Re-Watching Movies I Never Understood Part. 1
Naked Lunch
(These movies are chosen in no order)
I first saw Naked Lunch in high school after finishing the book. I’m almost positive I understood the movie about as much as I did the book which is to say, very little. But, this never stopped me from proclaiming it to be one of my favorite novels. “So original,” I’d say. With the movie, I had much less to say. Two hours of Cronenberg’s cooly detatched noir was a bit too much of long haul for me. At least with the book, I could open up to any page and shock a parent, teacher or jock sitting next to me.
The only feelings I remember from seeing the movie my sophomore year of high school are squeamishness, boredom and confusion, lots of confusion. “Why are they shooting bug powder and not heroin? Why is he fucking bugs and not dudes? Just let Burroughs fuck the boys, I’m cool with that. Doesn’t have to be bugs all the time. Oh god, speaking of bugs, why is that giant cockroach talking out of its pursed, pink asshole? Gross.”
Upon re-watching it, I found that my feelings have changed very little. I’m much less bored by it these days because well, maybe, my attention span is better? (I don’t know). I notice all the humor, the sly references to beat writers and the clear references to Burrough’s real life. But, I’m still completely baffled by a lot it.
I still don’t totally get all the bugs. All the bugs and their talking, pursed, horny assholes. I still don’t get that. At one point during the movie, my girlfriend who was doing work while I was watching, looked up at the TV for the fourth time and finally got weirded out enough to ask, “What is this about?”
How do you describe the plot to Naked Lunch? Describing the plot to Naked Lunch sounds completely ridiculous as you’re just trying to identify symbols throughout the film and place meaning on them. Your subjective interpretation becomes the actual plot points for the film. “Well, he’s an exterminator and he’s told by a horny, butthole bug that his wife, who is injecting all of his extermination-bugpowder, is an agent for this organization called Interzone Inc and he has to kill her. So, he does, but it’s more of an accident. But, then he has to run away to Interzone after being told by another giant bug in a gay bar that he has to. Then his typewriter is a bug and his wife has a doppleganger in interzone and all the reports he’s supposedly filing turn out to actually be his novel, Naked Lunch, but he also keeps pursuing the plot he’s apparently writing in the novel and there are more homosexual, typewriter, asshole bugs and then he kills the doppleganger so he can write?”
Even some of that is using the Wikipedia because I would never have gotten that far on my own. Am I a dummy? (Judging by my writing and grammar, most likely, yes) I may have felt lost at times but, my enjoyment level was far higher this time around. I understood the references and I also think I was excited to watch Cronenberg get phallic, slimey and gross. I miss him getting gross. He never gets gross enough anymore!
Naked Lunch is not a wild ride. It is a slow, weird-burn. It is disgusting and vaguely pretentious. The reason I say vaguely is because certain elements are outrageously tounge in cheek with the orgasiming typewriters and utter sucking alien “gizzum” drug at the end. The humor is too good for the film to just be pretentious. It has moments of hilarity, disgusting nihilism and pure sexual paranoia as the Burroughs character begins to discover his own longings. I wish I could say I felt any emotional connection with it whatsoever but I didn’t. I was mostly lost though out the film. But, lets be honest, I remember nothing about that ridiculous fucking book I swore by in high school. That book, like most beat books, is ridiculous.
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