Posted: 07/22/2004

Born Into This

(2004)

by Todd Lillethun

Official site here.

John Dullaghan’s comprehensive documentary about writer Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) manages to cover plenty of his life and work while cramming in terrific small moments from the man himself. It is a full, multifaceted portrait from many different angles, and a monument to an ordinary man who canonized the trials of ordinary life.

Bukowski wrote forty-five books of poetry and prose with a spare, direct style that employs colorful metaphors (ie. Love is a dog from hell) while shunning many other literary devices (description, plot, and character development are among his least favorites). What made his work rich, distinctive and exceedingly popular was his transparency: letting readers into his life without airs or pretense, and articulating his anguish and hope on a gut level.

In order to support himself and his writing, he worked a series of odd jobs in and around Los Angeles, including dishwasher, truck driver, security guard, gas station attendant, and postal worker. His pseudonym Henry Chinaski is a thinly veiled version of himself at these jobs, grinding out a living at the cost of his own health and dignity. When he found himself at the mercy of sadistic bosses or foolish coworkers, he retreated to the pleasures of women, gambling, and liquor in order to save himself from madness. His writing career took shape in the Los Angeles Free Press, an alternative newsweekly, where his column Notes from a Dirty Old Man garnered a modest but steady following. Eventually, John Martin, editor of the Black Sparrow Press, had become so enamored with his writing that he signed him on to a lifetime contract even if his books never sold.

But the risk paid off. Bukowski is now one of the most widely read authors in history, and one of the few to see fame and success in his lifetime. To hear him describe it though, the attention, money, and women all came too late. Unfazed, and perhaps a little humbled by the accolades, he wrote about it in his later work, casting himself as one of the most ridiculous of heroes. His working class existence marked his life indelibly, so much so that the false flash of celebrity would never suit him.

Having never met Bukowski himself, Dullaghan relies on footage shot by German and American television, as well as filmmakers Barbet Schroeder and Taylor Hackford, who also give commentary. He retrieves a treasure trove of insightful scenes — public and private readings, spats with girlfriends, daily errands to the Laundromat, and endless drunken blather. Interviews with famous fans are interspersed throughout (including Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Bono, Harry Dean Stanton), but more interesting are the people who knew him intimately, friends and flings and others who understood him. His ex-girlfriends recall their relationships fondly but admit that he was a handful — constantly carousing and always drunk, alternately tender, hostile, and aloof, he tested their patience mightily and wore some of them out.

Some of his contradictions get away without much thought, though. Among them, he denies being lonely a day in his life, saying “I am not lonely. I am alone, I am depressed, but no one person or group of people can enter that door and make me feel any better,” yet his long succession of girlfriends seems to prove otherwise. Also, despite a childhood full of abuse and turmoil, his own fatherhood is relatively unexplored. The brief interview with his daughter reveals a friendly woman with his prominent teeth and cheekbones, but that’s about it.

Like many famous person biopics, this film dismisses bad behavior as part and parcel of being a genius; any abuse or cruelty is easily forgiven or dismissed in advance. Since Bukowski has already made a career out of being a lout, further mischief only deepens his mystique. But this film seems to acknowledge his brokenness, and though it is a little too reverent at times, it is ultimately big-hearted by showing his all too human side. His flat, delicate voice and browbeaten shape hint at his hardened, angry soul, waiting for some justification for all the pain he has endured when none is possible.

As an introduction to newcomers or as a validation of the written word, the film is tremendously worthwhile, however. Bukowski’s the real deal. He’s lived, drank, and suffered with the best of them (Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemmingway are among his happy company), so Dullaghan understands the need to hear from the man himself, and gladly takes a back seat.

Most importantly, Dulligan dispels some of his unearned titles. Among them, “Poet Laureate of Skid Row” is terribly misleading and dismissive. Bukowski was not a bum. He was a working man, like most Americans, who could barely make a living off of the dirty low wage jobs he found. In Hot Water Music, he says: “they pay me just enough to keep me alive, but not enough to quit.” His alcoholism, gambling, and womanizing then were not unusual habits for people in his economic bracket. Indeed, his popularity partly came from his identification with working people.

His voice began to flourish with readers after the fifties, which some would describe as the rein of Mickey Mouse. His wife Linda mentions that he hated Mickey Mouse: “he hated him because he had three fingers and no soul.” While Disney and other popular entertainment salved America with cheap sentiment, Bukowski, for all his cynicism and sourness, wrote poems and stories that were so straight, sober, and utterly without bullshit that when the bald-faced truth appeared, depressing though it might be, it felt like a weight lifted from your shoulders. Bad news never felt so refreshing.

Todd Lillethun is a writer and filmmaker in Chicago.

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