With Paul Bugden and Hollywood Hal

We talk with two of Sydney’s most entertaining characters, actor, author and bookseller Paul Bugden, along with his incorrigible old friend Hollywood Hal, a legend of the city’s bohemian nightlife.

Part of their story is captured in the book Tales of an Accidental Bookseller, which spins the yarn of how Paul ended up as a washed up actor in New York at a young age, and retreated back to Australia broken and broken hearted. Only to encounter Hollywood Hal, one of the city’s great survivors. 

Hal convinced him to start selling books at the Kings Cross markets, and out of this evolved one of the tiniest, most infamous and and most charming bookshops ever to grace Sydney’s underbelly, Bugdens down on Victoria Street. It blossomed in the heart of bohemian Sydney, in Kings Bloody Cross. 

Bugdens became an integral part of inner-city life, and a magnet for collectors. 

Tales of an Accidental Bookseller tells the true story of a struggling actor and aspiring filmmaker who, in the midst of tragedy and great personal loss, finds redemption in the last place he would ever have thought to look – the second hand book trade. 

This beautifully written story captures a piece of Sydney life rapidly disappearing before the area’s bulldozers and rapid demographic change.

It is 1995, the height of the AIDS epidemic. Paul is surrounded by suffering and loss. Adding to his woes, a once promising career as an actor and budding filmmaker, with ambition enough to propel him to New York, is now in free fall. 

He’s been reduced to working part time, as a Therapist’s Assistant, in a minimum security twilight facility. What the hell happened? This wasn’t the plan. Life was looking bleak. 

Enter Hal, friend and hustler extraordinaire. Hal cajoles his friend to try his hand at the flea markets. Taking this tentative step up from despair, Paul suddenly finds himself in a new reality, the world of wheeling and dealing. It’s a dramatic departure, but one which will afford him not only a new trade but, more importantly, a fresh perspective: on life, on business, literature, art, and people. 

It just goes to show, we don’t always know what’s best for us.