NAKED LUNCH

For decades it was said that adapting William S. Burroughs’s seminal groundbreaking novel for the silver screen would not be an easy task. Enter David Cronenberg, who had just finished off a decade of cinematic weirdness and eccentricity throughout the 80’s with films like VIDEODROME and DEAD RINGERS. His sensibility turned out to be the perfect match for the prose of Burroughs. Not only using the novel as source material, Cronenberg also incorporates many aspects of Burroughs’s own life into the film. It’s a bold choice, for sure, but it’s hard to argue with the end result. The film gives us a compelling sense of the novel, the man and his writing process. Featuring a brilliantly deadpan, tongue-in-cheek lead performance by Peter Weller and an underrated score by Howard Shore, NAKED LUNCH still remains one of the most unique, strange and downright bizarre films Cronenberg, or anybody else for that matter, has ever made.