Naked Lunch (film)
Encyclopedia
Naked Lunch is the 1991 Canadian/British/Japanese film adaptation
, directed by David Cronenberg
, of William S. Burroughs
' novel of the same name
. Featuring Peter Weller
, Ian Holm
, Judy Davis
, and Roy Scheider
, the film is a co-production by film companies of Canada
, the United Kingdom
, and Japan
.
) is an exterminator who finds that his wife Joan is stealing his insecticide for recreational purposes
. When Lee is arrested by the police, he believes he is hallucinating because of bug powder exposure. He believes he is a secret agent whose controller (a giant bug) assigns him the mission of killing his wife Joan (Judy Davis
), who is an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Dismissing the bug and its instructions, Lee returns home to find Joan sleeping with Hank (Nicholas Campbell
), one of his writer friends. Shortly afterwards, he shoots her while performing a William Tell
routine.
Having inadvertently accomplished his "mission," Lee flees to Interzone, where Interzone Incorporated is based, and spends his time writing reports on his mission, which become the titular book. While in Interzone, the typewriters Lee uses are themselves living creatures, usually giving Lee advice on his mission. Clark Nova, one of Lee's typewriters, tells him to find Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider
), by seducing Joan Frost (Davis), who is a doppelgänger
of his dead wife.
After finding out that Dr. Benway is the head of a narcotic harvesting operation, producing a drug called "black meat," derived from the guts of giant centipedes, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol, and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, he shoots Joan Frost in the head, re-enacting the murder of his wife. This proves he's a writer, since it's a recurrence of the inciting incident that started his writing, and he's allowed to enter Annexia.
adaptation, in that it depicts the writing of the novel itself. Several characters are loosely based on people that Burroughs knew: Hank and Martin are based on Jack Kerouac
and Allen Ginsberg
(who assisted Burroughs in compiling the original novel), and Tom and Joan Frost on Paul
and Jane Bowles
whom Burroughs befriended in Tangier
, Morocco
.
The shooting of Joan Lee is based on the 1951 death of Joan Vollmer
, Burroughs’ common-law wife. Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party in Mexico City. He would later flee to the United States. Burroughs was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which were suspended. Burroughs later expressed Joan's death as the starting point of his literary career, saying: “I am forced to the appaling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death”
The film takes great liberties with Burroughs' novel. The only elements, characters and places taken from the book are "The Talking Asshole" routine, Dr. Benway, William Lee, the Mugwumps, the fictional drug called "the black meat", Interzone and Annexia, all of them arranged and related to each other in a completely different fashion from the way they appear in the book.
Tom Frost's typewriter
is a "Martinelli", apparently named after co-producer Gabriella Martinelli
. When he lends the machine to Lee, Frost says of the typewriter, "Her inventiveness will surprise you."
and features free-jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman
. The music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka is also featured throughout the film.
of five theaters, grossing $64,491 on its opening weekend. It went on to make $2.6 million in North America.
, based on 31 reviews (21 positive, 10 negative). Metacritic
also reported an average rating of 67 out of 100, based on 16 reviews. Roger Ebert
gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level. There is so much dryness, death and despair here, in a life spinning itself out with no joy". In her review for The New York Times
, Janet Maslin
wrote, "for the most part this is a coolly riveting film and even a darkly entertaining one, at least for audiences with steel nerves, a predisposition toward Mr. Burroughs and a willingness to meet Mr. Cronenberg halfway", but did praise Peter Weller's performance: "The gaunt, unsmiling Mr. Weller looks exactly right and brings a perfect offhandedness to his disarming dialogue". Richard Corliss
of Time
gave a lukewarm review, calling the film "tame compared with its source". In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe criticized what he felt to be a "lack of conviction".
Newsweek
s David Ansen
wrote, "Obviously this is not everybody's cup of weird tea: you must have a taste for the esthetics of disgust. For those up to the dare, it's one clammily compelling movie". Entertainment Weekly
gave the film a "B+" rating with Owen Gleiberman
praising Weller's performance: "Peter Weller, the poker-faced star of RoboCop
, greets all of the hallucinogenic weirdness with a doleful, matter-of-fact deadpan that grows more likable as the movie goes on. The actor's steely robostare has never been more compelling. By the end, he has turned Burroughs' stone-cold protagonist — a man with no feelings — into a mordantly touching hero". In his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman
wrote, "Cronenberg has done a remarkable thing. He hasn't just created a mainstream Burroughs on something approximating Burroughs's terms, he's made a portrait of an American writer". Jonathan Rosenbaum
in his review for the Chicago Reader wrote, "David Cronenberg’s highly transgressive and subjective film adaptation of Naked Lunch ... may well be the most troubling and ravishing head movie since Eraserhead
. It is also fundamentally a film about writing — even the film about writing".
Burroughs scholar Timothy S. Murphy found the film to be a muddled adaptation that reflects Cronenberg's mind more than the novel: he feels that Burroughs' subversive, allegorically political depiction of drugs and homosexuality becomes merely aesthetic. Murphy argues that Burroughs' social and politically situated literary techniques become in the film merely the hallucination of a junkie, and that by using the life of Burroughs himself as a framing narrative
, Cronenberg turns a fragmented, unromantic, bitterly critical and satirical novel into a conventional bildungsroman
.
The film has been selected for a Criterion Collection
release, an organization that releases high quality DVDs for important classic and contemporary films.
s for Canadian Film: 1992
ALFS Award: 1993
Berlin Film Festival
NSFC Award: 1992
NYFCC Award: 1991
episode "Bart on the Road
", Bart
, Nelson
, and Milhouse
use Bart's fake driver's license to get into the theatre to see an adult film. The film they choose, based on its rating, is Naked Lunch. When they exit, Nelson looks up to the marquee and says, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
, directed by David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
, of William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
' novel of the same name
Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
. Featuring Peter Weller
Peter Weller
Peter Frederick Weller is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.He is best known for his roles as the title character in the first two RoboCop films and Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...
, Ian Holm
Ian Holm
Sir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
, Judy Davis
Judy Davis
Judy Davis is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows....
, and Roy Scheider
Roy Scheider
Roy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C...
, the film is a co-production by film companies of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Plot
William Lee (Peter WellerPeter Weller
Peter Frederick Weller is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.He is best known for his roles as the title character in the first two RoboCop films and Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...
) is an exterminator who finds that his wife Joan is stealing his insecticide for recreational purposes
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
. When Lee is arrested by the police, he believes he is hallucinating because of bug powder exposure. He believes he is a secret agent whose controller (a giant bug) assigns him the mission of killing his wife Joan (Judy Davis
Judy Davis
Judy Davis is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows....
), who is an agent of an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Dismissing the bug and its instructions, Lee returns home to find Joan sleeping with Hank (Nicholas Campbell
Nicholas Campbell
Nicholas Campbell , sometimes credited as Nick Campbell, is a Canadian actor and filmmaker, who has won three Gemini Awards for acting. The movies Naked Lunch, Prozac Nation and the TV series Da Vinci's Inquest are some examples of his acting work.-Early life:Campbell was born in Toronto, Ontario,...
), one of his writer friends. Shortly afterwards, he shoots her while performing a William Tell
William Tell
William Tell is a folk hero of Switzerland. His legend is recorded in a late 15th century Swiss chronicle....
routine.
Having inadvertently accomplished his "mission," Lee flees to Interzone, where Interzone Incorporated is based, and spends his time writing reports on his mission, which become the titular book. While in Interzone, the typewriters Lee uses are themselves living creatures, usually giving Lee advice on his mission. Clark Nova, one of Lee's typewriters, tells him to find Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider
Roy Scheider
Roy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C...
), by seducing Joan Frost (Davis), who is a doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
of his dead wife.
After finding out that Dr. Benway is the head of a narcotic harvesting operation, producing a drug called "black meat," derived from the guts of giant centipedes, Lee completes his report and flees Interzone to Annexia with Joan Frost. Stopped by the Annexian border patrol, and instructed to prove that he is a writer as he claims, he shoots Joan Frost in the head, re-enacting the murder of his wife. This proves he's a writer, since it's a recurrence of the inciting incident that started his writing, and he's allowed to enter Annexia.
Cast
- Peter WellerPeter WellerPeter Frederick Weller is an American film and stage actor, director and lecturer.He is best known for his roles as the title character in the first two RoboCop films and Buckaroo Banzai in the cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension...
as William Lee - Judy DavisJudy DavisJudy Davis is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows....
as Joan Lee/Joan Frost - Ian HolmIan HolmSir Ian Holm, CBE is an English actor known for his stage work and for many film roles. He received the 1967 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor for his performance as Lenny in The Homecoming and the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for his performance in the title role of King Lear...
as Tom Frost - Julian SandsJulian SandsJulian M. Sands is an English actor, known for his roles in the Best Picture nominee The Killing Fields, the cult film Warlock, A Room with a View, Arachnophobia, Vatel, the television series 24 and as Jor-El in the television series Smallville.-Career:Sands began his film career appearing in...
as Yves Cloquet - Roy ScheiderRoy ScheiderRoy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C...
as Dr. Benway - Monique MercureMonique MercureMonique Mercure, is a Canadian actress.-Career:Mercure was born in Montreal, Quebec. At the 1977 Cannes Film Festival she won the award for Best Actress for the film J.A. Martin Photographer...
as Fadela - Nicholas CampbellNicholas CampbellNicholas Campbell , sometimes credited as Nick Campbell, is a Canadian actor and filmmaker, who has won three Gemini Awards for acting. The movies Naked Lunch, Prozac Nation and the TV series Da Vinci's Inquest are some examples of his acting work.-Early life:Campbell was born in Toronto, Ontario,...
as Hank - Robert A. SilvermanRobert A. SilvermanRobert A. Silverman was born on February 24, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Robert is one of several actors often cast by writer/director David Cronenberg. Silverman is sometimes credited as Bob Silverman or Robert Silverman. He has appeared in 5 films directed by David Cronenberg...
as Hans - John Friesen as Hauser
- Sean McCannSean McCann (actor)Sean McCann is one of Canada's most successful character actors and has been in the business for over 40 years. Winner of the prestigious Earle Grey Award for his lifetime achievement in television, Sean McCann has appeared in over 150 movies, television shows and plays.- Notable roles and awards...
as O'Brien
Adaptation
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. It can be seen as a metatextualMetafiction
Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
adaptation, in that it depicts the writing of the novel itself. Several characters are loosely based on people that Burroughs knew: Hank and Martin are based on Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
and Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
(who assisted Burroughs in compiling the original novel), and Tom and Joan Frost on Paul
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
and Jane Bowles
Jane Bowles
Jane Bowles, born Jane Sydney Auer , was an American writer and playwright.-Early life:Born into a Jewish family in New York, Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager and her mother took her to Switzerland...
whom Burroughs befriended in Tangier
Tangier
Tangier, also Tangiers is a city in northern Morocco with a population of about 700,000 . It lies on the North African coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel...
, Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
.
The shooting of Joan Lee is based on the 1951 death of Joan Vollmer
Joan Vollmer
Joan Vollmer was the most prominent female member of the early Beat Generation circle. While a student at Barnard College she became the roommate of Edie Parker and their apartment became a gathering place for the Beats during the 1940s, where Vollmer was often at the center of marathon, all...
, Burroughs’ common-law wife. Burroughs shot and killed Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party in Mexico City. He would later flee to the United States. Burroughs was convicted in absentia of homicide and sentenced to two years, which were suspended. Burroughs later expressed Joan's death as the starting point of his literary career, saying: “I am forced to the appaling conclusion that I would have never become a writer but for Joan's death”
The film takes great liberties with Burroughs' novel. The only elements, characters and places taken from the book are "The Talking Asshole" routine, Dr. Benway, William Lee, the Mugwumps, the fictional drug called "the black meat", Interzone and Annexia, all of them arranged and related to each other in a completely different fashion from the way they appear in the book.
Tom Frost's typewriter
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
is a "Martinelli", apparently named after co-producer Gabriella Martinelli
Gabriella Martinelli
Gabriella Martinelli is an Italian-Canadian film and television producer. She is president and CEO of Toronto-based Capri Films Inc., a vertically integrated production and distribution company that she founded in 2000....
. When he lends the machine to Lee, Frost says of the typewriter, "Her inventiveness will surprise you."
Music
The film's score is composed by Cronenberg's staple scorer, Howard ShoreHoward Shore
Howard Leslie Shore is a Canadian composer, notable for his film scores. He has composed the scores for over 80 films, most notably the scores for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, for which he won three Academy Awards. He is also a consistent collaborator with director David Cronenberg,...
and features free-jazz virtuoso Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....
. The music of the Master Musicians of Jajouka is also featured throughout the film.
Box office
Naked Lunch was released on December 27, 1991 in a limited releaseLimited release
Limited release is a term in the American motion picture industry for a motion picture that is playing in a select few theaters across the country ....
of five theaters, grossing $64,491 on its opening weekend. It went on to make $2.6 million in North America.
Critical reception
Critical reaction to Naked Lunch was mixed. It currently holds a 68% rating on Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, based on 31 reviews (21 positive, 10 negative). Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
also reported an average rating of 67 out of 100, based on 16 reviews. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "While I admired it in an abstract way, I felt repelled by the material on a visceral level. There is so much dryness, death and despair here, in a life spinning itself out with no joy". In her review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
wrote, "for the most part this is a coolly riveting film and even a darkly entertaining one, at least for audiences with steel nerves, a predisposition toward Mr. Burroughs and a willingness to meet Mr. Cronenberg halfway", but did praise Peter Weller's performance: "The gaunt, unsmiling Mr. Weller looks exactly right and brings a perfect offhandedness to his disarming dialogue". Richard Corliss
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...
of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
gave a lukewarm review, calling the film "tame compared with its source". In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe criticized what he felt to be a "lack of conviction".
Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
s David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
wrote, "Obviously this is not everybody's cup of weird tea: you must have a taste for the esthetics of disgust. For those up to the dare, it's one clammily compelling movie". Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
gave the film a "B+" rating with Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is an American film critic for Entertainment Weekly, a position he has held since the magazine's launch in 1990. From 1981–89, he worked at the Boston Phoenix....
praising Weller's performance: "Peter Weller, the poker-faced star of RoboCop
RoboCop
RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction-action film directed by Paul Verhoeven. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan in the near future, RoboCop centers on a police officer who is brutally murdered and subsequently re-created as a super-human cyborg known as "RoboCop"...
, greets all of the hallucinogenic weirdness with a doleful, matter-of-fact deadpan that grows more likable as the movie goes on. The actor's steely robostare has never been more compelling. By the end, he has turned Burroughs' stone-cold protagonist — a man with no feelings — into a mordantly touching hero". In his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
wrote, "Cronenberg has done a remarkable thing. He hasn't just created a mainstream Burroughs on something approximating Burroughs's terms, he's made a portrait of an American writer". Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
in his review for the Chicago Reader wrote, "David Cronenberg’s highly transgressive and subjective film adaptation of Naked Lunch ... may well be the most troubling and ravishing head movie since Eraserhead
Eraserhead
Eraserhead is a 1977 American surrealist film and the first feature film of David Lynch, who wrote, produced and directed. Lynch began working on the film at the AFI Conservatory, which gave him a $10,000 grant to make the film after he had begun working there following his 1971 move to Los Angeles...
. It is also fundamentally a film about writing — even the film about writing".
Burroughs scholar Timothy S. Murphy found the film to be a muddled adaptation that reflects Cronenberg's mind more than the novel: he feels that Burroughs' subversive, allegorically political depiction of drugs and homosexuality becomes merely aesthetic. Murphy argues that Burroughs' social and politically situated literary techniques become in the film merely the hallucination of a junkie, and that by using the life of Burroughs himself as a framing narrative
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, Cronenberg turns a fragmented, unromantic, bitterly critical and satirical novel into a conventional bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
.
The film has been selected for a Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
release, an organization that releases high quality DVDs for important classic and contemporary films.
Awards
Genie AwardGenie Award
Genie Awards are given out to recognize the best of Canadian cinema by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. From 1949-1979, the awards were named the Canadian Film Awards...
s for Canadian Film: 1992
- Best Motion PictureGenie Award for Best Motion PictureThe Genie Award for Best Motion Picture is awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to the best Canadian motion picture.-1st Genie Awards:*The Changeling *Cordélia...
- Best Director - David CronenbergDavid CronenbergDavid Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
- Best Supporting Actress - Monique MercureMonique MercureMonique Mercure, is a Canadian actress.-Career:Mercure was born in Montreal, Quebec. At the 1977 Cannes Film Festival she won the award for Best Actress for the film J.A. Martin Photographer...
- Best Art Direction - Carol Spier
- Best Cinematography - Peter SuschitzkyPeter SuschitzkyPeter Suschitzky BSC, A.S.C. cinematographer born in Warsaw and raised in London, the son of the cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky BSC. Among his most known work as director of photography are Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and the later films of David Cronenberg...
- Best Overall Sound - Peter Maxwell, Brian Day, Don White, David Appleby
- Best Sound Editing
ALFS Award: 1993
- Actress of the year - Judy DavisJudy DavisJudy Davis is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows....
Berlin Film Festival
42nd Berlin International Film Festival
The 42nd annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 13 to 24, 1992.-Jury:* Annie Girardot * Charles Champlin* Sylvia Chang* Ildikó Enyedi* Irving N...
- Golden BearGolden BearAccording to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
- Nominated
NSFC Award: 1992
- Best Director - David Cronenberg
- Best Screenplay - David Cronenberg
NYFCC Award: 1991
- Best Screenplay - David Cronenberg
- Best Supporting Actress - Judy DavisJudy DavisJudy Davis is an Australian actress best known for her roles in Husbands and Wives, Barton Fink, A Passage to India and in the TV miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows....
Cultural references
In The SimpsonsThe Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
episode "Bart on the Road
Bart on the Road
"Bart on the Road" is the twentieth episode of The Simpsons seventh season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 31, 1996. In the episode, Bart makes his own fake driver's license. He rents a car with it and takes Milhouse, Martin, and Nelson on a road trip to...
", Bart
Bart Simpson
Bartholomew JoJo "Bart" Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons and part of the Simpson family. He is voiced by actress Nancy Cartwright and first appeared on television in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987...
, Nelson
Nelson Muntz
Nelson Mandela Muntz is a fictional character and bully from the animated TV series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Nancy Cartwright. Nelson was introduced in Season 1's "Bart the General" as a bully but later turned into a friend of Bart Simpson, who is best identified by his signature laugh .-Role...
, and Milhouse
Milhouse Van Houten
Milhouse Mussolini Van Houten is a fictional character featured in the animated television series The Simpsons, voiced by Pamela Hayden. He is Bart Simpson's best friend in Mrs. Krabappel's fourth grade class at Springfield Elementary School....
use Bart's fake driver's license to get into the theatre to see an adult film. The film they choose, based on its rating, is Naked Lunch. When they exit, Nelson looks up to the marquee and says, "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."