Original subtitles

I'm a poet.

A what?

A poet. You know a poet? A cola?

A poet.

You're the poet?

I'm the poet.

What am I? I'm the poet. What kind of a poet?

Modern.

I've been in this neighborhood about ten years.

I never saw you before.

You been in here much?

I live right in the neighborhood all the time. Where, down on Normandy?

No, no, up here on Winona. I guess we have different hangovers at different

times. I guess so, yes.

So, yeah, well. Is that modern poetry?

Yeah, you should buy some of my, my name's Bukowski.

Buy my books, B-U-K-O-W-S-K-I. B-U?

Buk, Buk, rhyme with Buk, yeah.

Bukowski? Yeah, so.

Okay, uh.

There's your money.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah, we'll let you know.

Yeah, I wish you would.

With one punch, at the age of 16 and a half, I knocked out my father.

A cruel, shiny bastard with bad breath.

And I didn't go home for some time.

Only now and then to try to get a dollar from dear mama.

Everybody was disgusted with poetry. You know, when I was a kid, the poet is a

sissy. The poet...

the poets nothing and it was true they were they are a lot of them not meaning

being a sissy by sissy i mean they're missing the point you know

like guys are are fighting in the schoolyard and one guy gets a punch in

the mouth and and you're watching this another guy gets his head pushed down in

a fountain he comes up with a mouthful of blood these things are never

explained you know The realities were never explained. Everything was hidden

in poetry.

The reason I kept writing was because, not because I was so good, but because

they were so damn bad.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is it.

This is the neighborhood.

You know, I was a postal clerk and a carrier. I've been around.

I know this town.

I used to carry, I probably carried mail right on this street half a dozen times.

I used to work all the stations as a sub.

Yeah.

I probably carry this street right here, you know.

I know the town. For how long?

Oh, I only carried three or four years. I was a clerk the rest of the time.

But still, you know it that way. You learn to sell numbers.

You get the stink of L.A. in your bones, you know. I think the gods have been

kind of good to me. Just kept me where I belong.

Kept me where I belong.

Not too much.

Just right, you know. I can walk down the street, nobody knows me.

Except the guys in the liquor store, they read something in the L.A. Times.

Something came out.

I go in for a beer, you know, buy some beer. This guy says, wings of song.

He knows me, but anybody else they don't know me. They don't know who the hell I

am and it's good.

It's good

Well, okay.

This is it.

This is where I lived eight years' worth here.

I rode a lot of shit in this place.

Some shit and some good stuff, too.

Well, I drank, played the horses...

almost spelled alike.

They're entirely different.

One's young, Linda. She's 20 years younger.

She gives me a lot of shit. She's got some bad ways, let's admit it.

I don't mean betrayal like that. I mean more or less a spiritual betrayal.

She comes on to guys. She's young. So you have this type of thing.

He's really better natured than I am.

He really is.

I've got a worse temper than he has.

It's awful.

I don't approve of it myself.

He's 20 years older. I kept thinking, oh, hell, you know.

And then there's Liza, the other one.

She's older, in her early 40s.

Heads a record company. Has money in her pocket.

What you call mature.

like she said i've lived long enough to become a good woman and there's a lot of

wisdom in that statement i felt very compassionate towards him

and i felt he the alcohol thing was a sickness and he'd sort of wake up in the

morning he couldn't breathe he was practically having a heart attack

because he was you know so full of liquor

And I really would panic, and I'd say to him, well, look, Hank, I know you have

to drink a certain amount. Can't you cut it down to, like, one six-pack and, you

know, your health?

And I felt like a custodian in a way. I don't know how to explain it, but, you

know, I was always very protective and very sympathetic, and I never fought

with him because I figured that the things that he did, he couldn't help but

do, that he was a very disturbed person.

Still, that something is missing that Linda has, man. All the trouble, all the

travail, man.

I don't know what's the problem.

How's it going to get resolved?

Well, I'm going to give a reading up at Frisco Poets' Theater.

I'll take Linda along. We'll see what happens.

I don't know. I look for trouble.

Who's putting the reading on?

Ferlin Getty.

Something called a poet's theater.

Yeah, we'll get Bob.

We

expect

a pack.

We're probably going to turn people away.

We've sold 400 tickets already.

We're probably going to have between 750 and 800 people. That's what we can fit

in there.

City Lights, in the last year, has started presenting

major poets, ones with either big international reputation or ones,

American poets, who I believe are major writers in this country. And at the

moment, like, what else is happening besides Bukowski?

As far as I'm concerned, he's in the tradition of Henry Miller more than

Hemingway. I mean, I think he's really going to make it big as a national,

international writer.

Well, we'll bring it off. A lot of people out there? Yeah, a lot of people.

Got to bring it off then, right?

There's no choice.

I'm enough of a bastard to carry it off, even if I feel bad.

I'm gifted. I don't know where it comes from, but it's there.

Okay, it's 25 to 9.

You know,

it is easier working in a factory or something, to an extent.

There's no pressure.

You might lose your job.

I think I made a mistake here somewhere.

It was my main bitch. You create art in a lonely fashion to be... Once you

create it, you're done with it.

The stage shit is bad.

It's really bad, instinctively. It's really bad. I don't feel good about it.

They're there to see you die. They want to see blood, vomit.

They want to see you fail. They want to see you succeed.

They want the whole bag of you. They want to see your intestines, everything.

It's bad shit.

What am I doing it for?

Okay, you're lining up around the corner.

Lining up around the corner.

You have a little pot on the stage if we bomb it in?

Yeah. No, I'm not kidding.

Cheap Italian wine, man. You guys really fucked me up.

Okay. We got the poems.

We got the cows. Let's go.

There, you got the poems?

Great shape down here. Here we go

This is Charles Picasso.

Listen,

you guys, I've been drinking some bad wine.

So I may have to leave sideways or something else.

Really bad stuff, one of your little Italian restaurants up the street.

They put a cork in the bottle, but they...

Amplitude, do you hear me?

All right.

I look good?

That's better.

Okay, let's get started. What the hell? Come on.

Let's collect our money and get the hell out of here and really make it.

Number one.

Law.

Look, he told me, all those little children dying in the trees.

And I said, what? And he said, look.

And I went to the window, and sure enough, here they were hanging in the

trees, dead and dying. And I said, what does it mean? And he said, I don't know.

It's authorized.

The next day I got up, and they had dogs in the trees, dead and hanging and

dying. And I turned to my friend, and I said, What does it mean?

And he said, don't worry about it. It's a way of things. They took a vote. It

was decided.

And the next day it was cats.

I don't see how they caught all those cats so fast and hung them in the trees,

but they did.

And after bacon and eggs the next day, my friend pulled his

pistol on me across the coffee and said, let's go.

And we went outside.

And here were all these men and women in the trees, most of them dead or dying.

And he got the rope ready, and I said, what does it mean? And he said, it's

authorized, constitutional. It passed the majority.

And he tied my hands behind my back, then opened the noose.

I don't know who's going to hang me, he said, when I get done with you.

I suppose when it finally works down, there'll be just one left and he'll have

to hang himself.

Suppose he doesn't, I asked.

He has to, he said. It's authorized.

Oh, I said, well, let's get on with it.

God, all you guys belching and puking.

You guys are drunker than I am. Look at that.

Look.

Liquor's like a symphony or like a classical song.

You don't use it as a downer. You use it to leap up into the sky when you're in

pain or when you have depression.

You use it to get yourself out of the common... I'm so tired of people who are

sober every day. I can't understand people who are just walking up and down

sober. They live and they die their lives and never get drunk.

They never get sick. They never have hangovers. They just go around drinking

fruit juice, eating eggs, bacon.

of cauliflower.

They never get up, they never get down, they never get sick, they never get

high, they never go crazy.

Style.

Style is the answer to everything.

A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing.

To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing

without it.

To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.

Bull fighting can be an art.

Boxing can be an art.

Loving can be an art.

Opening a can of sardines can be an art.

Not many have style.

Not many can keep style.

I have seen dogs with more style than men.

Although not many dogs have style.

Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun, that was style.

Or sometimes people give you style.

Joan of Arc had style.

John the Baptist, Christ, Socrates, Caesar,

Garcia Lorca.

I've met men in jail with style.

I've met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.

Style is a difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.

Six heroes standing quietly in a pool of water.

Are you walking out of the bathroom naked without seeing me?

Do I know you?

Don't push me around, baby. I'll...

I'll deck... Never mind.

One more beer.

I'll take you all, all of you.

Oh, shit.

I knew... Okay, I want you to hate me anyhow.

Get on. I'm getting bored, baby.

So am I. I'm getting bored with you.

This is Linda King.

Are you a gambling man?

I've always been a gambling man.

You know,

baby, I changed tires for Sears Roebuck.

I have played gambling at the heart of the world.

I've come up with constipation of life.

What do you expect me to do? I have more than ulcers.

Why do you have more than ulcers? 10,000 times worse than ulcers. I have

hemorrhoids, bad heart, bad breath, bad nose, must get all

drunker and shit. Fuck all this.

Peanuts and all this. You want to fuck me? Well, fuck me. I don't do things

like that. Thank you. You don't fuck?

No, why should I? There's more important things to do.

It happened. Everything happened. Everything.

This is a result of a night with Bukowski. I

expected it to happen, but I didn't.

I was hoping it wouldn't.

Well, I got here this morning, and it was a mess. The place was a mess. What

happened last night was a small fight. Somebody got pushed into the window and

got knocked out.

Linda got all pissed off at everything. She fought with him. She bit him. She

scratched him.

And she split forever, I guess. And that's all I know, man. It happened very

fast. And it was ended.

Boom.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry to count you. What happened to you?

Look.

Jesus Christ. Look.

What happened after we left?

Were you here when the guy was picking on the fag?

No. My whole night was keeping these guys separate. The big tough guy and the

delicate guy, man.

I said, man, if you're gonna fight, fight me, baby. Show some guts.

Okay. Then Linda leans out the window and she says, You broke the window.

Why did you break the window?

And she keeps hollering to the guy, and he's leaning back.

Oh, Linda.

Oh, Linda. And she says, you broke the window.

You broke. I said,

now, what are you talking to that guy, man? He's leaning on this kid.

I said, I hate his guts. Now, you're leaning up.

You're jealous.

You're jealous.

I said, no, you're not doing the right thing. He was an asshole tonight. You're

talking to him. She's madder than hell, you know. All of a sudden, we're

wrestling in the room there. And she says, OK.

I'll kill you, you son of a bitch. I'll kill you.

I'm down the bottom. I'm too drunk to fight back.

God, maybe she will kill me, man.

So I don't know when all this happened.

I ran in here, and I locked myself in. I said, to hell with you, bitch. You're

out of my life.

She kicked the door in.

You don't know where she is?

No, I don't.

I'm going back to, uh, to lies.

I hope. Okay, now don't take sides.

If Linda walked in right now, I might say, hi, kid.

No, no chance.

Oh, shit.

Hey, Norm, baby.

Is that going to destroy the equipment?

You will. That face?

You know, last night when I...

What did you do? I'm trying to stop a guy from whipping on a fag. The guy was

a really nice guy. I shouldn't call him a fag. He was a nice guy. But he was

small, and the guy's trying to play the Bukowski game.

You know, I'll beat the shit out of you and all that.

He doesn't know it's just a game, right?

Right. He's serious.

God,

he's working on the guy. Hey, man, don't hit the kid. What the hell? He said some

nice things about my poetry.

So we're...

I'm trying to separate them, man. We're rolling down the same way. Oh, shit.

What are you doing putting on a 1930s show for the folks?

Jesus, your hair is long, your beard is longer. You look like a fucking fool.

You look like a freak, man.

My dick's the same size. What is this ridiculous thing?

I mean, what is this for? People are going to watch educational television.

Oh, they'll be educated, man.

Hank is the old educator.

Socrates, come back to corrupt us all.

Do it, pal.

Do it, pal. Hey, Captain, what did you think of the reading last night? What

did you think of the audience? I think I gave a good reading.

I liked the audience because about one-third of them hated my guts.

I could hear in between poems, you know, after each poem they go... That son of a

bitch.

That only stimulated me to do the next one. You want to check or you want to

guess?

Joe? Give me any goddamn time. Let a man in, will you?

Where?

Is he behind you or what?

All right.

I'll give you a chance. A great Lawrence Ferlinghetti and a great Charles Kelsk.

Here you go, kid. Four minutes.

Oh, he's beautiful.

Here you go. You're looking great, Charles.

You deserve this. Oh, God.

Really?

Poetry.

I love poetry.

and pussy.

Almost.

Is that the most you've been paid? $400 for an hour?

Oh, hell yeah. This is my big night.

So, uh, take care of it for me, will you, kid?

Thank you.

Oh, wow.

Christ, I used to work for 35 cents an hour, and now, okay, nothing to worry

about. Turn out the next line.

Listen, tell Liza that I really mean it.

Look, look, this is no fuck-up scene. I'm coming back forever if she'll have

me.

Listen.

Okay, listen.

I may not make the plane this afternoon. I don't know. I'm trying.

Listen, but tell her it's straight, kid.

You know what I mean? I'm not?

Who's Linda?

That's just a name.

He came over and he said, I'd like to see you and so on. And he came over to

my house and he was very drunk and very emotional and said he'd just broken up.

with linda and would i like keep him company and he was in despair and so on

and so on and i was supposed to go up to san francisco for a big press thing and

i thought oh if i stay with this person i'm really gonna have a hard time you

know but i always do the wrong thing i always just say oh well what the hell

you know i'm gonna try out something so he stayed and we spent the weekend

together and i took him down to the hollywood cemetery we went to visit

Rudolph Valentino's grave, and we sat on Tyrone Powers' bench, and we just had a

really nice time, and we went up and had waffles at the New World and everything.

I didn't really know him well. I'd always been very scared of him. He

always seemed very macabre to me. I thought he was a great poet. I didn't

like his writing, but his prose writing.

Anyway, that seemed to have cheered him up a lot, and he said, Oh, I really love

you. I'll love you forever. Just never leave me. I'll always be yours. You'll

have a hard time getting rid of me, and so on.

So we just sort of stayed together.

And we had periodic crises when he would get a call from Linda or something, and

then he'd say, oh, I love Linda, I don't love you, and then he'd change his mind

and say Linda was something else, and then we'd go together again. And

essentially what we did is that he would come over to the house with a six-pack

and drink himself into a sort of stupor and watch television, which evidently

he'd never watched before. So we watched endless television, and in between

watching television...

i kind of fed him alka-seltzer and sort of shoved him out of bed and got him up

and sent him off home where he'd go and work and he kind of bumbled around but

he was really interesting in a way because i kept thinking between all this

alcoholism and hostility and confusion somewhat was the person who wrote the

poems you know and i read a lot of the poems they were really marvelous to me

very sparse and full of images and the language was interesting, even though he

would always say he was uneducated and didn't know how to pronounce Dostoevsky

and didn't this and didn't that. He always tried to present himself as a

sort of primitive person, as an uncultured person, but he really wasn't.

And he hates any other person who's successful.

And he says God has been kind to him because he hasn't been successful. But

every little intimation of success he just loves.

So as God gets less kind to him, he's happier.

And he says, I'll get spoiled if I get famous. At the same time, you know, he

really wants to get famous, and he's consoling himself with this kind of

structure that he's got.

He always chose what I consider really unthreatening positions, where he didn't

have to utilize his sensitivities or his intelligence. He always chose menial

labor.

But he doesn't really like those people. He doesn't really like anybody, as far

as I can make out.

Yeah, but he's not like his poetry, unfortunately, ever.

He just has never liked that.

He doesn't talk like that. He doesn't... I think the poems are the Hank that

really exists somewhere, which he's afraid to be.

But he's very uncomfortable with any affection or any peacefulness.

He likes tension and hostility. Really, basically, he likes hostility.

I don't know, I began to think, this isn't exactly the life I want to live

because we never go anywhere and we never do anything except sit and watch

television and listen to this kind of hostile kind of outpouring all the time.

And I don't want to get into hostilities and I don't want to have that kind of a

relationship. At the same time, I was so fascinated by this man.

I told her I didn't love her and that she shouldn't love me.

I was coming off a bad bounce off of something.

And so I'd be laying in bed, you know, and I'd warn her about all this goddamn

shit.

And, you know, maybe 9.30 in the morning, she'd come rushing in from the

kitchen or something, and she'd say, and she'd throw her arms around me and say,

I don't love you, but I almost love you. I almost love you. I almost love you.

I thought, oh, Christ, I failed.

Because she does love me.

But in a sense, it was my fault.

Because if I didn't want her to love me, I shouldn't have been laying around in

her damn triple bed, you know, like in her color TV and all that.

So I'm the scoundrel in the picture. I'm the louse.

You know, it's awfully easy to be a louse.

Look, how many women have you had, man?

You bounce around between women just like anyone else.

You've got to keep bouncing until you find, you know.

Then you find they bounce.

It's just like a ping-pong thing, you know. It just keeps happening. Human

relationships are very devious and involved.

When Bukowski came back from San Francisco, he did go back to Liza for,

well, two or three days.

And then he called me and came over.

I was pretty mad about the fight we'd had up there, but, well, Bukowski's very

charming when he wants to be.

And, well, he re-seduced me all over again, and we got back together.

I didn't know. We've had 7 million flights, and we got back together. I

didn't know if it was the last time. I kind of thought it would be the last

time that time because I've never left him in another city before.

I've left him dozens of times in L.A., but I've never left him in San

Francisco. I thought he was going to hit me.

He has hit me before. That's why I was afraid of it.

So I jumped up.

I wasn't about to let him hit me. And I grabbed the pen off the stove, and I

scratched him. I bit him. I kicked my foot through the door, and I left. I

picked up my bag, and I left.

It looks like it's done.

Now that's what it is.

I fell in love with these writings.

Before I ever met him, I got three or four of his books before I ever asked to

sculpture him. I got notes for Dirty Old Man and two or three of his poetry

books. I thought it was great.

I read his books all night long.

Then I wrote him a letter and asked if I could sculpture him with his head, and

he said yes.

And I went over and got pictures of him.

I didn't intend to get involved with Bukowski at all, because I'd

heard his reputation as a drinker before I ever met him.

I just didn't think it would happen, but it did happen.

He's got a marvelous writing talent, a man who used it on me.

He seduced me through the mail, and he'd go home and he'd write back.

About the day, he'd write these marvelous long love letters. Oh, I've

got some of the greatest love letters you ever heard in your life.

This was part of it, I think. I think women love love letters, you know.

God, I got hotter and hotter and hotter until finally I just gave in.

I said, okay, good, I'll take it.

I have a lot of trouble with my women, you know. And I read my poetry, and I

read all these profundities.

Oh, well, call them that.

Then, you know, you get in bed with them, you talk with them, you live with

them for four or five days.

And they're waiting for you to say these grand statements. You know, you march

across the room, and you're supposed to say, Death has twelve wings like the

angel of hell.

People aren't built that way, you say.

Hey, baby, why don't you make me a cup of coffee? Well, that's not very poetic.

They don't understand that. They read your poetry and they expect you to go

marching around with flames coming out of your ass and your ears, making all

these statements. Well, human nature's not like that.

Because you save your balls and your juice for that typewriter.

And sometimes they resent that. They almost realize it. I mean, so if you say

it all to them, you're not going to say it to the machine.

So it finally becomes a war between the machine and the woman.

I've told them all, if I have to choose between you and that typewriter baby,

you've got to go.

And that's it.

Is that true?

It's true.

It's true right now. It's true to Linda. It's true to any woman I've met, will

meet, will ever meet in heaven, hell, or anywhere else.

That's the woman. I almost said that's the whore.

Jesus. But if the women go, does the inspiration go?

Yeah, but the women always seem to show up again.

I wouldn't advise women to anybody.

I wouldn't advise them to you or to me.

What are you going to do?

Ah, Sedina for winners.

Barney's has winners.

Ah, Sedina.

Here you go.

Hey, her out.

Great scratch. Her out.

Oh,

the game in there.

They had a different janitor in the men's room.

I didn't have a second race either.

Bold courage around 19 to 1.

My Kentucky Larve got a dead ride from the boy who stood up in the saddle all

the way, which is hardly a way to ride a 2 to 1 shot.

And I got a roast beef sandwich for a buck and a quarter.

If you're going to go broke, you might as well eat well.

And in the third, Granby had to pull up to avoid Factionel, who came over on

him. The stewards argued for 15 minutes before allowing it to stand.

And there I was, $52 down, and the mountains were dry.

Life was hardly worthwhile.

And in the fourth, Abern and Bob, I... think was the play, but I went to Misty

Repose. It got locked in the one hole with six furlongs and had nothing left

when he swung out.

A. Bob won handily, and I was $67 down. The coffee was a quarter, and the coffee

girl looked like an ex-prostitute, which she probably wasn't.

And then in the fifth, Christy Starr took it at 13 to 1, and I was third, I

think, with Bold Street.

I can't beat those maiden races, and I was $77 down and bought a hot dog, which

cost 50 cents and was gone in two bites.

Then I had to go 20 win on Nearbrook, which won by six or seven lengths, but

at four to five.

So I'm still $65 down, and the mountains are still dry.

But nobody is talking to me or bothering me. There's a chance.

I put 15 win on Moving Express and 5 win on Choctaw Charlie and CC comes in at 8

to 1.

And then I'm only $37 down and we have the 8th race.

Manta at 3 to 5 was a rather obvious bet.

I looked for something to beat her with and came up with Hollywood Josset.

Manta went on by, but I've been afraid of that and only gone 5 wins.

I was $42 down with one race to go.

I put 20 win on Vesperal and 10 win on Cedar Cross.

And Cedar Cross ran dead, and Vesperal went wire to wire.

So that was 72 down before the race, and you take the $84 payoff, and you got $12

profits.

There you go.

Behind for eight races, winner in the ninth.

Nothing big but bankroll intact.

This comes, my friends, out of years of training.

There are thoroughbred horses and thoroughbred bettors.

What you do is stay with your place and let them come to you.

Loving a woman is the same way as loving life.

You've got to work a bit for it.

In a day or two, I'll go again and get off better.

You'll see me that night having a quiet drink at the track bar as the losers run

for the parking lot.

Don't talk to me or bother me, and I won't bother you.

All right?

I thought when I was 17, I still think now at 52.

I mean, my ideas have remained stable. I haven't grown up, if that's the way you

want to put it. Is your writing any better?

I think the writing's better because the experience came in and fastened it up,

you know.

Like, it gave me more volume or a bigger band to play.

Okay, something else occurred to me now, since you guys want to listen to things.

I just want to listen to some shit.

I feel like throwing this beer right in your face.

Why?

I'll tell you why.

I always thought sometime in my life this time might come a little bit.

Like guys marching in on me with cameras and all that shit.

Somehow I almost felt it and knew it.

And I was always going to cra-

I don't think I can be destroyed, basically.

I don't think they can destroy me.

I'm too strong. They came too late with too little.

The young blondes with the tight pussies came too late.

The cameras came too late.

Don't grin at me like that. It's true.

They came too late. I'm too strong.

The gods have really put a good shield over me, man.

They really have.

I've been toughened up at the right time and the right place.

Or so goes the delusion.

But I really feel it.

The gods have been good to me.

They really have.

They're still good to me.