Bukowski: Born into This (2003)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

John Dullaghan

Release Date:

30 April 2004 (UK)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography

Plot:

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'. |

Plot Keywords:

Memory | Photograph | Novelist | Poetry Reading | Poet

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Charles Bukowski	...	Himself (archive footage)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bono	...	Himself
John Bryan	...	Himself
Linda Lee Bukowski	...	Herself
Marina Bukowski	...	Herself
Neeli Cherkovski	...	Herself
Joyce Fante	...	Herself
FrancEye	...	Herself
Taylor Hackford	...	Himself
John Martin	...	Himself
Mike Meloan	...	Himself
Jack Micheline	...	Himself
Pam 'Cupcakes' Miller	...	Herself
Dom Muto	...	Himself
William Packard	...	Himself
Sean Penn	...	Himself
Steve Richmond	...	Himself
Barbet Schroeder	...	Himself
Harry Dean Stanton	...	Himself
Tom Waits	...	Himself
Carl Weissner	...	Himself
Liza Williams	...	Herself

MPAA:

Rated R for language and sexual content/nudity.

Runtime:

130 min | Japan:113 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

USA:R | Australia:MA

Trivia:

The title of the film comes from Bukowski's poem, "Dinosauria, we", which was published in his book, "The Last Night Of The Earth Poems". Published in 1992, it was the final book of poetry released while the poet was still alive.

Movie Connections:

Edited from The Charles Bukowski Tapes (1985)

Great Documentary on Bukowski

I can't see any better way to find out about Bukowski (other than actually reading his work) than seeing this documentary.

Numerous interviews with CB and many of his friends are shown and a great deal of work went into unearthing the reasons for him writing what he did and for him turning out the way he did.

He represents the ultimate example of an artist who operated completely outside of academia and commercialism (I've got an MA and I never heard his name mentioned in school, and the only time I did hear his name mentioned in the 'entertainment'industry was in the show "Hair", where one of the leads called himself "Claude Hooper Bukowski".

Bukowski could only exist in the time framework that he existed in and it would be unusual for someone to turn out that way today, because of various developments in science (antidepressants), the law (child abuse)and other aspects of life in the 21st Century that have made this kind of "suffering artist thing" less inviting (and I speak from experience). The interview that was done when he had five or so bottles of wine and threatened to "hire a Jewish lawyer" to get his future wife thrown out of his house, and then started cursing at her and beating her (off camera), was kind of sensationalist, but did show that he really did lose it when drunk (!!!!).

About the only bad thing you could say about this great doc.(and most of the excellent reviews written here seem to agree) was the inclusion of Bono and Sean Penn as interviewees- I thought it turned into an episode of South Park or Family Guy!