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John Dullaghan’s hagiographic documentary about the life and times of Charles Bukowski doesn’t shy away from the nasty side of the notorious, booze-propelled author/poet (and some might add, misogynist). The film opens with slurred rants of "mother fucker" and later shows its subject petulantly kicking at his wife while branding her a "cunt." In between, publishers and friends recount the provocateur’s literary rise through his self-depreciating (and socially biting) street poetry about drinking, fighting, and screwing and his semi-autobiographical novels (Ham on Rye and Women). He also spent 12 years as a postal employee, and then there’s Barfly, the acclaimed film based on his life. Although Bukowski wrote the script, Dullaghan’s film reveals that the scribe was not particularly pleased with the end result. Through the archival footage (’70s German TV and interviews with Barfly director Barbet Schroeder), Bukowski paints himself as less the machismo debaucher readers have come to revere than as an introverted soul who reviled his strict father and lost his virginity to a "300-pound whore." Sean Penn, Bono, and Tom Waits all chime in as fans of the craggy icon with a chain of local bars named in his (dis)honor. (130 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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