French cineaste Jean-Luc Godard praised Bukowski for his work creating the English

subtitles for his 1980 film Sauve qui peut la vie.[33]

In 1981, the Italian director Marco Ferreri made a film, Storie di ordinaria follia
aka Tales of Ordinary Madness, loosely based on the short stories of Bukowski; Ben
Gazzara played the role of Bukowski's character.

Barfly, released in 1987, is a semi-autobiographical film written by Bukowski and

starring Mickey Rourke as Henry Chinaski, who represents Bukowski, and Faye Dunaway
as his lover Wanda Wilcox. Sean Penn had offered to play the part of Chinaski for
as little as a dollar as long as his friend Dennis Hopper would provide direction,
but the European director Barbet Schroeder had invested many years and thousands of
dollars in the project and Bukowski felt Schroeder deserved to make it. Bukowski
wrote the screenplay for the film and appears as a bar patron in a brief cameo.

In 2011, the actor James Franco publicly stated that he was in the process of
making a film adaptation of Bukowski's novel Ham on Rye.[34] He wrote the script
with his brother Dave, and explained that his reason for wanting to make the film
is that "Ham on Rye is one of my favorite books of all time." The adaptation began
shooting in Los Angeles on January 22, 2013 with Franco directing. The film is
partially being shot in Oxford Square, a historic neighborhood of Los Angeles.[35]

US band Red Hot Chili Peppers reference Bukowski and his works in several songs,
including the line "pick up my book, I read Bukowski" in the song Mellowship Slinky
in B Major from their 1991 album Blood Sugar Sex Magic, and the line "oh, here's
your Ham on Rye" in Long Progression, from their 2016 I'm with You Sessions. Singer
Anthony Kiedis has stated that Bukowski is a big influence on his writing.