On this day in movie history - Factotum (2006)

Factotum

directed by Bent Hamer,

written by Bent Hamer and Jim Stark,

based on the novel by Charles Bukowski,

released at the Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival in Norway on April 12, 2005.

Music by Kristin Asbjørnsen.

End titles song: Slow Day by Kristin Asbjørnsen.

Cast: Matt Dillon, Lili Taylor, Didier Flamand, Fisher Stevens, Marisa Tomei, Adrienne Shelly, Karen Young, Thomas Lyons, Dean Brewington, James Cada, James Michael Detmar, Kurt Schweickhardt, Dee Noah, James Noah, Michael Egan, Terry Hempleman, Emily Hynnek, Wayne Morton, Tony Papenfuss, Lana Schwab, Sally Wingert, Robert Downing Davis, Bryan J. Walker, Dan Lee Jr., Peter Moore, Bruce Bohne, Larry Roupe, Chris Carlson, Stephen D’Ambrose, Emil Herrera, Michelle Hutchison, Andy Hubbell, Martin Marinaro, Raye Birk, Stephen Pelinski, Stanley Kipper, Brent Doyle, John Paul Gamoke, Jim Lichtscheidl, Jay Gjernes, Clyde Lund, Debbie DeLisi, George McGuire, Brad Madson, Gary Tournier, Esera Tuaolo, John Nadeau, Cathi Cooper, Carole Samuelson. #Drama

Recommended reading:

Factotum

by Charles Bukowski.

Published by Ecco.

First published 1975.

ASIN: 006113127X

ISBN-10: 9780061131271

ISBN-13: 978-0061131271

Description:

One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.

Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

by Charles Bukowski.

Published by Ecco.

Published 2002.

ISBN-10: 1574231057

ISBN-13: 978-1574231052

Description:

The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles. – Joyce Carol Oates.

He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels. – Leonard Cohen.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire is the second posthumous collection from Charles Bukowski that takes readers deep into the raw, wild vein of writing that extends from the early 1970s to the 1990s.

Introvert insight:

In my quiet, I was working something out.

- Keanu Reeves.

 

I'm constantly around people that talk a lot but say nothing.

A sad case.

- Henry Rollins.

Do you hate people?

I don't hate them ... I just feel better when they're not around.

- Charles Bukowski.

People empty me.

I have to get away to refill.

- Charles Bukowski.

Introvert insight:

 

Whatever kind of introvert you are, some people will find you 'too much' in some ways and 'not enough' in others. 

- Laurie Helgoe.

 
There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.
- Susan Cain.
 

Blessed are those who do not fear solitude, who are not afraid of their own company, who are not always desperately looking for something to do, something to amuse themselves with, something to judge.
- Paulo Coello.
 

Beware of those who seek constant crowds; they are nothing alone.
- Charles Bukowski.

On this day in movie history - Bukowski: Born Into This (2003)

Bukowski: Born Into This

directed by John Dullaghan,

was released at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States on January 18, 2003.

Music by James Stemple.

Cast:

Charles Bukowski, Bono, John Bryan, Linda Lee Bukowski, Marina Bukowski, Neeli Cherkovski, Joyce Fante, FrancEyE, Taylor Hackford, John Martin, Mike Meloan, Jack Micheline, Pam 'Cupcakes' Miller, Dom Muto, William Packard, Sean Penn, Steve Richmond, Barbet Schroeder, Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Waits, Carl Weissner, Liza Williams, James Stemple.

Charles Bukowski, on writing:

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about.

My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

 - Charles Bukowski.

Recommended reading - The Movie: "Barfly"

 

The Movie: "Barfly"

by Charles Bukowski.

Edited by Barbet Schroeder.
Published by Black Sparrow Press.
Published in 1987.

ISBN 10: 087685708X
ISBN 13: 9780876857083

Paperback.

Description:

The screenplay of the 1987 movie, directed by Barbet Schroeder.

On this day in movie history - Barfly (1987)

Barfly

directed by Barbet Schroeder,

written by Charles Bukowski,

was released in the United States on October 16, 1987.

Music by Jack Baran.

 

Cast:

Mickey Rourke, Faye Dunaway, Alice Krige, Jack Nance, J.C. Quinn, Frank Stallone, Sandy Martin, Roberta Bassin, Gloria LeRoy, Joe Unger, Harry Cohn, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Joe Rice, Julie ‘Sunny’ Pearson, Donald L. Norden, Wil Albert, Hal Shafer, Zeke Manners, Pearl Shear, Rik Colitti, Michael Collins, Ronald G. Joseph, Damon Hines, Lahmard J. Tate, Gary Carlos Cervantes, Peter Conti, Vance Colvig Jr., Stacey Pickren, Leonard Termo, Gary Cox, Fritz Feld, Albert Henderson, Sandy Rose, Madalyn Carol, George Marshall Ruge, Debby Lynn Ross, Charles Bukowski, John Forker.

Recommended reading – Pulp

Pulp

by Charles Bukowski.
 
Published by Ecco.
Published in 1994.
Paperback.
 
ISBN-10: 9780876859261
ISBN-13: 978-0876859261
 
Description:
 
“Poet laureate of the down-and-out.” – LA Times.
 

Opening with the exotic Lady Death entering the gumshoe-writer's seedy office in pursuit of a writer named Cèline, this novel demonstrates Charles Bukowski's own brand of humor and realism, opening up a landscape of seamy Los Angeles.

 

Pulp is essential fiction from Buk himself.
 

Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued not just by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, but also by the surreal jobs he’s hired to do. Not only does he have to track down French classical author Cèline – who’s meant to be dead – but he also supposed to find the elusive Red Sparrow – which may or may not be real.

 

Pulp is Charles Bukowski’s brilliant, fantastical pastiche of a detective story.
 

Packed with wit, invention and Bukowski’s trademark lowlife adventures, it is the final novel by one of the most enjoyable and influential cult writers of the last century.

Recommended reading - Ham on Rye (1982)

Ham on Rye

by Charles Bukowski

Published by Ecco.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 006117758X

ISBN-13: 978-0061177583

Description:

In what is widely hailed as the best of his many novels, Charles Bukowski details the long, lonely years of his own hardscrabble youth in the raw voice of alter ego Henry Chinaski. From a harrowingly cheerless childhood in Germany through acne-riddled high school years and his adolescent discoveries of alcohol, women, and the Los Angeles Public Library's collection of D.H. Lawrence, Ham on Rye offers a crude, brutal, and savagely funny portrait of an outcast's coming-of-age during the desperate days of the Great Depression.

  

Charles Bukowski, on writing:

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.
- Charles Bukowski.

The Laughing Heart, by Charles Bukowski:

Your life is your life.

Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
Be on the watch.
There are ways out.
There is light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
Be on the watch.
The gods will offer you chances.
Know them.
Take them.
You can’t beat death,
but you can beat death in life, sometimes.
And the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
Your life is your life.
Know it while you have it.
You are marvelous.
The gods wait to delight
in you.

- The Laughing Heart, by Charles Bukowski.

Writing, a poem by Charles Bukowski: August 16

 

Writing

Writing

a poem by Charles Bukowski
1991
 
Often it is the only thing between you and impossibility.
No drink, no woman's love, no wealth can match it.
Nothing can save you except writing.
It keeps the walls from falling.
The hordes from closing in.
It blasts the darkness.
Writing is the ultimate psychiatrist,
the kindliest god of all the gods.
Writing stalks death.
It knows no quit,
and writing laughs at itself, at pain.
It is the last expectation, the last explanation.
That's what it is.

Recommended reading – Post Office (1971)

Post Office

by Charles Bukowski.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0753518163

ISBN-13: 978-0753518168

Description:

It began as a mistake. By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and race-track betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sadistic bosses and certifiable coworkers. This classic 1971 novel – the one that catapulted its author to national fame – is the perfect introduction to the grimly hysterical world of legendary writer, poet, and Dirty Old Man Charles Bukowski and his fictional alter ego, Chinaski.

“Wordsworth, Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and the Beats in their respective generations moved poetry toward a more natural language. Bukowski moved it a little farther.” – Los Angeles Times Book Review.

Charles Bukowski is one of America's best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, where he lived for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944, when he was twenty-four, and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).