Burroughs: The Movie (1983)

BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE  (1983)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Howard Brookner
That would be William S. Burroughs, the Beat writer, not Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan. This Burroughs was a tall, elegant, hollow-cheeked, chain-smoking heroin addict who wrote books with titles like "Queer" and "Junky" and "Naked Lunch". And he had a great voice, a relaxed, resonant drawl that made words sound good. Burroughs does a lot of talking, and a lot of reading, in this documentary, so you get to hear a lot of that voice. Whether what he has to say is profound or merely eccentric is something you'll have to work out for yourself: There's a wide spectrum of opinion about Burroughs. Witnesses include Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Lucien Carr, Terry Southern and, very briefly, a young Patti Smith. The trail that winds back from Hunter S. Thompson leads directly to William S. Burroughs.