https://vo.rs/tags/burroughs/Latest from the Burroughs desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/screen/naked-lunch-cronenberg-adapts-the-unadaptable/<p>For decades the received wisdom on William S. Burroughs&rsquo; <em>Naked Lunch</em> was that it could never become a film. The 1959 novel has no plot to speak of, no continuous narrator, and a catalogue of images — talking sphincters, drug-market atrocities, government agents made of insect matter — that would earn any literal transcription a ban in every territory that showed it. David Cronenberg reportedly said that a faithful version would cost more than the entire budget of a small nation and would be confiscated at the first border. So in 1991 he did the only sane thing a serious adapter of an unadaptable book can do: he adapted the writing of it instead.</p>Wed, 20 Sep 2023 11:00:00 +0000