to write with the deck stacked against him. Add in a mercurial personality, some physical facial deformities (due to severe facial acne) and a very heavy drinking problem, including periods of abusive behavior to his girlfriends and others, to help drown his sorrows and one does not get a pretty picture. The film also gives enough snippets of his work (including some readings by Bukowski himself) to intrigue me to go back and check him out.
But here is the kicker. I am always on the lookout for those who will speak for the dispossessed (like Algren, James T. Farrell, the young Dos Passos, etc.) even if there is no direct political linkage. Maybe I missed something before. Moreover, the "talking heads" that naturally populate a documentary like this included Tom Wait, Sean Penn, Bono, and Harry Dean Stanton. These are the same guys who provided commentary on a couple of Hunter Thompson documentaries that I have reviewed in this space recently. So, maybe I did miss something. Who would have thought?
DVD Review: "This is the modern Whitman, the man in the street, writing for people in the street."
Summary: 5 Stars
So John Martin, Black Sparrow publisher, describes Bukowsky in John Dullaghan's film bio "Born Into This." Tom Waits, one of the friends of Bukowsky interviewed in the film,* says something similar.
This "writer for the man-in-the-street" mantra is pretty frequently invoked when speaking about Bukowsky, but I don't buy it. It seems to canned, too ready-to-hand. Certain Bukowsky's prose and his narrative poems are written in a sparse, deliberately frill-less style. Perhaps this is what prompts so many "man in the street" descriptions. But it seems to me that Bukowsky is above all a chronicler not of the common man, but of Bukowski. There are few authors whose work is more autobiographical. Everywhere, even in Pulp, Bukowski's primary subject is himself. And whatever else one can say about him, whether you love or can't stomach his stuff (I fall somewhere in between), one thing's for certain: he wasn't your common guy in the street.
On one level, Dullagham's film is an excellently crafted biography of Bukowski's exterior life, interspersed with marvelous footage of Bukowksi at poetry readings as well as private interviews (there's also the famous clip of a drunken and enraged Bukowski kicking his wife, Linda Lee). We get a feel not only for the celebrity Bukowski, but also an appreciation of his devotion, as one of his acquaintances says, to the "de-Disneyification of America" through his in-your-face writings.
But one another level--the one at which the film really shines--we get a glimpse of the inner, fragile, lonely Bukowski. The exterior Bukowski at times outmachos a Hemingway or a Mailer, is an obnoxious drunk, and a disgustingly nasty misanthrope. But the inner Bukowski is the kid who was regularly and savagely beaten by his father, ignored by his mother, overwhelmed by life, stuck in a mind- and body-killing job, unrequited in love, shunned by peers. This Bukowski is wounded, telling one interviewer that love is as fleeting as morning fog; writes in a poem that "there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out"; and in one of the film's most poignant scenes, breaks down weepinig as he reads a poem, "The Shower," mourning his lost love Linda King: "Linda, you brought it to me. When you take it away, do it slowly and easily. Make it as if I was dying in my sleep instead of awake"; and, in describing the manic-bedhopping that served as the basis of his novel Women, softly confesses to an interviewer that he eventually stopped because "I became ashamed of what I was doing."
I make no predictions about Bukowski's enduring place in American letters. But I do know that Dullagham's excellent film has helped me better appreciate new depths in Bukowski the man and the artist. And for that, I highly recommend it.
_________
* Other interviewees include Linda Lee Bukowski, Neeli Cherkovski, Joyce Fante, Liza Williams, Michael Cano, FrancEye, Marline Bukowski, Harry Dean Stanton, Steve Richmond, Sean Penn, John Bryan, and--for some odd reason--Bono.
DVD Review: a rarity. don't miss it.
Summary: 5 Stars
i have wonderful friends who introduce fascinating things into my life. one such thing was this movie. my friend shawn and i had talked about bukowski books numerous times and i had let him know about the factotum movie with matt dillon and and he turned me on to this one. of course, he prefaced it by saying that no female he has ever shown it to has enjoyed because they thought hank was a pig.
i,of course, don't. for me it was a rare pleasure to listen and watch as he read his poems and talked about his life.
lately, i find bukowski everywhere, there is a site on myspace called charles bukowski which contains a song by a group called manicm and there is a song by modest mouse entitled bukowski. and i'm sure you may even know of others. i also find that many of the things i read lately have references to hank. he is everywhere you look if you stop rushing around.
if you're just beginning to know bukowski, this is a perfect addition to your growing collection of hank's books.
DVD Review: Pork Chops with Chinaski
Summary: 5 Stars
Pork Chops with Chinasky
By Christopher C. Happ 2008
A review of:
Born into This
Magnolia home entertainment 2003
I am interested in the great authors of the 20th century. I have studied the Beats: Kerouac, Burroughs, Corso, Ginsberg and other 20th century writers like, Hemingway, Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Upton Sinclair, Dos Passos, Kafka and many others. I have had a fascination for the less than mainstream writers like Hunter S. Thompson and lately, Charles Bukowski. I did not read Bukowski in the 20th century. I had heard of him and even saw his books on the shelves at City Lights bookstore, the home and spawning grounds of the Beats, although Bukowski never felt a part of that group. His work was innovative, talking about the seedier side of our existence.
I was sorry that I came to his work, so late. In honor of the man, I prepared a pork chop dinner and drank cheap beer and wine to get in the mood. He used the pseudonym Henry (Hank) Chinaski, in his novels and in Barfly, starring, Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke.
This is a glimpse of a 20th century writer, like many at that time, a heavy drinker and womanizer. Bukowski was as comfortable in a bar fight as he was at a poetry reading. Like many writers, he talks about the need to write, in order to understand this life and keep him from going crazy.
The documentary opens with Bukowski at a poetry reading in San Francisco at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's, Poet's theater. Founder of City Lights and publisher of many a Beat writer.
There is a refrigerator on stage and he drinks beer after beer and wine while reading his work and chiding naysayers in the audience. "One more beer and I'll take you all!"
Bukowski started out writing poetry and short stories, which he submitted to the top magazines at the time, like Atlantic Monthly. Finally, one of his stories was published and he wrote hundreds of poems. The movie Barfly based on his life, a blur of alcohol, women, cigarettes and a trail of meaningless odd jobs. As most writers, the passion for writing was a driving force, eclipsing all else. He lived in drab flophouse rooms and went from job to job.
The documentary shows Bukowski in the 1970's, on his way up and the 1990's, after he had arrived. We watch him read poetry, play the horses and there are interviews with his women and publisher John Martin, of Black Sparrow Press. Martin offered Bukowski $100 per month for life, after tallying his monthly living expenses. ($80 for rent, $19 for food and $3.50 for cigarettes.) That was in the 1960's and of course, any writer would jump at the chance to have such a stipend to be able to write full-time. His work started in the LA Free Press and Martin published chapbooks of his poetry. His column Notes of a Dirty Old Man got him recognized. Martin asked him to write a novel, because of the much greater financial possibilities.
A good biography of Bukowkski is, Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life, (1998 Howard Sounes)
His first novel: Post Office, (1971 Black Sparrow Books.), about his life working for the post office as a temporary carrier and clerk, a job he truly hated. In the late 1980's Martin raised his monthly stipend to $8,000 per month. The success of his works led to a house in San Pedro, a BMW, an Acura, a Macintosh computer and the ability to pay cash for them.
He wrote Ham on Rye, (1982 Harper Collins.) the story of his childhood and adolescence. He had acne vulgaris and in his words, "Was not a pretty guy" He describes regular beatings by his father with a razor strop and the alienation he encountered in school due to the acne and boils. His novel, Factotum , ( 1975, Harper Collins.), now also a movie, is a running account of his years as a bum, drinking, fighting, smoking and doing odd menial jobs.
Bukowski was a misogynist and unlucky at love. The documentary is a great insight into his life in his later years. He was really getting famous in the 1970's and died in 1993. The documentary is a portrait of a tortured writer and his disregard for the establishment. A story of redemption; although he drank, gambled and womanized until his death. Bukowski's story gives me hope. Hope that the art in one's soul can eventually lead to a life unencumbered by the 9-5 thing, with enough to live on and the ability to put all energies into one's art. This film is insightful of a writer's life and a slice of literary history. Bukowski had more than forty books published, some novels: Women, (1978) Hollywood, (1989) and a variety of poetry and short stories.
Description of Bukowski - Born Into This
Documentary on Charles Bukowski, author of 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man', 'Love Is a Dog', 'from Hell', and the autobiographical novels, 'Women', 'Hollywood', and 'Post Office'.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 expos? 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. Born Into This relies on interviews with Bukowski for biographical information instead of cheesy voiceovers, bringing the viewer even closer to the author. For example, in one amazing sequence, Bukowski rides the viewer around in the backseat of his car, telling us through his rearview mirror of his stint as a post office worker which inspired the novel, Post Office. Scenes splicing interviews with Bukowski's ex-wife, Linda Lee, and R. Crumb's comic strip panels portraying Bukowski as a sex-crazed maniac, set the tone for bawdier parts of the film. Occasionally the film displays lines of Bukowski's poetry on the screen, as reminders that he was not only a raging alcoholic with a fierce sense of humor but also a talented and beloved writer. With so much hilariously shocking footage of "Hank," Bukowski: Born Into This presents Bukowski as a troubled but classic genius. --Trinie Dalton
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