William S. Burroughs Movies

This is a documentary chronicling the life of Charles Henri Ford (now in his nineties and still as alert as ever), a pivotal figure in the European and American avant-garde scene from the late '20s through the present. Born to a Southern family that owned a hotel and included sister Ruth Ford, an actress who is best known for the U.S. debut of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, Charles moved to New York City in 1930, where his unmistakable male beauty sparked interest in the city's burgeoning gay scene. In the 1940s, he founded the literary journal Blues and the later View, which provided space for future notables such as Jean Genet and Vladimir Nabokov. The filmmakers made this motion picture over the course of ten years, lining up -- in the process -- a number of legendary avant-garde figures to discuss Ford, several of whom died by the time directors James Dowell and John Kolomvakis finished the picture. These include: William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Johnson, Paul Cadmus, Paul Morrissey, Ned Rorem, Paul Bowles and Gerard Malanga. Ford relates several anecdotes about them as well. The filmmakers spent over a decade creating this picture, tapping various historians, critics, and curators for additional details. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

In this documentary, director John McNaughton, famous (or infamous) for Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990), draws an intimate portrait of the painter George Condo, a friend of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Born in 1957, Condo has been called the high priest of "artificial realism," which he defines as a "realistic representation of something that's artificial." The film also shows Condo at work in his Manhattan studio; it was shot with a High-8 (non-digital) home video camera which gave McNaughton the freedom of movement to capture close-ups of brush movements and other minute details. It was later transferred to 35mm. There is also footage of Burroughs and Ginsberg in Condo's studio shortly before they both died. Condo Painting is quite different from McNaughton's other work, which stretches from science fiction and live theatre documentaries to such star-studded studio features as Mad Dog and Glory to TV series such as Homicide and the 1998 sex thriller, Wild Things. Condo Painting was screened as part of the Filmmakers of the Present section in the 1999 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

This Canadian documentary profiles the work of German music-theater icon Kurt Weill, who created such enduring shows as Threepenny Opera. Most of the film offers various performers singing or reciting his songs. Among those appearing are jazz diva Betty Carter, the Brodsky String Quartet, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, and bassist Charlie Haden. Also seen are dance numbers, and a reading of "What Keeps Mankind Alive?" ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Jack Kerouac penned such books as On the Road and The Dharma Bums, which captured the essence of the bohemian life that he came to personify. This documentary follows him on the road from the life of a beatnik in New York City, and across the country to California, as he set out to find America and himself. Archival photographs, film clips, interviews with those who knew him, readings from his books, and scholarly commentary provide insight into this icon of the Beat generation. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide

David Blair's Wax: Or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees is the first independent feature film to have been edited on a digital non-linear system. It is also the first film (independent or otherwise) to have been re-formatted as hypertext and posted on the Internet. The New York Times recognized the accomplishment, and ran the article "Cult Film is First on the Internet" in its May 23, 1993 business section.

Director Blair pieced Wax together over a period of six years, writing the film as he edited it, letting creative accidents and "directed random readings at the public library" (as Blair puts it) guide its creation. The result is a work much like the early structuralist films of British director Peter Greenaway, an obsessive, artificial history which has been fastidiously detailed with fragments of real and imagined facts.

The film is set at a flight simulation factory in Alamagordo, New Mexico, where Jacob Maker (Wax's narrator, played by Blair) is a computer programmer. Jacob designs gun sight displays and lives with his wife Melissa near the weapons testing range. He is also a beekeeper, whose "Mesopotamian" bees have been handed down to him from his grandfather, Zoltan. These bees are not ordinary bees; they have the power to put thoughts and images into Jacob's mind, and Jacob soon realizes that he is able to personally identify with the weapons he is helping to create. One day the bees put a special "television" in Jacob's mind. Through the bee television Jacob is subject to a bizarre series of fictions and hallucinations, and is finally lead by the bees to their subterranean home: an enormous cave below the Alamagordo desert. In the cave it is revealed to him that he must actually become a weapon and destroy his "target" in Iraq, before rebirth in a new body.

Wax wears its low-budget origin on its sleeve (it was shot on video) but has enjoyed an art-house reputation due to its wild imagination, its hybrid media existence as part-film-part-Internet-site, and its similarity to works of postmodern literature. Enthusiasts of Greenaway's early films, and readers of Jorges Louis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Thomas Pynchon, should look this one up. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

Those of us who had to suffer such "instructional" films as Dating Do's and Don'ts in high school will be especially entertained by Heavy Petting. In the visually sarcastic manner of the nuclear-age documentary The Atomic Cafe, the film assembles masses of information and misinformation about teenage dating rituals of the 1950s. Clips from contemporary movies, TV programs, commercials, and "sex hygiene" short subjects are used throughout; perhaps once upon a time these vignettes could have been taken seriously, but here they're only good for howls of laughter. Interspersed among the vintage footage are interviews with such children of the 1960s as David Byrne and William S. Burroughs. One look at the 1950s as depicted in Heavy Petting, and it's easy to see how the sensuous, psychedelic '60s came to be. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The operative word in Drugstore Cowboy is "drug". Matt Dillon plays the leader of a group of dopeheads who wander around the country robbing pharmacies to feed their habits. Dillon's chums include doltish James Le Gros and teen-age junkie Heather Graham; also along for the ride is Dillon's wife Kelly Lynch. Their nemesis is cop James Remar, whom Dillon takes perverse delight in humiliating. When one of the young addicts dies of an overdose, it promps Dillon to try to go straight, a task complicated by wife Lynch's determination to stay high and by the corrupting presence of an ex-priest, played by Naked Lunch author William Burroughs. Drugstore Cowboy was director Gus Van Sant's breakthrough picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Don't mistake this movie for the stormy special-effects blockbuster of the same name; the two films are light years apart. Based on Mary Robison's novel Oh!, this Twister was the quirky first feature from screenwriter/director Michael Almereyda (Nadja, The Eternal) about an eccentric soda-pop tycoon and his dysfunctional family. Suzy Amis plays Maureen Cleveland, a single mother who lives with her precocious daughter Violet (Lindsay Christman) and her very strange brother Howdy (Crispin Glover) in the family mansion, tended by the young live-in housekeeper Lola (Charlaine Woodward). Maureen's ex-boyfriend Chris (Violet's father) comes back to town with the intention of rescuing Maureen and Violet from Kansas so they can start a family of their own. This turns out to be more difficult than he expected. Maureen is still angry about their break-up and seems unresponsive to his earnest and somewhat clumsy displays of affection. Howdy is too busy writing nonsensical songs and hanging out with his new girlfriend Stephanie (Jenny Wright) to be of any help. To complicate matters, their father Eugene (Harry Dean Stanton) shows up with a prudish children's TV evangelist named Virginia (Lois Chiles) and announces their engagement. No one gets along, and soon all are trapped indoors during a particularly bad Kansas twister. As the storm rages outside, Maureen and Howdy cook up a plan to find their long-lost mother, who may be the only person who can explain why they are all so odd. Like Almereyda's later films, Twister is a kaleidoscope of absurd conversations, oddball characters, and events that seem to happen for no reason at all. It's a perfect vehicle for Crispin Glover, who delivers some of the film's wackiest dialogue as the rich kid comfortably living in his own fantasy world. Tim Robbins makes an appearance as Stephanie's jealous ex-boyfriend Jeff, and author William S. Burroughs has a cameo as a farmer shooting targets in an empty barn. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

This film looks at the life and works of counter culture literary icon William S. Burroughs. Burroughs became a hero to the Beat Generation and its spiritual descendants down to the present day. He is best known for his book, The Naked Lunch, which chronicles his life as an addict. His style of writing, with its prismatic, erratic, hallucinatory quality, has been a major influence on subsequent writers. Burroughs' off beat and often cynical views are presented in the film, in conversations with the author. The topics include the importance of language, time and space travel, the function of dreams, life, death, and consciousness, presented in Burroughs' inimitable style. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide

This biographical documentary tackles the legend of Jack Kerouac, one of the foremost writers of the Beat Generation. Kerouac started a beat that goes on; he's still a major influence in contemporary literature and poetry. The author first broke into prominence with his famous stream-of-consciousness novel On the Road, which landed him in a very public spotlight. Some of those interviewed here, which include Allan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Steve Allen, and other notables, maintain Kerouac could not handle the fame, or the politicization of his ideas; others contend he was simply an alcoholic who died young because he could not handle his drinking. Director Richard Lerner uses archival footage, interviews with Kerouac, home movies, and other sources to pack a wealth of information into 96 minutes. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

German sci-fi film about a futuristic society influenced by "muzak." Featuring William S. Burroughs and music by Dave Ball, John Caffery and Alexander van Borsig, Matt Johnson, Bill Rice and many others. ~ All Movie Guide

This biographical documentary on author and eccentric William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch), founder of the Beat Generation literary movement along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, is roughly divided into two segments. The first part has some witty scenes as the camera follows the author around to his various early haunts in the U.S., London, and Morocco. His friends are interviewed, including an interesting segment with Allen Ginsberg. In the second half of the film Burroughs becomes more of an exhibitionist than a subject, suggesting that discretionary editing would have made a smaller but better final version. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

After World War II there was a group of young men -- writers primarily -- who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream. These men and other artists, associated through mutual friendships, were looking for new ways and means to express themselves and their ideals. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice of their bohemian lifestyles, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs and poet Allen Ginsberg. essentially forming the Trinity of the Beats, and influencing the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation are reunited to share their works and recollections. ~ Forrest Spencer, All Movie Guide