William S. Burroughs: A Man Within Page #6

And he'd have a drink and be...

And you think

it's gonna go over.

And then he...

He's gotta fall down.

[ Mutters ]

[ Laughter ]

[ Man, Indistinct ]

Now, William, for a while,

rented this cottage.

And one time, I'm told...

I was out of town...

that he put some bales of hay

up against that stone wall

over there.

I heard about it.

I thought, "Oh, my God.

It's a wonder he's still alive."

The bullets went through

the bales of hay

and came right back.

So Patricia tells the story

that, one time, he was

out here doing that.

And he had some bottles

of black ink apparently

dangling from strings.

So the old man's standing here,

blasting away.

And suddenly he goes back,

and there's this great big

splot on his forehead.

And of course, the first impulse

of whoever was with him...

thought he'd shot himself.

But then they noticed

it wasn't red.

It was black.

Apparently, a piece

of the glass from the bottle

had ricocheted back and hit him.

It's a miracle that he lived

as long as he did...

with all of the things

that he did.

Joan Vollmer was

Edie Kerouac's...

Parker's roommate.

Everybody thought that she was

this incredible, charming,

intelligent woman...

and she should meet

William Burroughs.

So they started

to hang out together.

They did drugs together.

William was also seeing men,

and Joan suffered from that.

And by the time they got

to Mexico City,

Joan was doing a lot

of Benzedrine inhalers...

and drinking a lot and so on.

[ Narrator ]

William Burroughs had just

returned to Mexico City...

from a long trip

with Lewis Marker,

his young boyfriend.

At a small homecoming party

thrown by his wife,

Burroughs drunkenly proposed

the idea of moving

to South America...

where he could hunt wild boar.

Joan joked that if Bill

were their hunter,

they'd starve to death.

Burroughs, taking the bait,

dared Joan...

to show the boys what kind

of a shot old Bill is,

la William Tell.

Putting a gin glass

on her head,

she turned sideways,

giggled and said,

"I can't look.

You know I can't stand

the sight of blood."

William Burroughs fired

and missed the glass,

landing a fatal shot

through Joan's forehead.

For somebody like Burroughs

who began also...

It's a toy.

He's playing William Tell

with a .45, for God's sakes.

I think they were probably

drunk or stoned,

and they were playing around,

like playing Russian roulette.

Same kind of thing.

Put the apple on your head.

He tried to shoot it off

and missed.

I mean, it's hideous.

It's like a comedy sketch

almost though.

Allen Ginsberg thought that

that might have been...

some kind of a death wish

on her part.

I think Allen was very

emotionally invested...

in saving William,

helping William,

healing William...

and understanding it himself...

and not seeing it as,

you know, an act of...

complete carelessness

and violence...

or that there was some

strange, dark underpinning.

But clearly, some energy

was out of control.

[ Narrator ]

The accident left their

two children without a mother.

Julie... Joan's daughter

from her previous marriage...

was taken by her grandparents.

William never saw her again.

Their son, Billy Burroughs Jr.,

went on to live a short

and troubled life.

Despite William's conflicting

stories about the incident,

he managed to leave Mexico

and never went to prison.

Of Joan,

Burroughs later commented,

"I am forced

to the appalling conclusion..."

that I would have never

become a writer...

"but for Joan's death."

[ Burroughs ]

"There are mistakes

too monstrous for remorse...

to tamper or to dally with.

Edward Arlington Robinson.

Anyone who's never

made mistakes like that...

and paid for his mistakes,

"I trust him little

in the commerce of the soul."

The best he could've meant that

would have been...

remorse was hubristic.

To even entertain remorse

was-was...

prideful and...

predicated on the idea

that you could fix it,

that you had the power

to fix it.

One of his most

extraordinary pieces...

is that introduction to Queer.

Because he said those things

often here,

like, in the passing

of the decades,

sort of drunk and alone.

And he'd talk about it

in terms of something

that had happened...

at the moment

of synchronicity...

something happening...

and causing you to have

a reaction and you don't

know what it is.

And he often talked about

how, in Mexico City,

he was walking down the street

and he started crying.

You know, William

was very tough.

He'd cry for 10 seconds.

And then continued walking

along those winding streets

in old Mexico.

And it happened

three or four times.

He was walking to meet Joan

at 5:
00 in that bar,

and he didn't know

why he was crying.

And only after,

when she was dead,

he remembers this.

And the idea is that

you put your mind...

It's a synchronicity

or whatever that your mind...

foresees or sees this thing

that's happening

in the immediate future...

and you're reacting to it,

you're weeping for

the horror of it.

[ Man Vocalizing ]

I have constrained myself...

I have constrained myself...

to the realization that...

[ Patti Smith ]

Toward the end of his life,

we all gathered and we all

performed for him.

And I decided to read from

the introduction to Queer.

And I was reading it,

very concentrative.

And I tend to improvise

when I read.

So in reading something

so intimate of his,

I was also aware that he

would be fully concentrating...

on how I would read it...

and what I might

discover within it.

And all of a sudden,

I just went off.

It's like my tongue was tied,

and I just started

babbling a bit.

I miscalculated.

It was just a few minutes

or a few...

just microseconds...

just...

And when I finished,

everybody was...

You know, it was mo...

just a split second

of total silence...

'cause it was sort of

a heavy moment.

And then I finished.

[ Applause,

Cheering ]

And afterwards,

I went up to William.

I didn't know whether

to apologize or...

I didn't know what to say.

And he just took my hand,

and his eyes looked

almost teary,

and he just said, "Thank you."

So I would...

You know, it's like

hypnotizing someone.

I just feel that

if William had any

question in his mind...

whether it was an accident,

that whatever I channeled...

whether it be from the air...

or be from William himself...

um, helped to set that at rest.

The negativity of that karma

propelled him to be a writer.

He had to, you know,

fight his way out of

a black paper bag...

It was becoming a writer...

Of the negative karma

that he...

'Cause he loved Joan.

He's a gay man,

but he had a wife

and he loved her.

They had many... a great...

a great life together.

And it was

a great tragedy for him.

[ Laurie Anderson ]

I don't think that you have

an accident like that...

that doesn't mark you

for life...

mark what it means

to hold a gun,

mark what it means

to play around with it...

when you've done that.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes