Hollywood

Rating:
Summary: Bukowski gives a great peek at madness involved in Barfly.
Review: Anyone who has seen the movie must read this book.The film was a stretch for O'rouke and Dunaway tocapture the essence of the characters who actually lived this life. The debate that end with a saw. One book that deserves a spot on my bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: The original barfly
Review: Bukowski's humor is razor sharp in this book ostensibly on the making of "Barfly." Bukowski was enjoying some measure of success and even respect by this point, and was approached by Schroeder to write the screenplay for a movie about himself. Bukowski was of course flattered and took up the challenge. His books and poetry have always been about himself in one form or another, but here was his big chance to imagine himself on screen.

Bukowski takes you step by step through the making of the movie, with a sardonic eye for the details. Schroeder and his pal tried to get in touch with the lower east side of LA, which Bukowski enjoys poking fun at. He wasn't too keen about having Mickey Roarke cast as himself, he had Sean Penn in mind, but was smitten with the idea of Faye Dunaway as his love interest.

The book doesn't plunge to the lower depths as do his short stories and poetry. Bukowski keeps himself semi-detached from the subject of his early life. The book, like the movie, looks back at these formative years in a wry way that has a number of amusing twists and turns. He ends appropriately enough with the screening of the movie, with much of the gang invited to attend, making a party of it down in front of the screen as they assessed the film. Not bad, Bukowski concluded.

Rating:
Summary: Hurray for Hollywood!
Review: Drinking and creativity do not necessarily go together. For every O'Neill, Faulkner, Hemingway, and London, there are hundreds of others who live lonely, desparate and short existences, slowly drinking themselves to death in complete anonymity. Luckily, the world was blessed to have had Charles Bukowski whose most creative moments emerged when he sat before a typewriter with a wine bottle in one hand. Bukowski wrote gritty and no holds barred novels and poetry about the things he loved best--drinking, horse racing and women. He also wrote the screenplay for "Barfly," a film about his young manhood, spent hanging around seedy bars, getting into drunken brawls with the bartender, and writing some of the best poems this side of the grave.

Bukowski tells the story of his screenwriting experience through his alter ego Henry Chinaski, a survivor when everyone else in his crowd had already died. It's all there--dealing with easily bruised egos, the Hollywood eccentrics, the on again, off again production problems in making the film, and the continuous inconsistency of cash flow. What lends _Hollywood_ its wonderful resonance is its realness--the boldness and the pluck of its coarse leading player, Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski. And of course, his inspiration, the bottle of wine which was, even on the set, never too far off.