Burroughs: The Movie Page #6

and leave them

for a distant boy to find.

'Why, Ma, this stuff is terrific!

And I thought he was just

an old book-of-the-month cornball.'"

William Burroughs,

when you were in London...

you'd already broken onto the scene,

of course, with Naked Lunch -

Nova Express

was out in '64, wasn't it?

But what were you writing then?

Well, let's see. I wrote The Job

when I was in Duke Street.

I also wrote Wild Boys,

partly there and partly in Marrakech.

- That's absolutely your table, isn't it?

- Yes, it is.

- The one thing that was part of the -

- Mm-hmm.

- Part of the - Part of the work.

- Yes, right here.

I also wrote, um, Exterminator!...

and Port of Saints...

- and The Last Words

of Dutch Schultz.

- Oh, yes.

- So I was quite, uh - quite prolific.

- Pretty prolific.

I think he was here

in London, as a matter of fact...

when I came across the, uh...

to me, happy accident of the cut-ups.

There are many ways

in which cut-ups can be done.

One very simple way

that I've used frequently...

is just take a page, cut it down

the middle and across the page...

so you now have four sections...

and you rearrange the sections

in a different order.

And when this happens, of course,

you get new word combos.

You also get new words created

by the cut-up.

It occurred because I had

a number of sheets of newspaper...

some British newspapers,

an American newspaper

published in Paris...

and some other things that

happened to be lying on my desk...

when I took a Stanley blade

and cut through them.

And these little bits and pieces

looked so amusing to me...

that I started jiggling them around

as one would in a collage.

This was simply, of course,

applying the montage method...

which was really rather old-hat

in painting at that time, to writing.

As Brion said,

writing is 50 years behind painting.

"Listen to my last words anywhere.

Listen all you boards, governments...

syndicates, nations of the world.

And you powers behind

what filth deals...

consummated in what lavatory...

to take what is not yours...

to sell out your sons forever...

to sell the ground

from unborn feet forever.

I bear no sick words, junk words...

love words, forgive words from Jesus.

I have not come to explain or tidy up.

What am I doing over here

with the workers, with gooks...

the apes, the dogs, the errand boys,

the human animals?

Why don't I come over with the board

and drink Coca-Cola or make it?

Explain how

the blood and bones and brains...

of 100 million, more or less, gooks...

went down the drain in green piss...

so you on the board could use

bodies and minds and souls...

that were not yours, are not yours,

and never will be yours.

You have the wrong name

and the wrong number...

Mr. Luce Getty Lee Rockefeller.

Don't let them see us.

Don't tell them what we are doing.

Not the cancer deal with

the Venusians, not the green deal.

Don't let that out.

Disaster. Unimaginable disaster.

Crab men, tapeworms...

intestinal parasites.

Like Burroughs,

that proud American name.

Proud of what exactly?

Would you all like to see exactly

what Burroughs has to be proud of?

The Mayan caper,

the centipede hype...

the short-time racket,

the heavy-metalgimmick.

All right, Mr. Burroughs,

who bears my name...

and my words bear it all the way

for all to see...

in Times Square, in Piccadilly.

Play it all, play it all, play it all back.

Pay it all, pay it all, pay it all back.

No, no, no.

Premature, premature, premature.

Are these the words

of the all-powerful boards...

and syndicates of the earth?

I say to all:

These words are not premature.

These words may be too late."

Every particle of this universe

contains the whole of the universe.

You in yourself have the whole

of the universe.

I cut you up in a certain way,

I cut up the universe.

Mm-hmm.

But all of Burroughs seems to be,

to me, to be coherent...

once you know his method.

Uh, you know,

what Lucien calls charlatanism...

is actually experimental writing.

You can otherwise call

Czanne a charlatan...

for trying to work with hot plains

advancing and cool plains receding...

in the optical field of the eyeball.

So Burroughs, in cutting up...

was creating gaps in space,

gaps in time also...

as Czanne,

or as meditation does.

If, uh- This is Wittgenstein.

If you have a prerecorded universe...

in which everything

is already prerecorded...

the only thing

that is not prerecorded...

are the pre-recordings themselves.

So with my cut-ups, I was

attempting to tamper with...

the basic pre-recordings.

And I think I have succeeded

to some modest extent.

Well, I first met William in his works.

I was 14. I was a boy in Kansas...

living in a small town...

and I thought I was the only person

in the world who had ever...

thought about sex with other boys...

or sex with alien boys,

for that matter...

or drugs,

or mental explorations of this kind.

And then I found this book.

There were these twins

in my childhood...

and one of them -

I don't remember which one -

gave me the book Naked Lunch.

I was 14 and I read it, and, um,

it changed my life.

James came first to see me...

having read Bill,

and having read my work...

and I was sort of available

and right there.

Bill had just come back to America.

So James had come to offer

his services to me as a secretary...

and I was sort of hoping lover...

'cause he was kind of cute

and he was 21 and funny.

But Bill had just come back, and I

was worried about Bill getting straight.

I said, "You want to be my secretary?

First thing to do is go down

and see Burroughs."

So I called William.

And he says, "Yeah, I'm at

452 Broadway, the subway."

You know what I mean?

And on about the third or fourth visit...

I said, "I need a place to stay."

And he said,

"Why don't you move in here?"

They had some sort of

love affair also...

'cause James was quite open

and dug Bill.

It was, uh- It was interesting.

It was really kind of my first -

There had been other things, but

it was my first experience with a man.

William is sort of, um -

I don't know how long he has been.

Maybe always.

He's sort of - I wanna say

spaced-out and kind of magical...

at the same time about mail

and communications that come in...

which is my specialty,

communications...

and the forms of communication.

So, I took over more and more

until finally I was handling everything...

except the fact that

he lived from day to day...

and the fact that he created.

So I realized

that it was like a manager.

And I know, it is true, that he feels

that I make the right decisions.

Shall I sign it William?

Mmm, yeah, you know Burt.

Sure do. Huh?

- How would you sign it for Burt?

- Well -

Well, that's fine.

Now this I haven't even looked at.

A family picture.

Oh, my God. Look at this old photo.

Well, I think -

maybe I touched on this before...

but since his son died -

since Billy died this year -

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