Naked Lunch

Theatrical Release Date: 1991 12 27 (USA)

UPC: 715515014922

Studio: Criterion

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Profanity, Substance Abuse]

Summary: This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) wants to write, but he exterminates bugs to pay the bills. His wife, Joan (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, and soon he joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens; he visits the kindly yet sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) and walks away with his first dose of the black meat -- a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. Soon, monstrous beetles are whispering conspiracy theories in Bill's ears and his nebbish writer friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker) are sleeping with Joan under his nose. When a party trick involving a liquor glass and a gun goes awry, killing Joan, Bill flees to Interzone, a Mediterranean city full of talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, and plots within plots. As he navigates this paranoid landscape, Bill begins ingesting another drug called mugwump jism and writes fragments that Hank and Martin soon assemble into a novel under the title Naked Lunch. As beat literature aficionados know, Interzone is based on Tangiers -- the city where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. The incident in the film in which Hank and Martin appropriate Bill's writing and have it published closely approximates the real-life circumstances of the novel's publication, although it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who helped out the real-life Burroughs. The William Tell incident that kills Bill's wife is also drawn from the author's real life. "William Lee" is both Burroughs' literary stand-in and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky. Ian Holm, who plays Joan Frost's husband, Tom, would appear in Cronenberg's similarly experimental eXistenZ several years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Category: Avant-garde / Exp

Awards: In Competition – Berlin International Film Festival Best Supporting Actress – New York Film Critics Circle Best Screenplay – New York Film Critics Circle Best Picture – Genie Awards Best Actor – Genie Awards Best Supporting Actress – Genie Awards Best Art Direction/Production Design – Genie Awards Best Costume Design – Genie Awards Best Cinematography – Genie Awards Best Director – Genie Awards Best Score – Genie Awards Best Adapted Screenplay – Genie Awards Best Sound – Genie Awards Best Sound – Genie Awards Best Sound – Genie Awards Best Sound – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Sound Editing – Genie Awards Best Director – National Society of Film Critics

Features: New high-definition digital transfer approved by director David Cronenberg and enhanced for widescreen televisions
Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller
English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
RSDL dual-layer edition for optimal image quality
"Naked Making Lunch" making-of documentary by Chris Rodley
Illustrated essay on the special effects by Jody Duncan, editor of Cinefex magazine, featuring artifacts from Cronenberg's archive
Film stills gallery
Original marketing materials
William S. Burroughs' audio recording of excerpts from Naked Lunch
Archival stills of William S. Burroughs from The Allen Ginsberg Trust
32-page booklet featuring essays by film critic Janet Maslin, Chris Rodley, Gary Indiana, and a piece by William S. Burroughs

Naked Lunch

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 11/11/2003

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Alternate Wide Screen

Audio: DDS Dolby Digital Surround

Runtime: 115 Minutes

Sides: 2

Number of Discs: 2

Language(s) English

Subtitles: English

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 --
1. Opening Credit Sequence [:11]
2. "Exterminate All Rational Thought" [2:37]
3. Instructions from Control [6:23]
4. Habit-Forming [6:20]
5. Dr. Benway [2:50]
6. William Tell Routine [5:18]
7. Mugwamp [3:48]
8. Interzone [4:39]
9. "Words to Live By" [4:27]
10. Tom and Joan Frost [3:54]
11. Yves Cloquet [6:26]
12. The Martinelli [5:29]
13. Fadela [3:48]
14. "An Unconscious Agent" [1:44]
15. Naked Lunch [9:57]
16. The Mugwriter [6:14]
17. "A Sound You Could Smell" [6:33]
18. Kiki and the Parrot [8:13]
19. The End of Clark-Nova [3:11]
20. The Mugwamp Dispensary [6:57]
21. "Welcome to Annexia" [1:57]
22. Closing Credits [7:29]
23. Color Bars [3:07]
1. Jazz [:11]
2. Art and Life [2:37]
3. Insect Obsession [6:23]
4. Toxic [6:20]
5. Hideous Truths [2:50]
6. A Critical Moment [5:18]
7. Science Fiction [3:48]
8. Tangiers in Toronto [4:39]
9. Automatic Writing [4:27]
10. Writer's Paranoia [3:54]
11. Literary Voices [6:26]
12. Dueling Typewriters [5:29]
13. Innately Erotic [3:48]
14. Subterranean Stories [1:44]
15. An American Character [9:57]
16. The Pyramid [6:14]
17. On the Road [6:33]
18. Sexual Predators [8:13]
19. Metaphorical Implications [3:11]
20. Enslaved [6:57]
21. The Beginning [1:57]
22. Closing Credits [7:29]
23. Color Bars [3:07]
Side #2 --
1. A Controversial Work [6:19]
2. Fiction and Autobiography [4:09]
3. Burroughs Meets Cronenberg [2:45]
4. Fear of Naked Lunch [6:12]
5. Alien Connection [4:09]
6. Drugs: Real and Metaphorical [6:59]
7. A Movie About Writing [5:16]
8. Sexuality and Politics [12:57]

Brian J. Dillard

Given that William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch isn't so much a novel as a collection of literary fragments that riff on corporate culture, human depravity, and sexual outrage as often as they filter the author's actual life as a bisexual, expatriate drug addict, it's a wonder the book ever became a movie at all. "Unfilmable" was the adjective most often applied, especially when it was announced that maverick Canadian director David Cronenberg would give it a shot. Cronenberg was hardly faithful to either the contents or the precise spirit of the author's nightmarishly misanthropic beat masterpiece, but he did manage to transform elements of the book and the overall Burroughs mythos into a coherent entry in his own oeuvre of stylized alienation. Most any literal description of the author's prose -- or the film's plot -- will fail to drive home the one element that makes both so enjoyable: the absurdist humor of both auteurs' visions. Talking bugs, amphibian spies, and arcane narcotics sound creepy, and they are. But as with the book itself, Cronenberg's film is full of deadpan humor that wallows in the excretory excesses of his visual metaphors while also driving home their aptness and winking all the while. It helps that his cast is so game, from the ever-shrewish Judy Davis in not one, but two tightly wound roles to the reliable Roy Scheider and Ian Holm and the too-too tight-lipped Peter Weller. The viscous special effects, vivid cinematography, and distorted period costume design all conspire to conjure up a dream-logic 1950s of squares, hipsters, and secret agents awash in neon, cigarette smoke, and junkie delirium. Cutting up the raw materials of the cut-up king himself, Cronenberg fashions a film as idiosyncratically inspired as its source material. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Claude Aflalo  Actor 
John Friesen  Actor 
Julian Richings  Actor 
Ornette Coleman  Actor 
Jim Yip  Actor 
Deirdre Bowen  Actor 
Michael Caruana  Actor 
Justin Louis  Actor 
Yuval Daniel  Actor 
Sean McCann  Actor 
Joseph di Mambro  Actor 
Kurt Reis  Actor 
Peter Boretski  Actor 
Laurent Hazout  Actor 
Barre Phillips  Actor 
Howard Jerome  Actor 
David Cronenberg  Director 
David Cronenberg  Screenwriter 
Howard Shore  Composer (Music Score) 
Jeremy Thomas  Producer 
Peter Weller  Actor 
Judy Davis  Actor 
Ian Holm  Actor 
Julian Sands  Actor 
Roy Scheider  Actor 
Monique Mercure  Actor 
Nicholas Campbell  Actor 
Michael Zelniker  Actor 
Robert A. Silverman  Actor 
Joseph Scorsiani  Actor 

Country: Canada,UK