Naked Lunch (the movie this time)

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

A few of us read it and hey a few of us have seen it/should see it!

Naked Lunch is pretty far from a direct adaptation; it almost plays out like a reenactment of Burroughs writing Naked Lunch. Reading Naked Lunch is a lot less about what happens and a lot more about the mood it provoked; the grotesque, bizarre, obscene, nihlistic, and whatever else a thesaurus could think up for those words.

The movie manages to capture this mindset! Working as an exterminator, Bill Lee (Burroughs) finds out his wife is addicted to "the bug powder", which is when he begins to get messages from bugs talking out of their anus to kill her. He does kill her (which Burroughs really did), but by mistake. He then retreats, both physically and mentally. This is where most of the movie takes place, as Lee tries to escape reality as a form of being an undercover agent. Various typewriters work off his oppressed feelings; of homosexuality, of guilt, fo the general pain that is his miserable existance. And hey, a brand new wife figure to boot!

I think Cronenberg is trying to capture the dark side of the creative process, and Burroughs is pretty much the perfect example. He never escapes; the ending in particular is a cruel gag that shows that maybe his pain is all he has. Without it, he wouldn't even be a writer. Peter "Robocop" Weller is suprisingly great in this. He wears a suit that seems to suggest, well, nothing about his personality or his mindset, and has a deadpan reaction to just about everything. But underneath there's a darkness to him. When his wife dies, there's a scene where he looks at her dead body. It's not that he has no reaction, but the look on his face indicates that, at this point, he might not even be able to react to anything anymore. Judy Davis is good too.

The only problem is sometimes Cronenberg spends a bit too much time on special effects. There's one scene involving two men turning into some creature that looks so fake it pulls you out of the movie. It might've worked if Cronenberg hadn't done such a long closeup. Beyond that, the movie looks very good; the bright colors, 1950s clothing and generally alive look work nicely against the dark story.

christ almighty that was a lot of words for an AA-T movie thread >=(

[sexual tyrannosaurus]

Have fun being the only person in that movie theatre!

[Parallax]

I saw this movie and read this book I should say something.

...

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Have fun being the only person in that movie theatre!

Came out in 1991.

I saw this movie and read this book I should say something.

...

Parallax! >=

[Parallax]

okay okay

The movie does a good job out of the source material it's given. It's more of an adaptation of the mindset of the book mixed in with Burrough's actual life and other writings.
I thought Weller did a great deadpan throughout the entire movie. His reaction (or rather lack of) really pushes the idea that nothing is really fantastical about drug use to him anymore. To us it is, but not to the tired, old junkie.
As far as visuals go the whole thing I didn't like as far as special effects was when the Arabic typewriter started growing the penis thing. It was just--ohgod.
Also, the movie was very tan. 

(i'm really bad at this (the writing not the screenshot))

BONUS SCREEN SHOT

[Zeon]

HENDERSON!

[Brak]

Good movie.

Cronenberg kind of reminds me of David Lynch only less sucky and more great.

Plus it had Robocop AKA Christopher Henderson.

[Parallax]

Cronenberg kind of reminds me of David Lynch only less sucky and more great.

I get them confused a lot.

[The Chocolate-Covered Contest]

Cronenberg kind of reminds me of David Lynch only less sucky and more great.

They both have a bizarre way of doing normal things.

I like them both.  8)