Previously unknown Bukowski interview

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deepfreezevideo

It's been seven months since I spoke with the Harper Collins rep and after a dozen followup emails they're acting like a cheerleader who will be "washing her hair for the next five years".

They seem to have made the decision for me.
They forget that Buk sent his first submissions scrawled on yellow lined legal pads because his typer was in hock.
I made it easy for them; I used the telephone, email and Windows Media Player.

All I care about now is getting right with Linda. I don't care if she is a certified ga-zillionaire, I dont mind sharing.
I'll just sell it on my deepfreeze site and let it go at that and if I can get up with Linda I'll enter into a contract with her and split it in a way that works for both of us if she is okay with that.

Cheers,
JeffH
 
bright

bright

yeah, thanks.
Im also eagerly awaiting the release of your video,buk seems so natural in the teaser you posted.

Greetings.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Thanks, Jeff! Too bad Harper Collins act the way they do. Anyway, we all await the release of the interview. Keep us posted...
 
Brother Schenker

Brother Schenker

Founding member
deepfreezevideo said:
I'll just sell it on my deepfreeze site and let it go at that and if I can get up with Linda I'll enter into a contract with her and split it in a way that works for both of us if she is okay with that.
Click to expand...
Talkshow host Bernie Ward on KGO radio always ends his show by saying, It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is permission.

I encourage you to sell it until someone sends you an order of Cease & Desist. I mean, it's not like you are going to get rich by selling it. Only us Buk maniacs are interested and we are far & few between amongst the masses.

In fact, I would suggest you give it away for free. I highly doubt you even own the rights to it. Seriously. You're not gonna make any appreciable profits by selling it and may in fact incur more trouble via lawsuits than it's worth.
 
D

deepfreezevideo

Brother Schenker, the copyright process is already underway.
Havens doesn't have and family, descendants or any interested parties to his estate, which was nonexistent anyway, and I've practiced as much due diligence as is possible given the circumstances. No one else owns the rights, and I own the only existing master tape.
I doubt that there will be any glitches in the copyright process unless Fred Havens confounds the religious community by rising from the dead.

That is all that is standing in front of the release.
But I promise you the price will be more than reasonable, and no, I am not looking to "get rich", but I work for a reasonable wage, and it took a considerable amount of work to rescue this video from oblivion.
If I make anything at all from it, I will be satisfied, and doubly so because this does not deserve to be sitting on the shelf unseen.
 
D

deepfreezevideo

"Media People-Charles Bukowski" DVD

I've scheduled a press run with a replication company.
The initial run will be limited to 300 copies but these WILL be commercially pressed, NOT burned.

Used to be one had to do a thousand to get pressed discs but not anymore. I have to limit the first pressing quantity because I am not sure how well this will go.
They should be ready by end of April or mid-May, depending on my shoot schedules and other work related stuff.

Once again, bear in mind that this is video from a reel to reel 1/2 inch monochrome industrial VTR, the type you old farts probably used to see in the school library A/V dept., so it's not "broadcast quality" even for the 1970's.
I am surprised that a cable company would use this machine even for public access cable, but I guess that they had to cut corners somewhere.
It is what it is, and fortunately the creative content far outweighs the technical.

I'll put the links up here before I go anywhere else.
 
HenryChinaski

HenryChinaski

Founding member
I'm sure you'll be able to get rid of a lot of them on here man.

Do us a favor, let us get first dibs. Please? That would be awesome.
 
D

deepfreezevideo

Of course!
By the way, I've decided to go with CustomFlix, unless someone here has had a bad experience with the company.
I'd really love to get some participation in writing the jacket blurbs and descriptions. If anyone has anything they would like to contribute I will gladly welcome it and give credit where credit is due on the jacket.
Yes, I know that May has come and gone...I have been swamped with shooting work but it's time to get the gears rolling while I have the money to do the replication.
By the way, my private email is exvenicecreature @ charter.net
so please feel free to communicate any time.
I want to get this out in the next couple of weeks.

Here's a scan of the jacket.
I'd love to use a better pic but I have to stick with only what I am
legally allowed to use, namely frame grabs from the video.

DVDjacket1sm.jpg


JeffH
817-717-5605
 
chronic

chronic

old and in the way
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!
Click to expand...
So the project is not dead... just delayed.
 
Socratease

Socratease

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.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
---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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
LickTheStar

LickTheStar

Sad Flower in the Sand
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.
 
D

deepfreezevideo

mjp said:
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.
Click to expand...

--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.

mjp said:
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.
Click to expand...

---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.

mjp said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.

mjp said:
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.
Click to expand...

---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.
 
D

deepfreezevideo

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. :-)
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
deepfreezevideo said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
Bukfan

Bukfan

"The law is wrong; I am right"
Yes, start with f.ex. 100 copies and see how it goes. There must be costumers for a mere 100 copies...
 
Pessimist

Pessimist

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.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
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.
 
jabble

jabble

deepfreezevideo said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
chronic

chronic

old and in the way
jabble said:
Why would you come onto a Bukowski forum not knowing who Linda King is and the tricks she's pulled?
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
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.
 
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