William S. Burroughs: A man within
 

After hearing all the debate on gun laws here recently, it reminded me of the trailer for A Man Within where they interview Burroughs' gun dealer. They also interview Iggy and Genesis P-Orridge, it looks fucking fantastic. Has anyone seen it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHmmnGfgWPs

 

I saw this trailer some time ago, and look forward to seeing the film in it's entirety.

didn't he accidentaly kill his wife in mexico? they say that was really harsh on him. this is my favorite video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLSveRGmpIE

I'd say his wife got the harsher end of that particular deal.

Definitely.

Playing William Tell.

as brilliant as he was, junkie + gun never works out.

there was a film about, courtney love played his wife, if i'm not dreaming.

i love burroughs, he did kill his wife by trying to shoot a shot glass off the top of her head and missing. thanks for the link!

I'd be willing to bet junk had absolutely nothing to do with the situation involving Burroughs and his wife. Chances are, if he'd been shooting up at the time of the incident, he'd have had little interest in shooting his gun to begin with.


I agree, there are a lot of issues involving guns + drugs, but I'm not so sure Burrough's situation should be used as an example.

If he was drinking (i seem to remember reading that he may have been) I can see something like this happening. some people get a little brave/a little crazy under the influence of alcohol. I'm still a firm believer that it can be the most dangerous drug out there, depending on who is partaking.

There is a such thing as a responsible drug user. From what little I know of the life of Burroughs, he (mostly) fit this description. I'd even go as far as to say that he was a fairly good example of a responsible drug user.

The best burroughs doc is something called simply BURROUGHS. It's amazing.

Burroughs is one of my favorite authors of all time. He was a horrible human being, clearly, but that made for great writing.

Here you guys go: http://www.ubu.com/film/burroughs.html .. lots of great videos, but the absolute jewel here is

http://www.ubu.com/film/burroughs_movie.html

BURROUGHS (1985). By far the best documentary I've seen on the guy so far (I've got THE MAN WITHIN on my computer but haven't watched it yet, so maybe it's better), and you can download the 970mb avi from there.

is it the film with the soundtrack by sonic youth?
they showed it here a few days ago but i couldn't go.

http://www.burroughsthemovie.com

Also of note is Flicker...

http://www.flickerflicker.com/flash/index.html which I watched a few days ago. Same list of cronies are interviewed heavily as well as Lee.

Saw Man Within last night w/Ms ild. I'd say it was pretty good, they didn't really spend a lot of time talking about the early years with AG and JK,and zero mention of Hunke........ but it was all in all pretty good, and I would give it MOSTLY my imprimatur. However, they were guilty of the typical anti-cutup mentality although less rabid about it than others. It did spend a decent bit of time discussing the last parts of his life and was quite accurate about it. Genesis was a good source of info.

yes it is, i still need to see this.

I'm gonna see this at the Tampere Film Festival in March 11.

When the film was released in 1985 these flyers were in all the good record shops and bookstores in Chicago. I'm sure I picked this up at the old Wax Trax Records (2449 N. Lincoln Ave.)--one of the all-time great record stores. I remember really liking the movie--especially the Dr. Benway parts.

How was the Francis Bacon content? I didn't know he and WSB were acquainted, but think they were both some of the best minds of their generation.....

I wish I could remember. It's been over 25 years...