Filming Burroughs

Years ago I saw a tantalizing scene from the movie, Naked Lunch, in which a typewriter turned into a giant cockroach spouted off a stream of paranoiac drivel. It was so bizarre as to be laugh-out-loud funny. Earlier that evening, I had turned down the chance to see the whole movie because I was "not going to suffer through more William S. Burroughs, thank you". But this movie was nothing like Burroughs' books. That scene stuck with me and after 20-some years I finally watched this incredible film in its entirety last night.

The film is only loosely based on the book; its true subject is Burroughs himself. Naked Lunch, the film, tells the story of a bug exterminator named William Lee who comes home one day to find his wife "shooting up" bug juice and having a party with his friends. He is a sharp-shooter and often plays William Tell by shooting a glass off his wife's head. He decides to do so this day, and this time, tragically, he misses. She dies from a shot to the head.

Lee flees with his typewriter to Interzone (his drug-induced experience of Algiers). While in his drugged haze, he writes "reports" about the people he meets in Interzone (mostly gay men) and of the paranoiac hallucinations he's experiencing. He stores these reports in his room and mails copies to his friends in the USA (reference Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), along with pleas for them to join him in Interzone.

Lee does not remember writing these letters and so is surprised when his friends show up. In fact, they have been "blown away" by the writing and have found a publisher for his work. The friends have come to help Lee arrange and edit the pieces (his reports) for publication as the book, Naked Lunch. Lee sobers up for the work. They leave him to complete the writing, and although he falls back into his drug habit (opium this time), he finishes the job and eventually leaves Interzone, but only after having made peace with himself about his wife and about his sexuality.

Screenwriter/director David Cronenberg is working on a lot of levels. One can think of the movie straight-up as a biography of William Burroughs. In fact, a more accurate description includes a number of paranoid hallucinatory scenes including anthropomorphic representations of opium (and people sucking juice from these creatures) and the aforementioned typewriter-turned-cockroach that gives secret-agent Lee assignments to visit certain individuals and write reports based on his findings. Lee does in fact go on these assignments and in this way manages to get out of his room and interact with people in Interzone. By the way, the "reports" are actually the vignettes that become Naked Lunch (the book). Lots of self-referencing here. This is a complex movie that, while not being in any way true to the book, provides a rich film experience.

William Burroughs wrote that it was Joan's death that freed his voice for writing. Look at what came out: searing satire about homosexuals in power who call the shots in the world they live in. Burroughs was a gay man during a time when it was not only frowned upon to be gay, but illegal. He married (as did his friend in Algiers, Paul Bowles - Sheltering Sky) as a way of living a normal life and perhaps providing a cover for his homosexuality.

Burroughs' genius - and it is true genius - is forced into a sometimes passive-aggressive stream of sexual-political consciousness. The prose in his books is raw. The rants are unforgiving. The content of his books is just too hot for film, and so the film of the same name instead tells the story of the blocked writer, Burroughs, who finds his writing voice after shooting his wife. The vignettes of the book are only occasionally reproduced in the film. One is a story recited by Burroughs to the powerful, evil industrialist, A. J.; another is a scene in the aviary at A.J.'s house. Both instances produce a shocking effet in the film but are, in fact, tame examples of the stories in the book.

While I found the book challenging to get through, the movie was accessible to me in its own bizarre way- and even enjoyable -- I laughed out loud a number of times. The movie's noir style works completely. Acting is fabulous, the sets even more so. The setting for the opium den at the end of the film is true genius.

A movie like this obviously has a very limited audience. It is an art movie and so begs to be forgiven for the crude material in the hallucinations. If you are a fan of beat literature, you will find this film fascinating. But a warning to the squeamish there is a typewriter who turns into a bug who talks through his anus. Oh my.