Taglines: The book was banned. The film should never have been made. Too late.
Naked Lunch movie storyline. Not an adaptation of beat writer William S. Burrough’s novel but a mix of biography and an interpretation of his drug- induced writing processes combined with elements of his work in this paranoid fantasy about Bill Lee, a writer who accidentally shoots his wife, whose typewriter transforms into a cockroach and who becomes involved in a mysterious plot in North African port called Interzone. Wonderfully bizarre, not unlike Burrough’s books.
Naked Lunch is a 1991 Canadian-British-American-Japanese science fiction drama film co-written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider. It is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ 1959 novel of the same name.
The film was released on December 27, 1991 in the United States and April 24, 1992 in the United Kingdom by 20th Century Fox. It received positive reviews from critics, but was a box office bomb, garnering only $2.6 million out of a $17-18 million budget due to a limited release. It won numerous honours, including the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director and seven Genie Awards, notably Best Motion Picture. Naked Lunch has since become a cult film.
Naked Lunch (1991)
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider, Monique Mercure, Nicholas Campbell, Michael Zelniker, Robert A. Silverman, Peter Boretski
Screenplay by: David Cronenberg, Bill Strait
Production Design by: Carol Spier
Cinematography by: Peter Suschitzky
Film Editing by: Ronald Sanders
Costume Design by: Denise Cronenberg
Set Decoration by: Elinor Rose Galbraith
Art Direction by: James McAteer
Music by: Ornette Coleman, Howard Shore
MPAA Rating: R for heavy drug content, bizarre eroticism, and language.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: December 27, 1991
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