Factotum

[bluerains]

http://media.movieweb.com/galleries/3238/2396/lo/eo1.jpg


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417658/

This new movie starts today on the life of poet Charles Brokowski ...not a big reader myself but, I know many of you are...any feedback on the movie at the inside look of a poet would go nicely here...is the movie good ..post your thoughts...

 

[My Erotic Trail]

http://media.movieweb.com/galleries/3238/2396/lo/eo1.jpg


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0417658/

This new movie starts today on the life of poet Charles Brokowski ...not a big reader myself but, I know many of you are...any feedback on the movie at the inside look of a poet would go nicely here...is the movie good ..post your thoughts...

I will watch for it (~_~)

 

[Decayed Angel]

Barfly

The 1987 movie Barfly was also about Hank Chinaski. Written by Bukowski it starred Mickey Rourke. I wonder if Factotum is a remake.

Not sure if this will make a full release, most likely the art movie theatres.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

The 1987 movie Barfly was also about Hank Chinaski. Written by Bukowski it starred Mickey Rourke. I wonder if Factotum is a remake.

Not sure if this will make a full release, most likely the art movie theatres.

Factotum isn't a remake of Barfly. Bukowski wrote the Barfly script and used Hank Chinaski as the main character. Factotum, on the other hand, is an adaptation of Factotum the novel, written by Bukowski long before Barfly. Which also means it is not exactly about his life, as bluerains said, but about his fictional alter-ego.

 

[My Erotic Trail]

well, I am not much of a Matt Dillion fan...

 

[bluerains]

Matt Dillion

well, I am not much of a Matt Dillion fan...

does seem to play the bad boy in most flicks I've seen...I really like Marisa Tomei however...shes great...
So this is a loose based story on his life then...before I go see it , many of the poets here know the life of him well and how much the movie is correct...maybe it would spark interest in new readers ....like me...

 

[Lauren Hynde]

So this is a loose based story on his life then...

It's not loosely based on his life, it's based on a novel he wrote in 1975.

It should still spark an interest. I have seen some excerpts and trailers and it seemed extremely funny.

 

[bluerains]

It's not loosely based on his life, it's based on a novel he wrote in 1975.

It should still spark an interest. I have seen some excerpts and trailers and it seemed extremely funny.

ok..
so from the trailers he seems like an every day loser...master of all...yet, a non functioning soul of society...is this right...am wondering what kind of poet he was..I have not studied him much ..but read a few works... thats why the interest...

 

[annaswirls]

It's not loosely based on his life, it's based on a novel he wrote in 1975.

It should still spark an interest. I have seen some excerpts and trailers and it seemed extremely funny.

Apparently his wife said although Hank Chinaski is an alter-ego, it is pretty autobiographical

Matt Dillon was on The Daily Show. God I loved him in that movie, gosh, what was that... the summer camp with Tatum O'Neill and Kristy McNichol? ahhhhh

 

[My Erotic Trail]

ok..
so from the trailers he seems like an every day loser...

well, that might explain using Matt Dillon for the movie <grin

anna, I believe your thinking of the movie, little darlings <grin

 

[MyNecroticSnail]

Chuck Norris was never offered the part

 

[bluerains]

Chuck Norris was never offered the part

and certainly not..Schwarzenegger or Stallone..I guess Dillon fits the shoes ...the movie is not playing in my area yet...and it sounds interesting...

 

[bluerains]

I did some digging

to find a poem by bukowski that resonated ...this is a good one imho...

THE BLACKBIRDS ARE ROUGH TODAY


lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.

 

[bluerains]

another interesting thing I found

was this letter ...it was a great look at the mind of the sheep...guess he has some things to dig up now that interests me...
Charles Bukowski

Two Letters

To John Martin, 1986 To William Packard, 1992
To his publisher, John Martin (of Black Sparrow Press)


8-12-86
Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

"I put in 35 years . . . "

"It ain't right . . . "

"I don't know what to do . . . "

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. . .

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.


yr boy,

Hank

 

[TheRainMan]

...am wondering what kind of poet he was..

the letter you posted gives a hint as to what kind of poet he was.

and this, from Songs of Death:


many of these are songs of death
and they might bore you.
but look, my beauty, you down there in the first row—
nasty as I am, bad breath, bad manners, half my teeth
gone, half my brain
gone sailing.
do you realize, my pretty bitch, that even you could die
before I?
say tonight, after listening to my poems,
crossing the street.


. . . he may not have known a sonnet from succotash, but he knew how to do one thing —

communicate.

 

[bluerains]

the letter you posted gives a hint as to what kind of poet he was.

and this, from Songs of Death:


many of these are songs of death
and they might bore you.
but look, my beauty, you down there in the first row—
nasty as I am, bad breath, bad manners, half my teeth
gone, half my brain
gone sailing.
do you realize, my pretty bitch, that even you could die
before I?
say tonight, after listening to my poems,
crossing the street.


. . . he may not have known a sonnet from succotash, but he knew how to do one thing —

communicate.

yes, there seems to be a stark reality and cold biting truth to communicate ..some find that a hard pill to swallow and pen...

 

[eagleyez]

I saw him read in an old movie theatre in 77 in a lousy part of SF. Full house, mad crowd. Buk came out to a small desk and light, accompanied by a galvanized keg bucket full of Heinekens. He drank one, read a poem, drank another, read a poem.

This went on all night till the last green bottle was drained. How he held his piss in I still dont comprehend. He read for close to two hours. by the end it was like a rock show, with the crowd showering the stage with everything from flowers to empty beer cans to empty pint bottles.

I was young yet a fan of his. My partner and I marveled at the show, and other than Gary Snyder, its the best damn poetry reading Ive ever been to. I feel lucky to have made it, by pure chance, to the event.

PS. He was shy and tender in his reading and his material. I think he was scared to death quite honestly, as he hated those types of venues and readings, in his own words.

I may see the flick, I'll have to read about it first by legit critics.

 

[Decayed Angel]

I always picture Bukowski

pulling up to some dive bar in his BMW and slipping inside, trying to blend in with the clientel.


Factotum was to have opened last week, but I haven't seen it showing anywhere in either Houston or San Antonio yet. I wonder how large a release the film was, I may have to wait for the DVD, either that or Sundance or the Independent Film Channel.

 

[bluerains]

had pm

on a film by John Dullagan on his life and work...so I found a copy in branch library..and its his bio..its a hard look into the childhood and the scars of youth...and I found this poem there that really rocks...I have known many people over the years with childhoods like his...my father being one...21 years in the service hiding from his childhood abuse....his german father was brutal..as was my mothers...and I being a product of thier neglect...can find compassion for the suffering some folks really go thru..I have a young man of 12 who has befriended me ..goes to a boys school during the week because his adopted family is afraid of his suicide attempts..I don't wish that he be come jaded and crusty and can find his bluebird....

Bluebird
Charles Bukowski


there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

 

[eagleyez]

Chinaski was a Bluebird of sorts.

Hummed to Brahms and Shostakovitch alot, silently.