Did You Meet Bukowski?

“A couple of times. It’s like when I met Keith Richards, you try to match them drink for drink. But you’re a novice, you’re a child. You’re drinking with a roaring pirate. Whatever you know about holding your liquor, you’d better let go of it right now. So I thought I could hang in there, but I wasn’t able to hang in there, with either one of them. They’re made out of different stock. They’re like dockworkers. But it was interesting.

I met Bukowski at his house. Barbet Schroeder was a friend of mine, and they tried to get me to be in that movie, Barfly, playing Bukowski. They offered a lot of money, but I just couldn’t do it, plus I didn’t consider myself a good enough actor to do something like that. But Bukowski… I guess everybody, when you’re young, and you enter the arts, you find father figures. For me, it was more profound because I had no father — no operating father — so I found other men that supplied all that for me. I was looking for those guys all the time.” — Tom Waits

Via Word Magazine (UK), photo by Anton Corbijn