Life of Manchu

d o c u m e n t a r y
He's the Dirty Old Man, the wicked, vulgar poet from East Hollywood. He's Buk. He writes line after line about racetracks and bars and rooming-houses and whores, about fools and academics and the sewing-circle poets who write him breathless letters about their sex-lives and their Art. He cuts us all down to actual size, reminds us of our odors and excretions—and yet, so much in me doesn't want to call him a negative man. So much in me wants to talk about the tragedy and beauty that he has somehow hidden in each of his novels and in at least the better of his stories and poems, hidden amongst words so spare and ragged I'd swear there's no room left for any meaning.
His writing is confident and direct and unflinching and it will make you uncomfortable at times. There's a certain quality to documentary filmmaking, something involving the way people talk and breathe and move when they're actually talking and breathing and moving instead of acting. It's easy to spo...