On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a 69% rating based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 6.90/10. It went on to make $2,641,357 in North America. Naked Lunch was released on 27 December 1991 in a limited release of 5 theaters, grossing $64,491 on its opening weekend. Burroughs was present during the 1973 recording session. The use of Coleman's composition "Midnight Sunrise", recorded for his Dancing in Your Head album, is relevant, as author William S. The music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar is also featured throughout the film.
The film score is composed by Cronenberg's staple composer, Howard Shore, and features free jazz musician Ornette Coleman. Burroughs stated in the introduction to his book Queer that Joan's death was the starting point of his literary career, saying: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death". Burroughs was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which were suspended. He would later flee to the United States. Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party in Mexico City.
The shooting of Joan Lee is based on the 1951 death of Joan Vollmer, Burroughs' common-law wife. Cronenberg said it was necessary to "Throw the book away" as a direct adaptation would have been far too expensive and "would be banned in every country in the world." The screenplay for Naked Lunch is based not only on Burroughs' novel, but also on other fiction by him, and autobiographical accounts of his life. The film is based on the works of William S. Lee is shown shedding a tear at this bittersweet accomplishment. The border guards cheerfully bid him welcome to Annexia, and his new life as a writer. He again misses, and thus re-enacts the earlier killing of his wife. When this proves insufficient for passage, Lee, now having realized that accidentally murdering his wife has driven him to become a writer, demonstrates his William Tell routine using a glass atop Joan Frost's head. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, Lee produces a pen. After being recruited as a double agent for the black meat operation, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Benway is actually secretly masterminding a narcotics operation for a drug called "black meat" which is supposedly derived from the guts of giant Brazilian centipedes, Lee encounters Tom's housekeeper Fadela, previously observed to be an agent of the narcotics operation.
Lee also encounters a gay Swiss gentleman, Yves Cloquet, who appears to be disguised as a monstrous centipede.Īfter concluding that Dr. There is a row at gunpoint with Joan's husband Tom, after Lee steals his typewriter, which is then destroyed by the Clark Nova insect. Benway by seducing Joan Frost, a doppelgänger of his dead wife. Whilst Lee is addicted to assorted mind-altering substances, his replacement typewriter, a Clark Nova, becomes a talking insect which tells him to find Dr. He spends his time writing reports concerning his mission these documents, at the insistence of his visiting literary colleagues, are eventually compiled into the titular book. Having inadvertently accomplished his mission, Lee flees to Interzone, located in a city somewhere in North Africa. Shortly afterwards, he accidentally kills her while attempting to shoot a drinking glass off her head to emulate William Tell. Lee returns home to find Joan having sex with Hank, one of his writer friends. Lee dismisses the beetle's instructions and kills it. Lee comes to believe that he is a secret agent, and his boss, a giant talking beetle, assigns him the mission of killing Joan, who is allegedly an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Lee is arrested by the police, and he begins hallucinating due to being exposed to the insecticide. In 1953, Exterminator William Lee finds that his wife Joan is stealing his supply of insecticide to use as a recreational drug.