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
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	unknown
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Naked Lunch is a 1991 film adaptation of the novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs. It was directed by David Cronenberg. The film stars Peter Weller as William Lee (a figure based on Burroughs himself), with Ian Holm, Judy Davis and Roy Scheider. It was an international co-production between companies from Canada, the UK and Japan.

Plot summary

William Lee (the pseudonym Burroughs used for his first novel, Junky) is an exterminator who finds that his bug powder is being stolen by his wife for recreational purposes. The police arrest Lee, at which point he believes he is hallucinating due to the bug powder exposure. Lee believes he is a secret agent, and Lee's controller (a giant bug) gives 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.

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 to 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.”

However, 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."

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).

Reception

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.^[1]

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

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

Popular culture references

• In "Bart on the Road", an episode of The Simpsons, Bart, Milhouse and Nelson sneak into a theatre showing Naked Lunch with the help of a fake I.D. card. They walk out afterwards looking very confused, and Nelson remarks, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."
• The first track on Showbread's Age of Reptiles is called "Naked Lunch" and is themed around the ideas presented in both the film and novel.
• Naked Lunch was heavily referenced in the 1994 hit single Bug Powder Dust by UK dance music act Bomb The Bass.

References

1. ^ Murphy, Timothy S. Wising Up the Marks. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 0-520-20951-6

See also

• Kafkaesque
• The Metamorphosis
• Existentialism

External links

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

Cinema of Canada
	Films A–Z • Films by year • Animation • Comedy • Documentaries • Drama • Horror • LGBT • Sci-Fi • Short Actors • Awards • Directors • Cinemas • Cinematographers • Composers • Critics • Editors • Festivals • Producers • Schools • Screenwriters • Soundtracks

Donate to Wikimedia