Taylor Hackford produced and Richard Davies directed the terse, 46‑minute cinema‑verité portrait of Los Angeles poet Charles Bukowski that follows him to a November 21, 1973 San Francisco reading. The film trades tidy biography for raw immediacy: viewers are led through Bukowski’s Los Angeles neighborhood reminiscences about his Post Office years, into the airplane with Linda King en route to the reading, and into the close, often combustible circles that surrounded the poet. Midway through the footage the camera captures a genuinely ugly night — guests brawl in a hotel room and a window is smashed, then Bukowski himself argues violently with Linda King, the sculptor and then‑partner who appears repeatedly in the film. That on‑camera rupture ends with Linda leaving, and the documentary follows with sober, awkward interviews of Liza and Linda about their connections to Bukowski. The scene is striking precisely because it is unvarnished: no studio polish, no after‑the‑fact rewriting — just a documented fracture that fed Bukowski’s public reputation for volatile personal life.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1970s
On‑camera Domestic Blowup: The Hotel Fight That Left a Window Broken and Linda King Walking Out
Bukowski (1973 documentary) / 1970s
Taylor Hackford produced and Richard Davies directed the terse, 46‑minute cinema‑verité portrait of Los Angeles poet Charles Bukowski that follows him to a November 21, 1973 San Francisco reading. The film trades tidy biography for raw immediacy: viewers are led through Bukowski’s Los Angeles neighborhood reminiscences about his Post Office years, into the airplane with Linda King en route to the reading, and into the close, often combustible circles that surrounded the poet. Midway through the footage the camera captures a genuinely ugly night — guests brawl in a hotel room and a window is smashed, then Bukowski himself argues violently with Linda King, the sculptor and then‑partner who appears repeatedly in the film. That on‑camera rupture ends with Linda leaving, and the documentary follows with sober, awkward interviews of Liza and Linda about their connections to Bukowski. The scene is striking precisely because it is unvarnished: no studio polish, no after‑the‑fact rewriting — just a documented fracture that fed Bukowski’s public reputation for volatile personal life.
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