Gateway Cinephiles

3-Minute Intro: Naked Lunch

Screened: March 17, 2008
Format: DVD - Criterion (2003)
Selected By: Lara

The phrase “film adaptation of an unfilmable novel” reliably brings to mind David Cronenberg’s 1991 metatextual horror mash-up of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. St. Louis native Burroughs fostered a reputation as one of the most controversial artistic personalities of twentieth century America: elder statesman of the Beat movement, heroin addict, homosexual, globetrotting writer, fugitive, spoken-word artist, and lifelong dweller on society’s fringes. His 1959 novel Naked Lunch, written during his years in Tangier, Morocco, is often considered his most important work. An exemplar of Burroughs’ nonlinear “cut-up” style, Naked Lunch has been dismissed as unreadable drug-fueled dreck, prosecuted as legally obscene violent pornography, and hailed as one of the most important works of twentieth century American fiction.

A film adaptation of Naked Lunch had long been a dream of ambitious auteurs. It took three decades for Canadian filmmaker Cronenberg to rise to the occasion, buoyed by his cult acclaim and mainstream horror successes such as The Dead Zone and The Fly. By necessity, Cronenberg’s approach deviated from a strict adaptation, which he admitted would “cost 100 million dollars and be banned in every country in the world.” Instead, Cronenberg incorporated characters, situations, and themes from Burroughs’ novel into a hallucinatory horror story, adding elements from the notorious author’s own life and other works. The result is a sort of cinematic homage to the persona of William S. Burroughs, as well as a distinctly Cronenberg commentary on artistic creation.

Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch features little of the direct political and cultural criticism that runs through Burroughs’ novel. The director focuses on his perennial themes of evolution and control, elicited through grotesque biological and technological horror imagery. Peter Weller, best known for the titular role in Robocop, portrays explicit Burroughs alter ego Bill Lee with deadpan wit. With conspicuous performances from Iam Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider, Naked Lunch might be Cronenberg’s driest and most amusing horror film. Unlike its source novel, the film does employ something like a narrative, nightmarish and ludicrous though it may be. The mutating typewriters, giant insect spies, and narcotic centipedes are just cinematic flourishes. What Cronenberg preserves is Burroughs’ sense of artistic torment, ably conveying the terror, confusion, and catharsis of the creative process.