''The Last Straw'' is a film documenting the last live poetry reading given by

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

, even though he lived and wrote for another 14 years. The reading was given at The Sweetwater, a music club in Redondo Beach, California on March 31, 1980. It is produced and directed by

Jon Monday Jon Monday (born 1947 in San Jose, California) is an American producer and distributor of CDs and DVDs across an eclectic range of material such as Swami Prabhavananda, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Huston Smith, Chalmers Johnson, and Ch ...

for mondayMEDIA.

Plot synopsis

In March 1980,

Takoma Records Takoma Records was a small but influential record label founded by guitarist John Fahey in the late 1950s.

was about to re-release an audio recording on vinyl of a Charles Bukowski live poetry reading given in San Francisco years earlier. As part of the promotion of the album release, Bukowski agreed to give a new live reading, even though he hated doing them. Jon Monday, then General Manager of Takoma Records, video taped the event. But by later that year Bukowski's book royalties and movie advances provided him enough of a living that he no longer had to do readings. The Redondo Beach reading was Bukowski's last. The video recording of that night stayed in an archive until 2008 when mondayMEDIA entered into an agreement with Bukowski's widow Linda to release it on DVD. Bukowski's readings were known for their riotous back and forth with the audience and this recording shows this in full color. Each poem is set between a tense dialog - with Bukowski giving and taking insults and threats with members of the audience. It ends with the prophetic words "This reading is over." The Last Straw was edited to avoid duplicating of poems on the 2nd to the last reading, There's Gonna Be a God Damn Riot in Here DVD. The complete video of both readings can be found in the box set released in 2010, One Tough Mother.’’Record Collector Magazine” May – June 2021 Page 36

References

External links

* * * 2008 films American independent films American documentary films 2008 documentary films Documentary films about poets Charles Bukowski 2000s English-language films 2000s American films {{Indie-film-stub