Naked Lunch (1991)

I think I tried reading William S. Burroughs once borrowing books from the uni library, but it didn’t take; I mainly think of him for his acting role in Drugstore Cowboy and his distinctive voice. So finally sitting to experience Naked Lunch (1991), I was more connecting with it as a David Cronenberg film rather than as an adaptation of Burroughs and his iconic, cult novel. And after revisiting eXistenZ recently, the parallels were clearer in terms of the brown-green colour palette, the existence of double identities and alternate realities, and the infusion of technology with bodily orifices. Yet Naked Lunch was also a very specific era’s vibe, Gen X’s fascination with the beats and the 1950s, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure it I could handle the film in the first fifteen minutes with the combo of beat era poetry, wild jazz, and drug culture. Almost headache-inducing, just not my scene, man. We follow Bill Lee (Peter Weller), alter-ego for Burroughs (from what I gather Cronenberg’s screenplay incorporated the writer’s life), a lowly bug exterminator who also writes with a wife Joan (Judy Davis) addicted to heroin. As the bug spray powder becomes a drug that they both get hooked on, Bill becomes embroiled in an interdimensional espionage plot as explained by a giant bug that talks through an anus mouth. Truly, this was some of the most off-putting, gross, body horror special effects employed to convey a surreal cross-pollination between writing, addiction and sexuality. Cronenberg, you did it again, ya sick bastard. When a game of William Tell with a hand gun goes wrong, Bill heads to a free port for refuge, the Interzone, and he falls in with wastrels and dilettantes. Alien creatures and embodied typewriters ensue. When the movie hit the Interzone, I was more into the movie’s style and subject matter, a type of sci-fi neo-noir layer to what is really a portrait of a writer and a subculture. Truly great to see Peter Weller’s central performance; he keeps it wry and sonorous, keeping things grounded even when playing the seesawing mental and physical states of his character, from bemused flippancy to strung-out flop-sweat. What a voice, what a head shape. I was also convinced that was Willem Dafoe as the voice of the bug-typewriter with the anus for a mouth, sadly not the case though. Brilliant to see Roy Scheider in this kind of whacked out shit as well. Great supporting cast including Ian Holm and Julian Sands. Available to stream on Tubi in Australia (also on Amazon Prime). Recommended, if you dare.