SYNOPSIS: “Exterminate all rational thought.” Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs’s hallucinatory, “unfilmable” novel is finally realized onscreen by director David Cronenberg. Part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict Bill Lee (Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish netherworld of the Interzone, pursuing a mysterious project that leads him to confront sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. The fruit of an unholy union between two masters of the hilarious and the macabre, Naked Lunch mingles aspects of Burroughs’s novel with incidents from his own life, resulting in a compendium of paranoid fantasies and a searching investigation into the mysteries of the writing process.
| Bill Lee | Peter Weller |
| Joan Lee and Joan Frost | Judy Davis |
| Tom Frost | Ian Holm |
| Yves Cloquet | Julian Sands |
| Dr. Benway | Roy Scheider |
| Fadela | Monique Mercure |
| Hank | Nicholas Campbell |
| Martin | Michael Zelniker |
| Hans | Robert A. Silverman |
| Kiki | Joseph Scorsiani |
| Director | David Cronenberg |
| Producer | Jeremy Thomas |
| Based on the book by | William S. Burroughs |
| Co-producer | Gabriella Martinelli |
| Director of photography | Peter Suschitzky |
| Production design | Carol Spier |
| Music | Howard Shore |
| Editing | Ronald Sanders |
| Costume designer | Denise Cronenberg |
| Casting by | Deirdre Bowen |
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
By November 10, 2003
Burroughs’ work tends to affect people like a Rorschach test. It separates cultural conservatives from avant-gardists, social reactionaries from libertarians. Or, to use one of Burroughs’ favorite Read more »
By November 10, 2003
Naked Lunch, adapted by the dauntless David Cronenberg from William S. Burroughs’ 1959 landmark novel, represents a remarkable meeting of the minds. It’s hard to imagine Read more »
June 23, 2010
Two of our favorite artists, filmmaker David Cronenberg (Naked Lunch, Videodrome) and novelist Jonathan Lethem (who’s written liner notes for us and even set the opening scene of his most recent novel Read more »
February 22, 2009
“If there’s such a thing as an ideal time of day to expose yourself to the deranging, hallucinatory visions of the Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, midnight might well be it,” writes critic and Criterion Read more »
