Bukowski

Directed by John Dullaghan

Without denying his obvious influence on me and several thousand other writers, my interest in Charles Bukowski as a cultural figure has waned considerably over the years. Nowadays, he's a writer for the young-primarily white, slightly disgruntled males in their early 20s eager to romanticize poverty, booze and two-fistedness. Back in the early days of the underground press, he was the guy. Instead of an academic writing, he was a drunk writing in straightforward language about the streets, the flophouses and the bars.

John Dullaghan's documentary captures the newness of it all back then, as well as Bukowski's slow, semi-reluctant climb to underground godhead. Combining new interviews with ex-wives and girlfriends, co-workers, drinking buddies, editors, poets and celebrities (Tom Waits, Sean Penn, Bono) with a mountain of archive footage, Dullaghan finally begins to peel away a few thin layers from the Bukowski mythology.

No, it's not perfect. The Bukowski-obsessed might wonder why a few central players (photographer Michael Montfort, for instance) are nowhere to be found. All that said, Dullaghan has gotten his hands on some great footage-including bits from Taylor Hackford's 1973 Bukowski doc-and he's crafted a film that works both as a fairly solid introduction to the persona of a writer who's rediscovered every year by college students, and as a collection of readings and stories that the hardcore fans will embrace.