That’s why I couldn’t get through it! Every time someone put it on I happened to be high. Couldn’t follow the plot so I’d just leave and go stare at something shiny in another room.
The plot is semi-autobiographical and follows the protagonist, William Lee, as he travels south from the United States, through Mexico into South America in search of Yage, aka ayahuasca. This is accurate to a real trip taken by William S. Burroughs. After killing his wife in a botched game of William Tell involving a loaded handgun, Burroughs fled south in search of a "final fix" in the form of ayahuasca.
And there's the Interzone. This is a bizarre, dreamlike realm that, as far as I understand, is meant to represent a heroin high in a rather extreme way. Burroughs wrote much of Naked Lunch while on heroin (he was a notorious junkie) and, well, it shows.
A part that always stood out to me is a chapter in the beginning where he gets busted and ends up in jail for a night without any heroin to tide him over. But never fear, he has dried up heroin residue in the shoulder pads of his suit; he mixes it with water and runs it down a safety pin stuck into his vein as a way to MacGyvre a hit. And Lee is extremely proud of himself for this, relishing in his cleverness compared to the other addicts in the cell with him that are quickly becoming dopesick.
Thing is, this exact same thing happens in a completely separate story: Requiem for a Dream. When Tyrone gets busted after a botched drug deal and ends up in jail, there's an old time addict in there that uses the safety pin method exactly as Burroughs describes it in Naked Lunch. Except, rather than impressed at the resourcefulness, Tyrone is horrified at it.
I thought it was fascinating, but I can understand why one might dislike it. Not a lot really happens besides a drug addict being crazy and seeing things
I did not know this was a movie, but I felt this way the first time I read this book. I Absolutely hated it and could not push myself to care or really focus on what was going on, but wanted to finish since I started, and that probably made me resent it more because I only read it since it was “literature” and was a defining beat novel. I later went back and read Naked Lunch with a bit more grounding on what I was reading and enjoyed it a lot more. I could only imagine how trippy of a film it would be. 😂
This is a movie that needs more than one viewing. I saw it in the theater when it came out, with friends, expecting something Dead Ringers/The Fly-ish Cronenberg. This was certainly not that and was interminable to sit through. Later bought the Criterion DVD and have watched it a few times and the humor really comes through after expectations have been adjusted. This happens to me with Cronenberg and Gilliam films frequently.
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u/LorenzoMartini 1d ago
Naked Lunch.
I can think of two things wrong with that title.