Naked Lunch (1991)

What makes it different from others?

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

How sad is this?

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Naked lunch is a visual and metaphoric masterpiece about creativity art and poetry and the depths of insanity that have given us the most astonishing and creative leaps towards human evolution. David Cronenberg unfortunately is a true auteur in a business ran like a production line assembly due to the audiences inability to enjoy anything that doesn't relate to what they have been brain washed into identifying with. William Burroughs actually stated that this film was the closest adaptation to anything ever attempted out of his writings and is the only time I have ever heard a writer say a film adaption didn't make them cringe at its gross misrepresentation. So why would the lemmings who pay 13 dollars to view Transformers 3 have a problem with this imaginative astounding work of art? It is simple, if you don't like films like this your an idiot there is no way around it. People are going to try and use excuses like free will and some things are not for everybody. But lets be real those are nice ways of saying you have chosen to be stupid. Do people in the Olympics say you can't compete because it's just not for everybody, no they understand you can't compete because your not talented or skilled enough to even stand on the side lines. But since we live in the land of the symbolically deformed and challenged it's OK to pretend being a sucker is great seeing as the kindergarten level propaganda employed is the only means of selling garbage and lies to pee brains just to keep our economy above total depression. How could a cgi crap fest with no story or character development like Dred get higher ratings than a master piece of the symbolic like Naked Lunch? Once again proving stupid people only like movies that spoon feed them all the answers in one sitting like 6th sense and Memento. Movies that have only one message and one goal knowing the morons who flood cinemas have to be slapped in the face for 1 1/2 hours to go oh I get it after the final reveal that leaves nothing to be imagined rams right down their butter lubricated throats. This is why I left film school just like in ancient rome Americans have been turned to brainless sheeple who think true art is to be demonized as the devil and replaced by product ruled by bottom line and would rather watch Happy Feet than be philosophically challenged. Congratulations you are all new age christians who burn art, feign experience, and take your queue's from a square that promises a safe distance from perception and knowing. True roman solders defending the status quo as being a mass of mindless idiots who cling to the lowest human functions of domestic drama and talking point arguments founded in identifying your self as a soulless sellout with no sense of individuality; instituted by a culture industry that promises minimum wage for your suspension of the constitutional rights given to you by people who valued truth and knowledge. So if you are incapable of relating to anything artistic or meaningful and like to get caught up in societal ignorance's and your idea of philosophizing is am I a good Ma Ma and Da Da, or think fundamental life choice is what should I wear to the prom or which homoerotic child's game is playing tonight on the idiot box, you might not even want watch this and you surly should not be leaving a review. You don't see dyslexic people leaving reviews to grammar text books or blind people reviewing books not available in braille do you? And you surly don't see moron's reviewing Einstein and Tesla claiming their works to be worthless drivel because they can't understand it so why in the world of cinema is it OK? You don't see me going to web sites that sell foreign books in other languages and saying this is just a bunch of gibberish because I don't know how to decipher it do you? Yet IMDb is flooded with reviews of piaxar-latent inhibitionists who think talking animals are visceral genius and farting cartoons are comedic bravado. Stick to your lame human dramas please and stay out of grown ups business. Have some kids or go play at the local playground you'll find subjects more in line with your intelligence level. Schopenhauer was right.

Naked Lunch is not your typical movie. In fact most of it is like a messed up hallucinogenic acid trip. However, what it offers is a look into the mind of crazy weird. Centerpede humans and beetle type writers, nothing is like this film. It's storyline is interestingly compelling, whilst simultaneously being disgustingly absurd. A really terrifying look into drugs and insect killing and addictive chemicals. The Naked Lunch is not a film to watch to love. The Naked Lunch is a film about love that you watch to experience. Much like David Lynch's Eraserhead, this more direct storytelling but equally strange film will ensure to be meaningful and there are scenes you will never forget.

There was a time when the only filmmaker making films who seemed like a likely candidate to bring Philip K. Dick's A SCANNER DARKLY to the Big Screen was David Cronenberg. Maybe not... What NAKED LUNCH has to say about WRITING is interesting; what it has to say otherwise is open to interpretation. "Guilt is the key," we're told at one point. Certainly, guilt played a big part in Burroughs's life as a writer- but, beyond that...? "Exterminate all rational thought," Peter Weller as Bill Lee says: "I gave up writing when I was ten. Too dangerous. I've found my profession. I'm an exterminator." Huffing the poisons he sprays to exterminate bugs causes him to hallucinate (Or DOES it...?). He sees a large bug, which literally talks out of its ass; it tells him that his wife is from Interzone, Incorporated and that she must be killed. He meets a Mugwump, a creature that quite literally OOZES sex, who gives him a ticket to Interzone and suggests that he procure a typewriter- a Clark Nova ("It has mythic resonance.")- and begin writing. He visits Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), who mixes up a "cure" for Lee's wife. Says Benway: "It's like an agent- an agent who's come to believe his own cover story, but who's in there, hiding in a larval state, just waiting for the proper moment to hatch out." Lee then kills his wife (played by Judy Davis) while playing "William Tell" (a game wherein you shoot an apple off of someone's head). He then flees into the Interzone. There, his typewriter metamorphosizes into a talking bugwriter and he wonders (of homosexuals): "Could I be one of those sub-human things...?" He is, of course, and comes to the conclusion that "America is not a young land. It is old... and dirty and evil." Says the bugwriter: "... a writer lives the sad truth like anyone else. The only difference is- he files a report on it." Cronenberg has filed his report, and NAKED LUNCH is it. Unfortunately, Cronenberg, like David Lynch, began to take himself so seriously that he started doing things just for the sake of being weird. And, like Lynch, he eventually began to parody himself.

Naked Lunch is definitely the kind of flick that'll get most "thinking" people either burping, or farting, or, most likely, doing both at the same time, long before the picture is even over the rainbow. I'm not kidding.Naked Lunch is gastronomical! It's when you stop to consider that one of the main characters in Naked Lunch is in actuality a "talking" sphincter (it's true), that this will excuse any foul response to this poor-excuse-of-a-movie, without any apologies required.I have to say that it was actually really comical at times when this babbling butt-hole and Bill (Peter Weller) were engaged in one of their many screwy conversations, or whatever. I mean, what, in the hell, are you supposed to say to a sphincter? Go ahead! Try talking to your own sometime and see what kind of a response you inevitably get from it.It did kind of strike me ironically that, here in Naked Lunch, it just happened to be this extremely vocal arsehole who was calling all the shots with Bill, ordering him around, and telling him to do this and that. Yeah, irony-of-ironies, Bill, a grown man, is being bossed and bullied around by, of all things, Sir Admiral Anus . It's, naturally, all fun and games at first, but, typically, as novelties often go, this gabbing, little Corn-hole gets to be a total pain-in the-butt (literally) after a short while.It took (of all the lopsided-minds in this world) the most whacked-out one of them all (director, David Cronenberg) to bring Naked Lunch to the big screen. Any idiot with half a brain in his head could have told this nut (which I'm sure they did) that the William Burroughs' novel of the same name was impossible to film. But, Cronenberg, believing himself to be creating the work of a genius from the work of another genius forged ahead like a real, little trooper and produced an utterly awful film. Bravo, Cronenberg! You can have your Naked Lunch, and eat it, too.I won't even try to outline the ludicrous plot of Naked Lunch, 'cause, let's face it, there ain't one. In that way it's exactly on par with the Burroughs' novel.Right from the start Naked Lunch is absolutely nonsensical to the nth degree. The story runs off in so many different tangents, seemingly all at once, that it will make your poor, little head spin-spin-spin. I'd confidently say that you'd probably have more luck getting a clear story just talking to your own sphincter, rather than try to piece together Naked Lunch's rectal-mess.So, as I suggest, leave all your worldly troubles behind you and come on down to the Breakfast Club where they're serving a scrumptious Naked Lunch for your Last Supper.