Previously unknown Bukowski interview (2 Viewers)

I emailed him. Here's his response:
---It's just been a money thing.....working on two documentaries and it has been demanding.
I need funding and I've qualified at least twice but foot dragging made the best laid plans slow to a crawl.

I had intended to get Buk out months and months ago.
I want to try for this spring.

What I do NOT want to do:
Take a bunch of pre-paid orders. It's not fair to anyone, and I don't like when someone else asks it of me.
I promise you I would love nothing better than to get this out there sooner than later!
So the project is not dead... just delayed.
 
Just stumbled across this old thread and visited the deepfreeze site. Not a mention of the Buk DVD, but plenty on one of my all time favourites from the 70's Leon Russell, so I've asked him about the supposed 2009 re-release of that resurrected videotape, the fascinating story of which is well documented on that site.
 
---It's just been a money thing.....working on two documentaries and it has been demanding. I need funding and I've qualified at least twice but foot dragging made the best laid plans slow to a crawl.
Waaaahhhh, I need funding! Help me! Help me!

Fuck this guy. The Bukowski thing is not a documentary, it's a god damn tape of a cable TV show.

Jesus christ, you can get 100 DVDs duplicated (DVR) and packaged for less than $350. You can get a glass master and a stamper made and make 1000 real DVDs (not DVR) for $900. Sell them real cheap (by "real cheap" I mean like $5.99 and a couple bucks for mailing) if you want to move the whole 1000. Make a few thousand bucks and be done with it. Relatively small beans if you price them to sell, but it's a small audience. Or you could price them at $15.99, sell a couple hundred and sit on the rest for 20 years. When no one will be able to play a DVD.

This guy sounds like Linda King waiting for the world's biggest publisher to come and write her a million dollar check for a book that 2,000 people will read. At most.

Everyone wants funding. It's a wonder most of these people can wipe their asses without venture capital interceding somehow. This isn't ART waiting for the NEA, it's COMMERCE. So get capitalistic, fucker, make something happen.

The world has turned into a bunch of frightened worms wiggling around in the freshly turned dirt.
 
I'm actually to blame partially... I built an asswiper with investor money.

Of course, it remains a better investment than most stocks these days, so I'm rolling in dough.
 
Waaaahhhh, I need funding! Help me! Help me!

Fuck this guy. The Bukowski thing is not a documentary, it's a god damn tape of a cable TV show.

--Jeezus Christ, I never said it was a documentary.
It IS a goddam tape of a cable TV show. That's exactly what it is.
I said that I'm working on two docs right now.
Those two are pumping me dry.

Jesus christ, you can get 100 DVDs duplicated (DVR) and packaged for less than $350. You can get a glass master and a stamper made and make 1000 real DVDs (not DVR) for $900. Sell them real cheap (by "real cheap" I mean like $5.99 and a couple bucks for mailing) if you want to move the whole 1000. Make a few thousand bucks and be done with it. Relatively small beans if you price them to sell, but it's a small audience. Or you could price them at $15.99, sell a couple hundred and sit on the rest for 20 years. When no one will be able to play a DVD.

---Yeah, that's what I do all the time, but the difference is, I learned a little something in the twenty-five years I've been doing this.
Sitting on a bunch of discs don't pay the bills, and I know a lot of people sitting on boxes and boxes of DVD's that aren't selling.
Sorry if this isn't smiley happy news but costs are costs, and they pile up, and the discs take up space and eventually wind up in storage, which means they eventually start costing more to just sit there than they bring in, which means that eventually they wind up in a public storage AUCTION.

This guy sounds like Linda King waiting for the world's biggest publisher to come and write her a million dollar check for a book that 2,000 people will read. At most.

Well, I don't actually know who Linda King is, but what I won't do is wind up sitting on a bunch of discs that don't sell. Done that already.

Everyone wants funding. It's a wonder most of these people can wipe their asses without venture capital interceding somehow. This isn't ART waiting for the NEA, it's COMMERCE. So get capitalistic, fucker, make something happen.

The world has turned into a bunch of frightened worms wiggling around in the freshly turned dirt.

---I'll make something happen when it doesn't wind up losing me money and when Fred Havens decides he's ready to move on it.
I'm really sorry that it's not sooner than later.
I'm the first person who would like to see it out there, but I'm not a big publishing company. I'm just a working camera guy and editor, I pay my bills, I feed and clothe a small family and keep a roof over our head.
It doesn't work as well when you're lighting hundred dollar bills on fire, and I already have a couple of those going already.
 
Oh...almost forgot to mention that I received a phone call from FRED HAVENS a few months ago. This is the guy that everyone told me was DEAD.
No, he didn't come back to life.
He just disappeared into obscurity from everyone he used to know in LA.
He now lives in New Orleans.

That put me at another "slight" impasse, because I then had to try and convince Fred that going ahead with this is the right thing to do.
He finally agreed but he's broke and therefore can't finance the pressing either.

Sorry, I gotta draw the line somewhere.
I've put out about eight grand on a film about a guy who made guitars for Prince and another four grand on a film about a quadriplegic veteran who took on the Iron Man Triathlon. Neither one is finished and neither one will probably make dime one for me.
I gotta eat and feed the fam.
I'm not a big record company or a big publishing house.
I'm just a working camera guy and editor.

So yeah, fuck me I guess. :-)
 
Sitting on a bunch of discs don't pay the bills, and I know a lot of people sitting on boxes and boxes of DVD's that aren't selling.
You must have stopped reading very early on (understandable, you were probably angry), because that's exactly what I said not to do.

I said make a small run of cheapo DVRs and sell them. Done. Otherwise this is just another lost videotape. It would be interesting to see, but not the end of the world if you just sit on it forever.
 
Yes, start with f.ex. 100 copies and see how it goes. There must be costumers for a mere 100 copies...
 
Somebody posted a video of not long ago. That's not the one you're talking about, is it? I don't really know what to make of it...

Therapist: Sit down, you are out of the frame.
Buk: The grave does not have a frame.
 
I have it here, but I doubt that Jeff would appreciate making it available, since he took it down from his site. You'll just have to imagine what it was like.
 
Well, I don't actually know who Linda King is, but what I won't do is wind up sitting on a bunch of discs that don't sell. Done that already.
Why would you come onto a Bukowski forum not knowing who Linda King is and the tricks she's pulled?

He wants you to send him a money order to help out the project and get one of the first off the production line.
 
Why would you come onto a Bukowski forum not knowing who Linda King is and the tricks she's pulled?
Why should he know anything about Linda King? If someone comes across an previously unknown bit of Bukowski video should they just keep their mouths shut about it because they had never heard of Linda King? C'mon...

He wants you to send him a money order to help out the project and get one of the first off the production line.
He's stated in the past that he does not want anyone to pre-order this.

He's said that he hasn't had the money to do this and, I would imagine that it might not be a the top of his list of things-to-do. I hope that at some point it does see the light of day in one form or another, but that's up to him. I seriously doubt that being shitty about it will get it done any more quickly.
 
You must have stopped reading very early on (understandable, you were probably angry)

Nope, not angry...just cut me a little slack, okay? ?
Surely you must know that some of these projects sit and sit forever...things aren't always under my control.
My first wife was business mgr for the guy who wrote Lonely Teardrops: The Jackie Wilson Story.
Suzanne dePasse wrote him a nice check, optioned it and then put it on the shelf.
That was thirty years ago and the author probably won't be alive next year, which is probably when Ms. dePasse will finally decide to get the movie made, maybe.
This is small potatoes by comparison and you wouldn't believe the number of projects like this that sit and sit and sit.
 
didn't mean it in a bad way - good to know you're still alive and kicking. ?
 
tell him to drop by the forum and say hi etc. it'd be cool to at least hear his recollections of his experience with bukowski.

i want to know if he was as hung over as he looked lol.
 
Just stumbled across this old thread and visited the deepfreeze site. Not a mention of the Buk DVD, but plenty on one of my all time favourites from the 70's Leon Russell, so I've asked him about the supposed 2009 re-release of that resurrected videotape, the fascinating story of which is well documented on that site.
Very off-topic but...about that:
I will understand if the mods feel compelled to delete this post, and please forgive if I unknowingly broke a rule.
I probably don't have much time left.
I had a heart attack this week and I guess I am trying to wrap up my loose ends.
 
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