Naked Lunch (film)

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Naked Lunch
Directed by	David Cronenberg
Produced by	Jeremy Thomas, Gabriella Martinelli
Written by	David Cronenberg, Based on the novel by William S. Burroughs
Starring	Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Peter Suschitzky
Editing by	Ronald Sanders
Distributed by	Twentieth Century Fox
Release date(s)	January 21, 1991[citation needed] December 27, 1991 (USA, limited)
Running time	115 min.
Country	Canada U.K. Japan
Language	English
Budget	$17-18 million [1]
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Naked Lunch (1991) is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, directed by David Cronenberg. The film is a tri-national co-production by film companies of Canada, the U.K., and Japan, featuring Peter Weller as William Lee (Burroughs), Ian Holm, Judy Davis, and Roy Scheider.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Cast 3 Adaptation 4 Music 5 Reception 5.1 Criticism 5.2 Awards 6 Popular culture references 7 References 8 See also 9 External links

[edit] Plot summary

William Lee (Burroughs's pseudonym for his first novel, Junky) is an exterminator who finds that his wife is stealing his insecticide for recreational purposes. When Lee is arrested by the police, he believes himself hallucinating because of bug powder exposure. Lee believes himself a secret agent, and Lee's controller (a giant bug) assigns him the mission of killing his wife, Joan Lee, who is, according to the bug, an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Dismissing the bug and its instructions, Lee returns home to find his wife sleeping with Hank, one of his writer friends. He soon shoots her while performing a William Tell routine.

Having "accomplished" his "mission", Lee flees to Interzone, where the Interzone Incorporated organization is based, and spends his time writing reports on his mission, which become the book Naked Lunch. While in Interzone, the typewriters Lee uses are themselves living creatures, usually giving Lee advice on his mission. Clark Nova, one of Lee's typewriters, tells him to find Doctor Benway, by means of seducing Joan Frost who is a doppelgänger of his dead wife, Joan Lee.

After finding out that Doctor Benway is the head of a drug manufacturing ring, producing "the black meat", Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Upon meeting the Annexian border patrol, to prove that he is a writer as he claims, he shoots Joan Frost in the head, in the same manner that he shot his late wife, Joan Lee. After seeing this, the border patrol welcomes Lee to Annexia.

[edit] Cast

• Peter Weller as Bill Lee
• Judy Davis as Joan Frost/Joan Lee
• Ian Holm as Tom Frost
• Julian Sands as Yves Cloquet
• Roy Scheider as Doctor Benway
• Monique Mercure as Fadela
• Nicholas Campbell as Hank
• Michael Zelniker as Martin
• Robert A. Silverman as Hans
• Joseph Scoren as Kiki (as Joseph Scorsiani)
• Peter Boretski as Creature Voices/Exterminator #2
• Yuval Daniel as Hafid
• John Friesen as Hauser
• Sean McCann as O'Brien
• Howard Jerome as A.J. Cohen

[edit] Adaptation

The screenplay for Naked Lunch is based not only on Burroughs' novel, but also on other fiction by him, and autobiographical accounts of his life. It can be seen as a metatextual adaptation, in that it depicts the writing of the novel itself. Several characters are loosely based on people that Burroughs knew: Hank and Martin are based on Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who assisted Burroughs in compiling the original novel), and Tom and Joan Frost on Paul and Jane Bowles whom Burroughs befriended in Africa.^{[citation needed]}

The shooting of Joan Lee is based on the 1951 death of Joan Vollmer, Burroughs’ common law wife. Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party in Mexico City. He would later flee the United States, and he was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which was suspended. Burroughs later said that he “would have never become a writer but for Joan's death.”

Although the film takes great liberties with Burroughs' work, one segment, in which Lee recounts the story of "The Talking Asshole" is presented verbatim from the novel.

Tom Frost's typewriter is a "Martinelli", apparently named after co-producer Gabriella Martinelli. When he lends the machine to Lee, Frost says of the typewriter, "Her inventiveness will surprise you."

[edit] Music

The film's score is composed by Cronenberg's staple scorer, Howard Shore and features free-jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman. The music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka is also featured throughout the film, making it one of the few American releases to feature their music (along with The Cell).

[edit] Reception

[edit] Criticism

The reaction to Naked Lunch was mixed. Some critics found it an excellent representation of Cronenberg's perennial themes: the intersection of the body and the machine, biological change, and infection.^{[citation needed]} However, Burroughs scholar Timothy S. Murphy finds the film a muddled adaptation that reflects Cronenberg's mind more than the novel: he feels that Burroughs' subversive, allegorically political depiction of drugs and homosexuality becomes merely aesthetic, or material of horror movie imagery. Murphy argues that Burroughs' social and politically situated literary techniques become in the film merely the hallucination of a junkie, and that by using the life of Burroughs himself as a framing narrative, Cronenberg turns a fragmented, unromantic, bitterly critical and satirical novel into a conventional bildungsroman.^[2]

[edit] Awards

Genie Awards for Canadian Film: 1992

• Best Motion Picture
• Best Director - David Cronenberg
• Best Supporting Actress - Monique Mercure
• Best Art Direction - Carol Spier
• Best Cinematography - Peter Suschitzky
• Best Overall Sound - Peter Maxwell, Brian Day, Don White, David Appleby
• Best Sound Editing

ALFS Award: 1993

• Actress of the year - Judy Davis

NSFC Award: 1992

• Best Director - David Cronenberg
• Best Screenplay - David Cronenberg

NYFCC Award: 1991

• • Best Screenplay - David Cronenberg
• Best Supporting Actress - Judy Davis

[edit] Popular culture references

• In "Bart on the Road" episode of The Simpsons, Bart, Milhouse and Nelson use a false identity card to sneak into a cinema showing Naked Lunch; emerging afterwards looking very confused, Nelson remarks: "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title".
• The first track on Showbread's Age of Reptiles is titled "Naked Lunch", the themes of which are the ideas of the film and the novel.
• Naked Lunch was heavily referred to in the 1994 hit single "Bug Powder Dust" by UK dance music act Bomb the Bass.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Kafkaesque
• The Metamorphosis
• Existentialism

[edit] External links

• Naked Lunch at the Internet Movie Database
• Criterion Collection essay by Janet Maslin
• Criterion Collection essay by Gary Indiana

v • d • e Films by David Cronenberg "Transfer" • From the Drain • Stereo • Crimes of the Future • Shivers • Rabid • Fast Company • The Brood • Scanners • The Dead Zone • Videodrome • The Fly • Dead Ringers • Naked Lunch • M. Butterfly • Crash • "Camera" • eXistenZ • Spider • A History of Violence • Eastern Promises

v • d • e Works by William S. Burroughs Novels and Novellas: And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (unpublished) • Junkie • Queer • Naked Lunch • The Soft Machine • The Ticket That Exploded • Dead Fingers Talk • Nova Express • The Last Words of Dutch Schultz • The Wild Boys • Port of Saints • Blade Runner (a movie) • Cities of the Red Night • Ghost of Chance • The Place of Dead Roads • The Western Lands • My Education: A Book of Dreams • The Cat Inside Short story collections: Interzone • Exterminator! • Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology • Tornado Alley • The Burroughs File • The Third Mind Essay collections: The Electronic Revolution • The Third Mind • Ali's Smile/Naked Scientology• The Adding Machine: Collected Essays Non-fiction: The Yage Letters • The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs • Letters to Allen Ginsberg • The Burroughs File • Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs Recording: Dead City Radio Films: The Junky's Christmas • Ah Pook is Here • Naked Lunch

v • d • e Genie Award Winners for Best Motion Picture The Changeling (1980) • Les Bons débarras (1981) • Ticket to Heaven (1982) • The Grey Fox (1983) • The Terry Fox Story (1984) • The Bay Boy (1985) • My American Cousin (1986) • Le Déclin de l'empire américain (1987) • Un Zoo la nuit (1988) • Dead Ringers (1989) • Jésus de Montréal (1990) • Black Robe (1991) • Naked Lunch (1992) • Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993) • Exotica (1994) • The Confessional (1995) • Lilies (1996) • The Sweet Hereafter (1997) • The Red Violin (1998) • Sunshine (1999) • Maelström (2000) • Atanarjuat (2001) • Ararat (2002) • Les Invasions barbares (2003) • Les Triplettes de Belleville (2004) • C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) • Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006) • Away from Her (2007)