Burroughs: The Movie Page #5

I started tossing down the drinks.

Then I said to Joan, "It's about time

for our William Tell act."

And she put a glass on her head...

and I had this piece

of, uh,.380 junk.

Just as she had said to Lucien,

"How fast can this heap go?"...

I think she said to Bill,

"Well, shoot that off my head."

I fired the shot.

The glass hadn't been touched.

Joan started sliding down

towards the floor.

Then Marcus said -

walked over

and took one look at her.

He said, "Bill, your bullet has hit

her forehead."

I said, "Oh, my God."

I always thought that

she had kind of challenged him

into it and led him into it...

that it was sort of

like using him to -

that she was, in a sense,

using him to...

get her off the earth, 'cause I think

she was in a great deal of pain.

The ambulance came.

The police came.

I went down

to police headquarters with them.

I hadn't been there five minutes

when my lawyer walks in.

He said, "Don't say anything, Bill.

Don't say anything.

Um, this is a shooting accident."

Had you done

the William Tell thing before?

Never.

Never. Never.

Just an absolute piece of insanity.

I hate to see

The evening sun go down

I hate to see

The evening sun go down

It makes me think I'm

On my lastgo-round

Years later, I think it was, Bill -

I've heard a few different things

from Bill.

He says that he wept a great deal.

He also said that, uh...

one time, many years ago,

he was puzzled...

by what got into him

that he would actually pick up on it.

My whole life has been a resistance

to the ugly spirit.

Oh, absolutely.

I've felt it,

lived with it day and night.

Well, it gave Bill,

certainly, a taste of mortality.

It opened him up quite a bit.

It was then that he began writing.

It was then that Bill got very serious...

and began casting about

for something to do...

to connect to himself,

to the reality around him.

Uh, I think it grounded him a bit...

'cause it's from then on,

as I remember...

that he begins writing Junkie.

Growing up, you know,

my grandparents raised me...

because after that tragic accident,

you know...

when I was much younger,

with my mother and everything...

Bill went and started traveling

around the world and stuff...

but we kept in

sort of psychic communication...

one way or another,

most of my life.

Just as I reached puberty...

he started sending me copies

of Rimbaud to read...

and stuff like that.

Every so often, um...

things like a plaster cast of

a shrunken head from the Amazon...

would appear in the mail

and things like that.

Beautiful Amazonian butterflies

in little glass cases...

and-and things like that.

You know, I'd keep in touch

with physical objects

that he would send me.

I started to write

in Mexico in 1948...

and that's where my first novel,

Junkie, was written...

and published in 1953...

owing to the good offices

of Allen Ginsberg and Carl Solomon.

I remember when I took...

the first manuscript of Junkie

to one of the publishers.

He said, "Well, if this were written

by Winston Churchill...

it would be interesting...

but as it is not written

by anybody in particular...

it isn't such good prose,

forget it."

This is from Junkie.

"I've just arrived

at this tenement apartment.

After Joey went out...

I noticed another man

who was standing there looking at me.

Waves of hostility and suspicion...

flowed out from his huge brown eyes...

like some sort of television broadcast.

The effect was

almost like a physical impact.

The man was small and very thin...

his neck loose in the collar of his shirt.

His complexion faded from brown

to a mottled yellow...

and pancake makeup

had been heavily applied...

in an attempt

to conceal a skin eruption."

And what was my reaction to Bill...

and Bill's comments

about me in Junkie?

I rather resented

having a scrawny neck.

But other than that, I - I -

you know, I was pleased

that he'd even considered me...

worth commenting about,

in a matter of speaking.

It doesn't say "scrawny neck"

in here at all.

I simply said that his neck was loose

in the collar of his shirt...

which isn't at all the same thing.

I don't find that a bit offensive.

Look at this cover.

In January of 1953...

in the days that

I remember him first in Tangier...

he was full of

the most extraordinary energy.

He could punch a typewriter...

or he could punch

a tape recorder to death...

in shorter time

than any man I've ever known.

He had such enormous energy

in those days...

and such enormous intention

behind what he was doing.

He lived in a very comfortable hotel...

where he practiced pistol shooting

and typewriting...

and was extraordinarily amusing.

The stories that he told,

and his wit, and his invention...

which he was just turning

into literature at that time...

because, as he said himself,

he began to write very late in life.

And during the years in Tangier...

he had written a very, very great deal

in a rather short time.

I wrote very intensively...

for about two years...

and this material,

most of this material, um...

went into Naked Lunch.

That is, Naked Lunch was extracted

from this material...

and also all the notes

that I had written...

while addicted

over a period of eight years.

He spent a great deal of his time...

dashing through the streets madly

from one pharmacy to another...

getting chemicals that he could use

and boil down and inject.

But gradually he began to become...

more and more

invisible in the streets...

as the winter wore on...

and all the Spanish kids

called him the "hombre invisible."

He went to the cafs that those boys

went to and saw a lot of them...

and then became great friends

with Kiki...

who would become

one of the characters of his writings...

throughout the years, in fact.

For about eight years, in Tangiers...

I was writing sporadically...

and a lot of this material was

in the letters to Allen Ginsberg...

which have recently been published.

I was surprised,

reading back over that...

how much of Naked Lunch

is in those letters.

"Dear Allen, Kiki comes on more

affectionate all the time.

A real sweet kid.

He is helping me get my clothes off.

I can just barely make it

around the room, my ankle hurts so.

I must see a doctor tomorrow.

What a bum kick

to die in this awful place.

This German cat practices something

he calls 'technological medicine.'

'You can get by with one kidney.

Why have two?

Yes, that is a kidney.

The inside parts should not be

so close in together crowded.

They need lebensraum

like their Vaterland. '"

"The people ask...

what would lead me

to write a book like Naked Lunch?

Well, 'leads' is a good word.

Yes, one is slowly led along

to write a book...

and this looked good,

no trouble with the cast at all...

and that's half the battle,

when you can find your characters.

The more far-out sex pieces...

I was just writing

for my own amusement.

I would put them away

in an attic trunk...

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