Join us for an evening celebrating influential beat generation author William S. Burroughs, featuring the recently remastered re-release of Howard Brookner’s seminal, gritty documentary BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE (1983) and David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Burroughs’ own NAKED LUNCH (1991).

Saturday, April 4
BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE (90 mins)
Doors 7:00 / Movie 7:30
NAKED LUNCH (115 mins)
Doors 9:00 / Movie 9:15
Single Movie $10 advance / $12 door
Double Bill $12 advance / $14 door
Advanced tickets available at www.riotheatretickets.ca

BURROUGHS: THE MOVIE (Howard Brookner, 1983) | Remastered and re-released in 2014, Howard Brookner’s ‘Burroughs: The Movie’ explores the life and times of controversial beat generation author William S. Burroughs. As a filmmaker, Brookner was granted an unprecedented level of access that allowed for a unique degree of intimacy. The film charts the development of Burroughs’ unique literary style and his wildly unconventional life, including his travels from the American Midwest to North Africa and several personal tragedies. ‘Burroughs: The Movie’ is the first and only feature length documentary to be made with and about Burroughs. Brookner began making in 1978 as his senior thesis at NYU film school, and then expanded it into a feature which was completed five years later in 1983. Sound was recorded by Jim Jarmusch and the film was shot by Tom DiCillo, fellow NYU classmates and both very close friends of Brookner’s.

NAKED LUNCH (David Cronenberg, 1991) | David Cronenberg’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ hallucinatory, once-thought-unfilmable novel ‘Naked Lunch’ follows the story of a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Peter Weller) who is plunged into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Alternately humorous and grotesque—and always surreal—the film mingles aspects of the novel with incidents from the writer’s own tangled life, resulting in an evocative paranoid fantasy and a self-reflexive investigation into the mysteries of the creative process. Also starring Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands and Roy Scheider.