Naked Lunch [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

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

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Audio: Dolby Digital Surround
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 (Alternate Wide Screen)
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• 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

AWARDS

• Berlin International Film Festival

•     In Competition - 1992 (David Cronenberg)

• Genie Awards

•     Won Best Adapted Screenplay - 1992 (David Cronenberg)
•     Won Best Art Direction/Production Design - 1992 (Carol Spier)
•     Won Best Cinematography - 1992 (Peter Suschitzky)
•     Won Best Director - 1992 (David Cronenberg)
•     Won Best Picture - 1992
•     Won Best Sound - 1992 (Bryan Day, Dave Appleby, Don White, Peter Maxwell)
•     Won Best Sound Editing - 1992 (Richard Cadger, Jane Tattersall, David Evans, Tony Currie, Wayne Griffin, Andy Malcolm)
•     Won Best Supporting Actress - 1992 (Monique Mercure)
•     Nominated Best Actor - 1992 (Peter Weller)
•     Nominated Best Costume Design - 1992 (Denise Cronenberg)
•     Nominated Best Score - 1992 (Howard Shore)

• National Society of Film Critics

•     Won Best Director - 1990 (David Cronenberg)

• New York Film Critics Circle

•     Won Best Screenplay - 1991 (David Cronenberg)
•     Won Best Supporting Actress - 1991 (Judy Davis)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Peter Weller - William Lee
       Judy Davis - Joan Frost/Joan Lee
       Ian Holm - Tom Frost
       Julian Sands - Yves Cloquet
       Roy Scheider - Dr. Benway
       Monique Mercure - Fadela
       Nicholas Campbell - Hank
       Michael Zelniker - Martin
       Robert A. Silverman - Hans
       Joseph Scorsiani - Kiki
       Barre Phillips - The Ornette Coleman Trio

• Director:

  David Cronenberg

• Producer:

  Jeremy Thomas

• Book Author:

  William S. Burroughs

• Screenwriter:

  David Cronenberg

• Cinematographer:

  Peter Suschitzky

• Songwriter:

  Ornette Coleman

• Composer (Music Score):

  Howard Shore

• Editor:

  Ronald Sanders

• Production Designer:

  Carol Spier

• Art Director:

  James McAteer

• Co-producer:

  Gabriella Martinelli

• Set Designer:

  Elinor Rose Galbraith

• Costume Designer:

  Denise Cronenberg

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Bryan Day, Don White, Dave Appleby, Peter Maxwell

• Special Effects:

  Chris Walas

• Casting:

  Deirdre Bowen

• Production Manager:

  Marilyn Stonehouse

• Sound Editor:

  Jane Tattersall, Wayne Griffin, Andy Malcolm, Richard Cadger, Tony Currie, David Evans

REVIEW:

• 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