Naked Lunch (1991)

Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider
Grade: B-

Whether it’s the book or the movie, the labyrinthine Naked Lunch is an affair so mesmerizing and ambiguous that it needs to be studied.

Summary

We open with two quotes. One is from Hassan I Sabbah saying, “Nothing is true; everything is permitted”. The other is from the author of the book in which this film is based on in William S. Burroughs. It says, “Hustlers of the world, there is one Mark you cannot beat: The Mark Inside…”.

In New York City in 1953, exterminator William “Bill” Lee (Weller) goes to a house for a job. In the middle of his spraying of the insecticide, his supply runs out and he can’t finish the job, despite a few more cockroaches coming out of the woodworks. After being yelled at by his boss and Lee himself blaming the Asian supplier for the issue (who throws the powder in his mouth jokingly in front of everyone), Lee hangs out with his two writer best friends Martin (Michael Zelniker) and Hank (Nicholas Campbell) at a diner. The two are going back and forth about if rewriting is censorship or not as Lee joins them in the conversation. When they ask Lee what he thinks, he simply states that he’s come to the only conclusion of “Exterminate all rational thought”. Martin is confused by this answer, but Hank sees it as some philosophical response. They then discuss Lee’s job, how he thinks someone is stealing his bug powder, and Martin and Hank’s seeing Lee’s predicament as an opportunity to quit and start writing pornography instead. If he writes a novel a week, it can net him $120. Martin even has a connect he can set Lee up with because him and Hank have considered writing a novel themselves. Even so, Lee insists he gave up writing when he was 10 and is satisfied with just being an exterminator. The two make a joke about Lee’s roach powder, so Lee assumes they had something to do with it. They didn’t, but they basically tell him it has something to do with his wife Joan (Davis).

Upon getting home, Lee sees Joan shooting up the bug powder as a recreational drug. She suggests he try it, but he tells her that she needs to stop because they ration it out like “snakebite serum”. Still shooting up the drug, the completely unphased Joan tells him to cut it with baby laxative, so the cockroaches will shit themselves to death. A bothered Lee realizes this is the best job he’s ever had. If he runs out of powder again, he’ll probably be fired. Joan calls her high a “literary” one, and she actually tried the powder with Hank and Martin. This is why they know about it. Fortunately, they didn’t like it, but Joan did. Intrigued by Joan’s comment saying that it’s a “literary high”, Joan further explains it’s a “Kafka high” (referencing writer Franz Kafka), and you feel like a bug when you do it. Following this, it doesn’t do much pushing from Joan to convince him to try it, so he cooks it up on his spoon soon after. Sometime later, Lee is on his lunch break with his co-workers, and they mention Lee’s addiction as well as if the Asian worker actually ingests the bug powder or if it’s just a sleight of hand trick. One guy thinks he actually does, saying he’s been breathing in the powder for so long that it just makes him laugh. As Lee gets up to leave, he’s stopped by two City Narcotics officers, Hauser (John Friesen) and O’Brien (Sean McCann). He’s taken downtown because they have accused him of possession of a dangerous substance. During interrogation, Hauser and O’Brien talk about Lee’s old rap sheet and how it consists of a lot of drug-related offenses. Lee admits he was a troubled person back then, but he’s married and has a good job now. Spread out on the table is the bug powder though, and they ask what he’s doing with it. He insists it’s his job to use it to kill bugs, so the two cops want to test it.

Hauser grabs a box, and a cockroach the size of a pillow crawls out of it. Once Hauser and O’Brien leave the room, the cockroach starts to speak to Lee, saying it set this whole thing up to get a moment alone with him. He calls himself Lee’s case officer and says Lee is his agent. The cockroach reports to Lee’s “controller”. Next, he asks Lee to rub some of the bug powder on his lips, so he does. Then, the cockroach tells him about the instructions he’s gotten from control. He says that Joan is not really his wife. She’s actually an agent for Interzone Incorporated, an organization based in Interzone, a notorious free port on the North African coast. This is a place considered to be a “haven for the mongrel scum of the Earth”. The cockroach instructs Lee that he has to kill Joan this week, “and it must be done real tasty”. Lee doesn’t think someone like her would be involved in something like that, but the cockroach suggests that she may not be a woman or a human at all. An anxious Lee takes off his shoe and smashes the bug to death. Next, he uses his shoe to break the glass and the door, and he is able to escape the police department. Getting home to Joan, Lee says they have to skip town because he got busted for the bug powder and how he’s been hallucinating over the stuff. He doesn’t even know what he actually said to the two cops who apprehended him and doesn’t remember how he escaped. Joan starts freaking out asking if Lee got the next day’s powder, so Lee points out the problem she has. She admits it but pulls out a little baggie of the drug and asks Lee to rub it on her lips, just like the cockroach did.

He does and they start making out.

On the subway, Lee tries to steal some of the powder from his co-worker Edward, who had it in his container next to him. Edward plays it off and asks where Lee was this morning because they all saw the cops nab him. In addition, their boss can’t get Lee’s powder back because it’s been considered evidence. He asks if that’s why Lee just tried to lift his, but Lee insists he’s doing a job for a friend because the centipedes there have started to attack his children. Not buying it, Edward tells Lee he isn’t the only one to develop a bug powder addiction. He gives him a card for general practitioner Dr. A. Benway (Scheider). Following this, Lee meets with Benway, and tells him of his “friend” with the addiction to this “yellow stuff” or pyrethrum. To help, Benway gives him this black powder to mix with the bug powder and to gradually increase it with each use without telling the friend. Eventually, the friend will lose the taste for the powder because it shuts down the brain’s response to it. It’s made from aquatic Brazilian centipede. Before leaving, Lee also asks for some bug powder as well because he needs some to mix it with. Benway pulls some out and mixes it with the black powder for him, telling him that once the two are combined, the smell of the black powder is gone and there is no discoloration. He refers to it as an “agent”, resulting in Lee’s ears perking up to the word because of what the giant cockroach said earlier. Apparently, it’s like an agent that has 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”. Later, Lee walks through a market and comes upon cooked centipedes and tries his best to hold back tears for some reason.

At home, Hank is fucking Joan while Martin reads something he wrote while watching. Lee comes home to this mess but ignores it. He doesn’t even respond when Martin suggests that the both of them join in. He just quietly goes to his room to snack on the package of centipedes he just bought. His presence kills the mood though, so Hank and Joan stop. In his room, he starts to shoot up the powder, so Joan walks in and says that her and Hank were just bored, and it wasn’t serious. Unphased, Lee says he didn’t take it seriously. Joan says Hank got embarrassed and left, so Lee sarcastically responds by saying he hopes he didn’t leave before he came. Thankfully, Joan quells any suspicions by telling Lee that he can’t cum because he’s on junk. The same goes for her. As Lee injects Joan with some more of the drug as Martin enters the room and continues to read his writing aloud, Lee pulls out a gun from the drawer. He says it’s time for their “William Tell routine”. With a smiling Martin watching, Joan puts a glass on top of her head, and Lee pulls the trigger. Unfortunately, he shoots her in the head and kills her, and he can’t believe it. At a waterfront dive bar, Lee coughs away and some guy with a silver centipede necklace named Kiki (Joseph Scoren) observes him, asking if he’s gay. He says “No”, but his response isn’t necessarily straightforward. Seeing Lee as being on the fence about the whole thing, he tells him about a friend he should meet who specializes in “sexual ambivalence”. He moves to reveal Mugwump, a human-sized alien creature sitting at the bar. Immediately, Mugwump suggests Lee buy a Clark Nova Portable typewriter for his report for Interzone.

Lee is taken aback by this because he never agreed to anything, but Mugwump tells him not to leave out any of the details of Joan’s death. Lee tries getting up, but Mugwump lets him know that Interzone is the only place that will accept a shady character like Lee on such short notice. He gives him a plane ticket to Interzone (tourist class unfortunately), and he tells Lee they will contact him there. He goes to a store to trade in his gun for the Clark Nova Portable typewriter in the window. The guy wants an extra $8, so Lee gives him ammunition as well to cover the sales tax. Martin shows up at the store, and the two hug. He tells Lee that he told the police it was a drunken accident. However, right now, they’re saying he escaped from custody and murdered his wife. Public opinion is not in Lee’s favor. Lee tells Martin he’s already booked a ticket to get away and shows him his “ticket”. However, it’s actually the vial of bug powder he had earlier. Then, he tells Martin he’ll send him a copy of his report. A confused Martin asks if he’ll be okay, and Lee says he’s heard Interzone is nice this time a year.

It has now become clear that the hallucinations are getting a little too real, and Lee is having trouble seeing what reality is and what is fiction.

In Interzone, Lee begins his report on “The Assassination of Joan Lee by Unknown Forces”. While typing away at some restaurant in which many others are doing the same, Hans (Robert A. Silverman) tries to start a conversation with Lee about their typewriters and how his company policy only allows him to have a Krups Dominator instead of a Clark Nova Portable. Inviting himself over, he correctly presumes Lee is American and knows Benway. He tells Lee he’s interested in selling a large stash of “black meat”, the ingredients of the powder Benway gave to Lee. Lee exits the bar, so Hans follows him and apologizes because he thinks he mistook him for someone else. He then says he provides services to the arts and needy writers specifically, asking if he can provide anything to Lee. This leads to Hans taking Lee to a factory where they process the black meat, which literally consists of different types of unidentified raw meats. He brings up how if Lee were an agent for a foreign power, it would be beneficial for him to present his product in the best way possible. Hearing this, Lee asks if Benway qualifies for said foreign power, and Hans enthusiastically confirms. Afterwards, Lee tests the black meat. Later in home and high as hell, Lee nods off with a cigarette in his mouth while he’s writing. The typewriter starts typing up the report by itself. Then, it transforms into another bug creature telling Lee to wake up. Lee does and rightfully freaks out after seeing the gigantic bug on his desk. The bug praises Lee’s confidence as an agent but reminds him not to be careless. Just before Lee attempts to run away, the bug/typewriter asks Lee to type a few words into him, words he will dictate to Lee.

The first sentence he wants Lee to write is “Homosexuality is the best all-around cover an agent ever had”.

When he tries to type it into him, the bug tells him to be forceful and to hurt him. So, Lee starts to aggressively type it, and the bug starts to moan. Next, he says that their new management will be pleased that Lee sees their point of view. Lee is confused by this point, so the bug goes further in saying that they will be happy at the thought of Lee engaging in homosexual acts. Bothered by the bug’s encouragement, Lee leaves in a hast to go back to the restaurant. There, Hans asks about Lee leaving his Clark Nova at home and if he’s contacted Benway. Though Lee insists he’s never met Benway, Hans says he can smell Benway on Lee because anybody who crosses paths with Benway are marked by him, referring to Lee as a “marked man”. Lee turns to see Tom (Holm) and Joan Frost (played by Davis in a dual role) sitting at a booth and then leaving. Intrigued because Joan looks exactly like his deceased wife, he asks Hans who they are. He tells Lee they’re American fiction writers who have lived there for a very long time, and they live in a nice flat in a new building at the foot of a mountain. Constantly, they are visited by young and handsome men (sometimes two or three at a time) from Interzone. When he asks to be introduced, Hans says it wouldn’t be to his advantage because Joan doesn’t like him. Instead, Hans brings over Kiki, the man who introduced him to Mugwump earlier, and tells him about Lee’s interest in Tom and Joan Frost. Right off the bat, Kiki tells Lee that Joan would probably fuck him, but Tom won’t because he only likes Interzone boys.

Straight to the point this guy is.

An annoyed Lee explain he just wants to talk to them, so Kiki talks about a party at the O’Leary place. Tom will be meeting a group of them there and they will walk through the casbah. They’ll be happy to take Lee with them. With the help of Kiki and the Interzone boys, Lee is able to get acquainted with the Frost couple, with Joan noting how he’s the new writer in town. After Joan says that she and Tom came to Interzone for the boys and Lee says he didn’t, Tom interrupts to talk to Lee privately. He brings up Lee’s Clark Nova and says it’s too demanding of a typewriter. If he gets writer’s block again, he tells Lee he’ll let him use his Martinelli. Then, Tom cuts to the chase and asks if it’s true that Lee murdered his wife. Lee tells him it was an accident, but Tom is confident in saying there are no accidents. Tom admits he’s been killing his own wife for several years but not intentionally. He says that on the level of conscious intention, this would be insane, but Lee points out that he does have conscious intention because he just said it. In reality, Tom says that it’s not conscious and this conversation is all happening telepathically. Seeing Lee is confused, Tom points out to him (and the viewer) that if you look at his lips, he’s actually saying something else entirely. He’s not actually telling Lee about the several different ways he’s killing Joan, about the housekeeper Fadela (Monique Mercure) who he’s hired to make Joan deathly ill from witchcraft, about the medicines and drugs he’s given her, or about the constant nibbling away at her self-esteem and sanity that he’s managed without being obvious about it.

Lee smiles when coming to this realization.

Then, they switch back into their conscious and real conversation where Tom talks about Joan writing in longhand form. Laughing things off, Lee says he won’t be good company that night and decides to take a rain check. Next, a disheveled Lee is found under a bridge by Yves Cloquet (Julian Sands), who mentions the rough shape Lee was in at the O’Leary party. Apparently, he was very raw in his emotions and was dealing with a lot of pain. Lee doesn’t remember being at the party nor does he remember Cloquet. Even so, Cloquet takes him to breakfast and brings up how he had no idea Lee was gay, assuming so since he showed up to the party with the Interzone boys. Lee seems to be disgusted with himself, saying that generations of Lees have been infected by homosexuality. He is uncomfortable with the label but accepting of it after telling a personal anecdote about a queen named Bobo who inspired him to live his truth. He does get sidetracked though by telling the story of how Bobo died, saying his “falling hemorrhoids” flew out of a car, which wrapped around the rear wheel and completely gutted him as a result. This story didn’t seem entirely necessary to bring up, but it took up a decent amount of time and had to be mentioned because of how crazy it was.

He does it again later with Cloquet and Kiki in the car about some fictional story where an asshole separates from a human and becomes its own. It has nothing to do with the story, doesn’t make any sense, and is even longer than the Bobo story. I suppose this is what happens to the mind of a constantly inebriated writer.

Anyway, Cloquet offers to take him for a drink at his place, but Lee declines because he has to go home to work on his report. At his home, Lee is high off as his ass, but the words typed up are part of his “realization” speech to Cloquet. He is then distracted seeing a centipede crawl around in his bathroom, so he walks in and blows on it, just like Joan did in the first act. As the bug hits the ground, he smiles. At the restaurant, Tom and Joan tell a distracted Lee that Cloquet has taken a liken to him because of some funny routine he did at the party, with Tom saying he could bed Cloquet because of his powerful aphrodisiac of humor. Lee doesn’t really care and asks about Hans instead. Unfortunately, Hans was arrested and deported two weeks ago. They let him take his clothes and his passport, but that was it. Everything else was “nationalized”. Wondering why, Tom tells Lee that he probably neglected to pay the right officials off, especially since he ran a drug factory in Medina. Tom tells Lee that Hans manufactured Majoun, a local, hash resin almond paste that you could “spread on a muffin like jam”. He offers it to him to try. Then, he offers his Martinelli typewriter to try out, which Joan looks to be bothered with.

Back at home, Lee deals with withdrawal, loneliness, and an addiction to something that doesn’t actually exist, which he puts into his reports. Now, he is even more fearful of what is next because the lines of reality have become blurred, and he’s not sure how to respond or where Interzone will take him next. After both typewriters come alive as bug creatures and Lee’s Clark Nova kills Tom’s Martinelli, because the Clark Nova says it’s an enemy agent that Lee was giving access to his innermost thoughts, Lee gets his new mission. Despite the initial cover of homosexuality, the Clark Nova bug/typewriter says the key may actually be Joan Frost. Lee must seduce her and “discover the substance of a report” and deliver it directly back to him. Even so, drug-induced paranoia, hallucinations, and an inability to overcome his addictions makes Lee’s “mission” an unclear horror show as he tries to navigate through it.

He may say “The zone takes care of its own”, but I assure you it doesn’t, and his methods in approaching the everyday happenings of Interzone doesn’t help matters at all.

My Thoughts:

Strange is putting it lightly.

David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch isn’t as confusing as the William S. Burroughs novel the film is based on, but it gets to levels of incomprehensibility that very few movies have dared to reach in fear of losing the audience. With nauseating and uncomfortable imagery (especially for its time), a fearlessness in delving into themes of drug addiction, homosexuality, and sex, and a refusal to let anyone know what’s really happening, Naked Lunch is a film that forces the viewer to read between the lines in every sequence to truly uncap the madness as it unfolds. Even then, it’s still unclear. Also, it’s chaotic, it’s gross, and it’s about as bizarre as it gets. Truthfully, you probably won’t even like it, as the attention it commands while forcing you to decipher metaphors and meanings borders on the outrageous. On the other hand, if you are one of those moviegoers who searches adamantly for the less-talked-about, unorthodox, or unconventional stories put to film, this is a must-watch because Naked Lunch is an experience like no other. Above all else, you will not forget it. In fact, it’s impossible. I’ve tried to forget it for years (*I hate bugs*). The book Burroughs wrote is considered to be amongst the unfilmable, so Cronenberg took it as a challenge. Pulling off the unthinkable, working diligently on the difficult task of not only adapting portions of the unforgettable title, but also include elements of other stories from Burroughs such as Exterminator!, Cronenberg recreates the plot as Burroughs’s attempt to write the Naked Lunch book instead, while incorporating the darker parts of the author’s real-life story.

In doing so, he gave us the closest adaptation of the book that we will ever get.

The character of William Lee in the book was basically an alter ego of Burroughs, so Peter Weller focused his performance on the author himself. Even with how anarchic the movie is, Weller’s subdued portrayal of William Lee is strangely enough, exactly what this movie needs. Apart from a few horrific scenes where he is forced to react, he deadpans everything that happens to him. From Joan cheating on him with Hank, to walking in on her using his bug powder as a recreational drug, to the appearances of anthropomorphic aliens and insects giving him missions, Weller’s stoic, cold, and unflinching response to this jungle of a world he’s manifested through drug use is such a calming response that it becomes unnerving and slowly unsettling as time moves on. The cracks in Lee’s true self starts to reveal itself and trying to figure out the differences between this disjointed reality and what’s just in his head is as invigorating as it is confusing. It’s all a puzzle with no answer, as we are led to believe that somehow this mission led to Lee becoming a writer, no matter what details of the story are authentic or not.

What the hell is actually happening? This is what we wonder, but we are along for the ride and try to take it at face value just as Lee does because he (as well as we) has no other choice.

For the sake of argument, let’s play along with this idea of being an “agent” working in Interzone. We know Lee is an addict, but the science fiction influence makes the audience believe in the possibility that what’s being portrayed onscreen is actually happening. When Mugwump shows up at the bar and hands Lee his plane ticket to Interzone, the dialogue spoken between the two is captivating enough to make us wonder, along with Lee’s resistance and the implications from the plane ticket. However, this is the beginning of the many subtle details presented onscreen to further the illusion. Lee, or Burroughs himself really, is going to Interzone to work on his report, but he’s actually heading to Tangiers in North Africa to write his book Naked Lunch. The problem is that HE doesn’t even know it. When Martin and Hank go to see him later on in the story and bring up this magnificent book he’s been writing and review it, Lee is so fucked out of his mind that he doesn’t remember anything about it and doesn’t recognize his own writing. When he shows the ticket Mugwump gave him to Martin, the true horror of Lee’s condition starts to uncap the core of the story, as the “ticket” isn’t a ticket at all. It’s just a vial of bug powder that was given to him by Benway. Lee was going back and forth between reality and a high so vivid, he first had trouble realizing what is actually going on, but now, he is fully entrenched in the deep end of a drug-induced psychosis to which there is now escapable path. With this in mind, Lee travels to Interzone and from then on, we don’t know what’s really happening to him because of the lack of screentime devoted to the real happenings of the people around him. Along with this, he’s very rarely sober. When he looks like he is clued in, it doesn’t really matter because his brain is so fried that it’s altering his personal reality, and he becomes an unreliable narrator because of his own demons.

As a result, it’s absolutely maddening, with Cronenberg being so excited about Lee in his element when he’s at his highest, that we never see Lee in reality at his lowest. What actually happened to him when he was high is only alluded to him, or it’s implied heavily. Nothing is said specifically. At times, he wakes up under a bridge or on the side of a street, a complete mess with no memory as to what happened. Then, he starts the day again, goes back into his feelings of despair and his disengagement from humanity, and gets high again as he writes. In the midst of it all, the hallucinations start up again on the daily. Though he’s frightened at the situations he finds himself in, he can’t seem to stop his addictions and his condition only worsens. Because of this, the scenes become more graphic and downright horrific, mirroring how deep into his addiction he’s gotten. For instance, the parrot cage scene with Kiki and Cloquet (after he uses Kiki as a bartering chip to convince Cloquet to get him closer to Benway) is something that will be etched in my memory for a lifetime. By the time this happens, he’s moved on to Mugwump jism as his drug of choice, which becomes the new “awesome” replacement for the black meat Lee became addicted to in Interzone. Then, we start to see something. Lee’s signature brown suit becomes more recognizable and distinctive as you start to realize it’s the only thing he wears, the sweat becomes more visible as his condition and confusion worsens, and the “mission” he believes he has to complete becomes more and more convoluted to the point where even the bug characters are helpless at explaining it. It doesn’t matter though because Lee is fully convinced to the point where he’s letting his Clark Nova typewriter attack Tom Frost’s Martinelli when they both turn into gigantic bugs, and he accuses his last typewriter (that turned into Mugwump) of trying to double cross him with the parrot cage incident.

However, when he hangs out with Joan Frost, he tells her that he suffers from “sporadic hallucinations”, and he more than likely broke the Martinelli himself, though it’s presented onscreen as the typewriters attacking each other. Is Lee telling the truth here, or is he lying because him revealing the insect war in his home would make him sound insane? It’s hard to say because of Weller’s cold, monotoned, holding-all-the-cards-at-the-expense-of-the-audience performance. It would make sense for him to understand they are hallucinations, but then there would be no point for this story as a whole if he did realize it. Then again, is there a single answer to any of these questions? Is there supposed to be, or are we supposed to still question the intention to the very end? There is sort of a resolution involving Benway that explains the ‘mission” aspect of the story, but the epilogue unties the tying of this loose end, especially with the reintroduction of two people playing two different characters that they played in the first act, much like Judy Davis did with Joan Lee and Joan Frost (Davis did a phenomenal job by the way. You don’t even realize it’s the same actress). Even with the resolution involving Benway, there’s such a negativity clouding the overall mood of the film. Furthering this is the reality of the accidental killing of Lee’s wife in the first act, and Lee’s new attachment to this woman who looks just like his deceased wife. It makes us question whether the ending is written with either contempt of the real-life parallels to the famed author’s accidental killing of his own wife and his never-ending cycle of hopelessness in his writing, it’s Cronenberg trying to make Lee and this universe of sorts that he’s created something else entirely, with just a heavy Burroughs influence, or it’s a way of explaining how Burroughs’s wife’s death allowed for him to become the writer he became (which he has stated in real-life).

Basically, we’re not sure what the overall message of Naked Lunch is. In this way, I suppose it does capture the essence of the famed book, which is equally as pointless but hard to put down. The lack of clarity, mixed in with so many mind-altering concepts and scenes, creates for an experience so surreal, the befuddled expression on your face will be similar to the blue-eyed Weller’s stare after his final William Tell routine, following the smiling border guards’ response of welcoming him to Annexia, as if to say, “What the fuck just happened?”.

Of all the thoughts and comments that will pass through your mind throughout the course of this movie, “What the fuck just happened?” will cross your mind the most. This is a guarantee.

This is especially true in the sequence in which Lee goes to Joan Frost to seduce her. As they both get high on Majoun, Lee has her write a pornographic story in Arabic on Tom’s Mujahideen typewriter. As things get more intimate in the heat of the moment, and we have no idea what’s being typed up since we can’t read Arabic, he tells her to write the story filthier and filthier to the point where she starts to finger the Arabic typewriter. Then, a dick sprouts out of the creature-like machine, and it turns into an alien-like specimen that jumps onto the two and humps them until they are interrupted by militant housekeeper Fadela. Again, what is actually happening and what isn’t? The sober Fadela whips the alien until it jumps the balcony and explodes, revealing it was just a typewriter. When Tom sees it on the street outside and confronts the two, Joan explains that Fadela came in and threw it off the balcony for no reason. At this point, Lee and Joan aren’t nearly as high as they were previously, so we’re not even sure what they believe because Lee did react to the creature somewhat, unless it was more or less a metaphor for Fadela reacting to what Lee was doing and whipping him instead. Technically, this is possible, with Lee maybe being the one who tossed this typewriter over the balcony (what’s his problem with these typewriters?), but why would Joan react in the manner she did? Before Tom walked in, you can hear her say that it jumped over on its own. Is this just a bunch of addicts lying to no end? Also, what was the point of Tom’s bodyguard Hafid (Yuval Daniel) trying to convince Joan as a last-ditch effort that Fadela is trying to control her? What is his goal here? Tom’s ambivalence to Joan cheating seems strange too because there’s no resolution to this either.

By the time Joan decides to do “penance” and joins Fadela’s lesbian haven that ends up being the center for Interzone Inc., they almost lose you completely.

Why is Joan doing this? Why does she feel so attached to Fadela? How deep does this go? What is actually happening regarding Fadela in relation to what Lee is actually seeing, and does her inclusion into the plot explain the real existence of Interzone, despite our reservations because of the eventful second act? The reveal involving Benway makes it seem like Interzone is real, but why would he waste time being the housekeeper for Joan and Tom? They aren’t that important to the overall story, and their existence doesn’t affect Lee enough even if Joan Frost looks like Lee’s old wife. In addition, when Tom shows up to Lee’s house with a gun to demand his Martinelli and takes his Clark Nova instead, everyone in the room reacts as if it’s the bug it turns into (Lee’s uncaring of the kidnapping of the typewriter was very amusing), so wouldn’t this confirm that what’s going on is in fact actually happening and not a hallucination conjured up in the mind of William Lee? I can’t see it any other way, despite so many things happening beforehand that suggest everything is stemming from his high. When he sets up his Mugwump typewriter for an exchange of hostages of sorts with Tom having Lee’s Clark Nova, the Mugwump typewriter tells him before he’s stuffed into a bag that getting rid of him is Lee officially “severing ties with reality”. Is it though, or is this Lee’s attempt to rid himself of this drug? It’s hard to say because he continues to live in this bug-infected reality and continues to be a user to the very end. So, is Mugwump real? There’s no way because everyone in the bar would’ve freaked the hell out when he showed up to meet Lee the first time, but what makes this difficult is that Tom sees the same stuff Lee does. In fact, Lee sells Tom on the Mugwump typewriter with the kicker being that it “releases two types of intoxicating fluids when it likes what you’ve written”.

Okay, they’re both drug addicts, but the chances that they see the same crazy shit is slim, no? Hafid isn’t a drug user either, so this would confirm that some of it did have to happen, wouldn’t it? In the very next scene, Lee takes the broken Martinelli and puts it in a pillowcase, but it’s revealed to just be drug paraphernalia when Martin and Hanks look inside of the case when they come to visit. So, was Tom and Lee fighting over certain drugs this whole time? Once again, this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding Naked Lunch, as it thrives on the concept of surrealism taking over the body and mind through addiction. As he writes it in his report himself, Lee has become addicted to a drug that doesn’t actually exist and now he’s suffering from very real withdrawals because he’s not even sure what he’s addicted to and what he can’t have. The fear creeps in and this idea of the unknown is what grabs our attention as a viewer, at least if you’re up for it. You truly have to walk into this with an open mind and no preconceived notions regarding the project. If you don’t have a problem with being uncomfortable and you like to be challenged to a frustrating degree, you’ll enjoy the puzzle that this movie can be, as well as the negative feelings that accompany it. The gloominess is only intensified with the free form jazz score, the sounds of what seems to be a violin scratching at times, and lighting that can actually affect your mood when combined with everything else. It’s dark and joyless, but it’s something worth revisiting on several occasions just because you want to see if you can process the story this time around. It’s a lot like a video game with a hard-to-beat level that forces you to take a break on it for months because of how difficult it is.

I know this would go against the artistry of Cronenberg’s idea and his love for Burroughs’s writing, but I like to think of the possibilities of this film if he didn’t decide to go this deep with it. In this hypothetical where Naked Lunch were treated like a normal feature and they leaned into the giant insects, the aliens, the fact that human characters are becoming addicted to the semen of such creatures (Lee even drinks a coffee cup of the jizz coming from the Mugwump typewriter when he types), and a supporting character as unforgettable as Mugwump, this could have been a science fiction tale of epic proportions. The character designs, the animatronic creatures, and the set design was spectacular for a smaller budgeted movie about drug addiction, bugs, and Tangiers. The climax in the drug factory that ends up being a dispensary for Mugwump jism, with all of the different Mugwumps tied up and guys like Hans drinking the jism directly from the tentacles was one of the wildest sequences of the film giving us a glimpse of how insane this could have been if they leaned into this direction and didn’t have to teeter the line of hallucinated imagery. If they went the “sci-fi” route rather than the philosophical and surrealistic journey they decided to go instead, they would have to make some tweaks to Lee, but there are elements here that make him a tragic hero in the nontraditional sense. Obviously though, they were never going to go down this road. It was all about the surrealist aspects of the works of William S. Burroughs, the extreme details of drug culture magnified to a level that makes our head spin, and the philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavor.

There are a couple of instances where I actually laughed out loud too, despite the focus of the story being on dejection from society, general unhappiness, and total uncertainty. At one point, the Clark Nova has a discussion with Lee about how the original Joan married Lee as a part of her agent’s cover, not realizing that Lee was the very enemy agent assigned to kill her and kind of laughing it off in a way, confirming that Joan (an elite corps centipede) was sent by Interzone Inc. to marry him via her controller in Fadela. Lee is angered that he wasn’t told about this and had to deal with the mental anguish of the situation, and the Clark Nova tries to soften the blow by admitting, “The situation does generate some ethical paradoxes at times. I’m the first to admit that”. Honestly, it’s hilarious, especially because it comes from a talking bug/typewriter. Then, when the Clark Nova is dying, he tells Lee to go to Hans’s old drug factory in the Medina for Joan and to find Fadela to get into Interzone Inc. When Lee asks what he should do when he sees her, the bug typewriter has the audacity to say, “You’ll know what to do when the time comes”. Keep in mind that there’s not a single clear decision made by Lee throughout the film because of his drug dependency. In fact, he is confused for a majority of the runtime, so this notion that he’ll finally know what to do, as the viewer is surely confused to all hell, is legitimately laughable. The Clark Nova then gives him the useless advice of “Remember, all agents defect, and all resistors sell out”. This only further complicates things because of the screenplay’s refusal to let the audience in as to what this actually means. Obviously, we know Lee is considered an agent and has already accidentally defected and went back because of his use of typewriters, but the latter part of the statement doesn’t make any sense because the script doesn’t spend time on explaining what a resistor means to the overall film.

There’s a lot of this philosophical talk throughout to further relate to Burroughs’s writing and to make things even more cloudy like when the Clark Nova straight-up says that “Women aren’t human” but a different species entirely from men with different motivations and such, and he decides not to elaborate further. Nevertheless, one thought-provoking line from the Clark Nova did stay with me when he mentions that the writer deals with sad truths just like anyone else. The only difference is that he reports it. It doesn’t necessarily affect the ending, but it’s a cool way too see a writer’s perspective, especially one dealing with so many personal problems like Lee. Joan writing “All is lost” over and over again at the drug factory is just another compliment to this message.

Though a rather important conversation between Martin and Hanks centers over the fact that rewriting is “betraying your own thoughts” and a form of censorship, it’s possible that a little rewriting could have helped the final product of Naked Lunch. A confusing mess from start to finish, many will walk away from this in a bad mood, but it’s arguably all by design. Director David Cronenberg’s hands were all over this production and though there are certain monologues and sequence of dialogue that could have been omitted entirely to paint a clearer portrait of what he was trying to say, the lack of clarity is a crucial part of the experience. Constantly, you will be asking why things are happening, what is actually happening to our protagonist, and what’s in his head, but the ambivalence of the plot combined with innovative special effects and character designs, a captivating Peter Weller, and a dedication to the strange and unexplainable makes this something that deserves to be seen, just so we can discuss it to try and understand it more. Naked Lunch is fascinating and about as abstract as it comes, but it’s an enthralling feature that deserves to have more eyes on it than it did in 1991.