In these rare intimate (and inevitably wine-soaked) early 1980s interviews with the bard of Los Angeles lowlife, Charles “Hank” Bukowski, we get a rare glimpse of the barfly poet himself in fine raconteur form. The interviews included here—or perhaps drunken bull session would be more appropriate—were organized by Italian journalist and TV producer Silvia Bizio and originally committed to the doomed Betamax video format, a stash of which Bizio has recently uncovered and digitally transferred to DVD. As we learn over the course of this hour-long collection of footage from Bukowski’s home in San Pedro California, the proto-bohemian’s work is celebrated much more in Europe (and in Italy) than America.
Her on-camera attempts to engage with the crusty, feisty old gutter poet often come off too much like genuflecting hero worship, a thinking person’s sort of groupiedom. But Bukowski, for his part, takes the obvious intrusion in stride and only occasionally lapses into rude, boozy badinage. Bukowski’s poetic “Hank” persona comes off as a cagey mix of self-deprecation, self-mythologizing, and saucy showboating. When Bizio needles him constantly about sexuality and the importance of sex in his work and life, he achieves a certain poetic ambivalence—pushing himself as both lothario/superannuated playboy and a cynical celibate whose only interest in including sex in his work is because it sells books (Bizio also mentions in an aside that it is mostly women in Italy who read Bukowski).
Although the interview questions driving this film aren’t nearly penetrating enough to access the truly broken soul behind the impermeable “Bukowski” mask, this is still an intermittently enjoyable document of a man whose singular contributions to American arts and letters will probably never get the mainstream accolades in his home country that he deserves. Optional. Aud, C, P.