10 - Genre and authorship in David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch

Summary

When David Cronenberg adapted William Burroughs's (1924–1997) Naked Lunch (1959) for the screen in 1991, the result was a film self-consciously exploring its own status as an adaptation. Cronenberg himself calls it “an exercise in analyzing the difference between the two media … writing and cinema,” a programmatic statement considering the film's interest in authors and their writing machines, the competition and collaboration among authors, and the origins of creativity in addiction, sexuality, personal and historical trauma, and insanity. In one scene of the film, the writer Tom Frost, played by Ian Holm and modeled on Paul Bowles, asks Bill Lee, the William Burroughs stand-in played by Peter Weller, whether it is true that he shot his wife. “How did you know?” Lee asks. “Word gets around,” Frost replies. It is this reply, enigmatic and overdetermined, that provides a striking metaphor for all adaptations. Even more so, it encapsulates Cronenberg's self-conscious approach to Naked Lunch. When it comes to writing and filmmaking, to the process of adaptation itself, texts travel – word does indeed get around.

Apart from the larger thematic issues in Naked Lunch, the film also represents a crucial step in a process of authorial self-(re)fashioning in the career of its director, David Cronenberg. Apart from the director's deep personal investment in the material, which makes watching the film a strangely intimate experience, it also gives Cronenberg an opportunity to shape his public persona and position himself self-consciously as a political filmmaker.