William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (1 Viewer)

It was aired on PBS (Seattle) recently. I managed to record it but haven't watched it yet. (Par for the course with Burroughs, I bought a copy of The Ticket That Exploded over 40 years ago and haven't read that yet.)

Extra clips from the PBS broadcast here.
 
You haven't missed anything. Slam your balls in a door a few times - it's the same as suffering through that documentary. Then you can delete it. Same thing with the book you haven't read. Nail your tongue to a 2x4. Keep it there for a day. That's just like reading the book. Then you can throw the book away.

Alternate method for people who are wary of unnecessary physical pain; walk outside, stare at a clod of dirt for 10 or 12 hours. That's just like reading, hearing or seeing Burroughs do anything. Ginsberg too. Might as well throw him in there.
 
Nah.. I'm not having that..surely 'Junky' at least is a good book..and I find Burroughs' recordings of him reading his stuff spellbinding, and his stuff makes me think, in the same way as Buk's does.
Burroughs was a one-off, and inspirational..I know Buk didn't rate him, but..
 
So I watched the PBS version. Probably shorter than a dvd release. And censored (bad words). Patti Smith, Iggy, others talking their talk about him. It was all right, not great, sort of continues this long struggle I've had with him. Close to 20 years ago I read Naked Lunch. Around the time of the movie release. Somebody said they admired me for doing that. And that's about all I remember of the book.

I'll keep the documentary. I put it on a disc along with the recent Lou Reed Berlin movie and another documentary of Elizabeth Smart (By Grand Central Station...).

Did my taxes. I owe two bucks. Two fucking dollars! Jesus, two hours of plugging in numbers and rechecking the calculations. All for the pleasure of paying out two bucks. Of course the day before I got a letter from Revenue Canada saying I'd screwed up last year and owed them another $100. Plus $4.56 interest. They were right. I wrote the two checks and mailed them in. Don't screw with the government because they have a bigger screw and a bigger door to slam your balls with.
 
There's another new Burroughs documentary called, "Words of Advice: William S. Burroughs on the Road" (2010).
It's a Danish documentary which partly focuses on his visit to Denmark in the late 80's or early 90's, but there's also lots of footage from his house in Kansas and interviews with people who knew him well, including James Grauerholz, who tells some anecdotes, plus footage from some of his readings. I watched on TV not long ago, and it's not too bad. I certainly liked it.

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Advice-...ef=sr_1_4?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1301419916&sr=1-4
 
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I would suggest "Interzone" which is a book of short stories written in straight narrative just like "Junkie" (or "Junky" as it was later renamed).
Then there's his most famous book, "Naked Lunch", if you like weird stories. It does have its funny moments though.
 

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