“Naked Lunch” The height of Cronenberg’s “perverted” world was born!

Trying to visualize a surreal masterpiece

First, let's review the original work by Burroughs. The novel `` Naked Lunch '' was published in 1959 and was hailed as the pinnacle of Beat literature, along with Jack Kerouac's `` On the Road .'' Burroughs's novels are particularly heavily influenced by drugs among the Beat writers' works, and Naked Lunch is no exception; it is a series of surreal images, with little drama given to the many characters that appear. . In other words, there is no story-like story. You can easily imagine that it would be difficult to make it into a movie.

Still, there was a movement to try making it into a movie. According to Burroughs, in 1970, his filmmaker friends tried to make a film with burlesque-style music, but the project failed. Meanwhile, charismatic musician Frank Zappa proposed the idea of ​​turning Naked Lunch into a Broadway musical, but that idea also never came to fruition.

"Naked Lunch" NAKED LUNCH Copyright(c) 1991 Recorded Picture Company (Productions) Limited Naked Lunch Productions Limited

Cronenberg was, of course, a fan of the original work, and thought it would be scary to adapt it into a movie. However, by chance, he said in an interview that he wanted to make a movie out of ``The Naked Lunch,'' and word spread throughout the industry, and in 1984, he met producer Jeremy Thomas, and the project suddenly took off. . Cronenberg and Thomas flew with Burroughs to Tangier, Morocco, the same place that inspired him to write The Naked Lunch, where they developed ideas for a film.

The Naked Lunch project was then shelved for a while as Cronenberg moved on to other projects, including The Fly . During that time, Thomas would make `` The Sheltering Sky '' (1990), also set in Morocco, with director Bernardo Bertolucci.

An attempt to delve into the secrets of the original author Burroughs' life and creation.