You Never Had It: An Evening with Charles Bukowski

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A night of drinking and talking about sex, literature, childhood and humanity with the irreverent writer poet Charles Bukowski in his California house in 1981. A story of tapes lost, found and brought back to life.

A PMA exclusive conversation with Joshua Bodwell, Editorial Director, Godine, Publisher / Black Sparrow Press and Neeli Cherkovski, author of Bukowski, A Life: The Centennial Edition is available to view here.

55 minutes. Not rated. Directed by Matteo Borgardt.

Producer and journalist Silvia Bizio introduces an evening with writer Charles Bukowski by recounting her time with the author and the discovery of an extraordinary time capsule that lead to the documentary’s creation. This short documentary is based on a video interview conducted by Bizio in January of 1981 with Bukowski at his home in San Pedro, California. It was a long night of smoking cigarettes and drinking wine with Bukowski and his soon to be wife, Linda Lee Beighle, talking about all kinds of subjects, from writers to sex, love and humanity. The interview was shot on Umatic tapes which have been digitized and edited along with new shots in Super8 of scenes of Los Angeles today and poems read by the same Bukowski.