Bukowski Noir (1 Viewer)

Meh... I agree with most things said in that article. For example, "He invokes the image of the struggling artist"... but, I wouldn't call Buk "noir". When I think noir I think like, 1920s prohibition, black and white, red lipstick, flappers, etc.
 
It is different haha. I accept that possibly there are different kinds of noir, and people may view them differently. But when I think noir I think black and white, elegant yet dangerous. Buk's not elegant, and when I read him, I can see the neon bar signs, not black and white.
 
Great article. He doesn't fellate Bukowski *like so many on this website* and manage a pretty balanced positive review of him.

Quality.
 
I don't see ANY antilogy between these two ways to define 'noir'.

A movie starring Humphrey Bogart as a dick is as much 'noir' as anything prohibition-timed "elegant yet dangerous". And both are black&white.
(of course, Gerard's point on 'Pulp' goes very well with the Bogart-movie-film-noir-thing.)

I can see your 'neon-light', Loli, though. How about a dark b/w movie with only a few colored elements?


edit:
Olaf! I, personally, would suck Bukowskis dick on any given day.
 
Noir is not elegant. It is inelegant. Noir is the language of back alleys and dark bar rooms, flophouses with mattresses stained by the yellow flop sweat of the thousands of losers who laid there before you. Noir is a gun, a gat, a roscoe, a rod, a slug from a .45 between the eyes by the woman in the red dress who swore she loved you. Noir is pain and aguish and human defeat, a desperate plea for absolution from the void.

"1920s prohibition, black and white, red lipstick, flappers, etc." is the language of F. Scott Fitzgerald and as similar to noir as a goose is to a grizzly bear.
 
noir (nwär)
adj.
1. Of or relating to the film noir genre.
2. Of or relating to a genre of crime literature featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings.
3. Suggestive of danger or violence.
and this line too.
Short for film noir + Sense 2, short for French roman noir, black novel.]

BTW that Rodger Jacobs can lay down some lines, can't he?
Thank you Carver's Dog.
 
I think crime, dark alleys and derelict bars are elegant. ;) Then again, I like to argue semantics, so nothing I say really holds any water because I'm mostly dismissed as a nihilist.

I like b&w movies with few colour - Sin City, for example. Beaaaaautiful cinematography. I would call that some kind of neo-noir, however.

I'd fellate Buk anyday. Though I still wouldn't call him noir. He's not any label, really. He's just simply Bukowski.
 
Just off the top of my head, I can reasonably assert that The Fiend and The Murder of Ramon Vasquez from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town would fit comfortably into any noir short story anthology. There's also a grim take-off on Hemingway's The Killers in Tales of Ordinary Madness (can't recall the title) that is practically textbook noir.
 
mjp, always calls me a troll, I'm not entirely sure why, a lack of civility on his part perhaps, but I can always smell the envy in his words. For an old man, he's incredibly immature, and for a young girl, I'm incredibly wily.

Anyway, good essay!


And sure, Bukowski has Noir Qualities, at least in the most general definition: i.e. literature (mainly crime) featuring tough, cynical characters and bleak settings


*P.s. let us rejoice on this day the end of WW1!
FUCK THAT! do you think I'm stupid?
WW1 hasn't even finished.
All war's being One War.
 
CarversDog said:
Just off the top of my head, I can reasonably assert that The Fiend and The Murder of Ramon Vasquez from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town would fit comfortably into any noir short story anthology. There's also a grim take-off on Hemingway's The Killers in Tales of Ordinary Madness (can't recall the title) that is practically textbook noir.
Click to expand...

For some reason, I can't picture a detective smoking a cigarette raping a little girl in black and white? When I read the Fiend, which is one of my favorite short stories by Buk, I didn't think of darkness (literally), I could see the sunlight coming in from the guy's window while he's whacking it in the kitchen over two bottles of wine. I could see him walking down a nicely-paved sidewalk to the girl's house - I could see her bright red knickers. In the garage, I could see colours. I think that I could see this light in juxtapose with this being a very dark, fucked up story, makes it beautiful irony.

In the Murder of Ramon Vasquez, I could also see colour. And I don't recall any homosexuals in classic film noir? Certainly, one could argue neo-noir, though.
 
And I don't recall any homosexuals in classic film noir?

Sure there were. Joel Cairo in Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", Bruno in Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train"; in fact Highsmith, author of the famous Ripley novels, frequently employed thinly-disguised gay characters.

I didn't think of darkness (literally), I could see the sunlight coming in from the guy's window

Look, noir implies a theme "suggestive of danger or violence". You are taking the word way too literally. If someone says to you "I'm in a blue mood" do you suddenly expect their skin to take on the pigmentation of a Smurf?
 
CarversDog said:
And I don't recall any homosexuals in classic film noir?

Sure there were. Joel Cairo in Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon", Bruno in Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train"; in fact Highsmith, author of the famous Ripley novels, frequently employed thinly-disguised gay characters.
(snip)

?
Click to expand...

Here is a little example:.
My boss just watched this movie last night and added his 2 cents. Watch that it is pretty funny, although the character isn't so thinly-disguised in that clip.
 
Excellent example. And, of course, there is Tony's twisted desires toward his sister in both the Howard Hawks and Brian DePalma versions of "Scarface". Noir carries a lot of twisted and Freudian human sexuality ... hey, sort of like Bukowski's writing, eh? Copulating Mermaid of Venice Beach, anyone?
 
Some film historians consider a lot of the early gangster films, particularly those produced by Warners like Public Enemy, to be early predecessors of noir because they inhabit the same dark world but, yes, true noir was born at RKO in the early 1940s
 
Edgar Ulmer's Detour is considered by many to be the first true film noir. It's also one of the few truly great poverty row films.

My personal favorite noir is The Asphalt Jungle. One review at the time it was released read (from memory) "A nasty film about nasty people doing nasty things." A glowing review for sure.
 
Public Enemy was not noir exactly, but that clip is pretty funny. It is a nasty film about nasty people doing nasty things.

C-dog, Pubic Enemy would make a good title for a porn movie, wouldn't it.
 
I found the exact quote and I was mistaken... it wasn't a reviewer who said that, it was Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM, the studio that released the film).

MGM boss Louis B. Mayer wished Huston had stuck with the hackneyed stereotypes. He hated the picture, calling it "full of nasty, ugly people doing nasty, ugly things. I won't walk across the room to see something like that."
 
It's funny you linked that site, I just checked that out for the first time this morning. It seems old Martin Brimmer is the best paid screenwriter in the business.:D
 
Past tense. I haven't written scripts for adult for years, though sometimes a writer passing through the biz will co-opt my pseudonym onto a title page. But at my "peak", which was 2000, I was earning near two grand per script but, mind you, these were big budget efforts for Wicked Pictures with hefty scripts weighing in at between 45 and 60 pages. When the cable market imploded in '01 and lifted their embargo on plotless movies, I abdicated. I've been reading that plot-driven porn is making a comeback but I have no interest in climbing aboard that train again.
 
Gotta agree with you there. What's life without the every-so-often chemically induced hallucinogenic moment?

"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?""

-- Hunter S. Thompson
 
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