Naked Lunch with Peter Weller: DVD Cover
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Naked Lunch Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands

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  • DVD Release Date: 11/11/2003
  • Original Release: 1991
  • Rating: Rated R
  • Sales Rank: 6,410

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  • Overview
  • Editorial Reviews
  • Scenes
  • Customer Reviews
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Scenes

Features

New high-definition digital transfer approved by director David Cronenberg and enhanced for widescreen televisions; Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg and actor Peter Weller; English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired; RSDL dual-layer edition for optimal image quality; "Naked Making Lunch" making-of documentary by Chris Rodley; Illustrated essay on the special effects by Jody Duncan, editor of Cinefex magazine, featuring artifacts from Cronenberg's archive; Film stills gallery; Original marketing materials; William S. Burroughs' audio recording of excerpts from Naked Lunch ; Archival stills of William S. Burroughs from The Allen Ginsberg Trust; 32-page booklet featuring essays by film critic Janet Maslin, Chris Rodley, Gary Indiana, and a piece by William S. Burroughs

Full Product Details

Scene Index

Side #1 --
1. Opening Credit Sequence [:11]
2. "Exterminate All Rational Thought" [2:37]
3. Instructions from Control [6:23]
4. Habit-Forming [6:20]
5. Dr. Benway [2:50]
6. William Tell Routine [5:18]
7. Mugwamp [3:48]
8. Interzone [4:39]
9. "Words to Live By" [4:27]
10. Tom and Joan Frost [3:54]
11. Yves Cloquet [6:26]
12. The Martinelli [5:29]
13. Fadela [3:48]
14. "An Unconscious Agent" [1:44]
15. Naked Lunch [9:57]
16. The Mugwriter [6:14]
17. "A Sound You Could Smell" [6:33]
18. Kiki and the Parrot [8:13]
19. The End of Clark-Nova [3:11]
20. The Mugwamp Dispensary [6:57]
21. "Welcome to Annexia" [1:57]
22. Closing Credits [7:29]
23. Color Bars [3:07]
1. Jazz [:11]
2. Art and Life [2:37]
3. Insect Obsession [6:23]
4. Toxic [6:20]
5. Hideous Truths [2:50]
6. A Critical Moment [5:18]
7. Science Fiction [3:48]
8. Tangiers in Toronto [4:39]
9. Automatic Writing [4:27]
10. Writer's Paranoia [3:54]
11. Literary Voices [6:26]
12. Dueling Typewriters [5:29]
13. Innately Erotic [3:48]
14. Subterranean Stories [1:44]
15. An American Character [9:57]
16. The Pyramid [6:14]
17. On the Road [6:33]
18. Sexual Predators [8:13]
19. Metaphorical Implications [3:11]
20. Enslaved [6:57]
21. The Beginning [1:57]
22. Closing Credits [7:29]
23. Color Bars [3:07]
Side #2 --
1. A Controversial Work [6:19]
2. Fiction and Autobiography [4:09]
3. Burroughs Meets Cronenberg [2:45]
4. Fear of Naked Lunch [6:12]
5. Alien Connection [4:09]
6. Drugs: Real and Metaphorical [6:59]
7. A Movie About Writing [5:16]
8. Sexuality and Politics [12:57]

Scene Index

Editorial Reviews

This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) wants to write, but he exterminates bugs to pay the bills. His wife, Joan (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, and soon he joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens; he visits the kindly yet sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) and walks away with his first dose of the black meat -- a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. Soon, monstrous beetles are whispering conspiracy theories in Bill's ears and his nebbish writer friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker) are sleeping with Joan under his nose. When a party trick involving a liquor glass and a gun goes awry, killing Joan, Bill flees to Interzone, a Mediterranean city full of talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, and plots within plots. As he navigates this paranoid landscape, Bill begins ingesting another drug called mugwump jism and writes fragments that Hank and Martin soon assemble into a novel under the title Naked Lunch. As beat literature aficionados know, Interzone is based on Tangiers -- the city where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. The incident in the film in which Hank and Martin appropriate Bill's writing and have it published closely approximates the real-life circumstances of the novel's publication, although it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who helped out the real-life Burroughs. The William Tell incident that kills Bill's wife is also drawn from the author's real life. "William Lee" is both Burroughs' literary stand-in and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky. Ian Holm, who plays Joan Frost's husband, Tom, would appear in Cronenberg's similarly experimental eXistenZ several years later. Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Naked Lunchby Anonymous

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April 20, 2007: A brilliantly conceived and executed fever-dream of a film, filled with darkly grotesque imagery and memorably twisted characters. Cronenberg skillfully creates a shadowy claustrophobic world where, in seamless fashion, one man’s drug-induced hallucinations intertwine with and become indistinguishable from his normal waking life. Peter Weller is perfectly cast in the role of William Lee, a man whose perpetually stoic and deadpan demeanor ultimately helps him navigate and survive the deepening perils of his own drug addiction, even as his life spirals into nightmare. Supporting cast members (especially Judy Davis as Weller’s adulterous bug-powder-addicted wife) also deliver credible performances in smaller but still-crucial roles. Peter Suschitzky’s cinematography is excellent, giving Cronenberg’s mid-1950s New York sets a gritty, seedy lived-in look. The physical appearance of the “bug-writers” and the even more monstrous-looking “Mugwumps” is artfully conveyed, though decidedly unappetizing. Also noteworthy is Peter Boretski’s distinctively creepy-sounding creature voice (a role on par with Douglas Rain’s ubiquitous HAL 9000 character in 2001: A Space Odyssey), alternately soothing, scolding and menacing as he matter-of-factly explains to Weller the amoral Byzantine workings of Interzone. In the pantheon of movies devoted to drug-addiction, this is one trip you shouldn’t miss.

Naked Lunchby Anonymous

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November 10, 2005: Peter Weller does a great job but the script falls apart. this is the remake of the book and instead of dope follows around a bug man. It gets confusing only noting that Bill Burroughs shot his wife in the head on accident, wink-wink-then he sucks up bug dust and goes into the interzone.


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