Friday, January 04, 2013

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Naked Lunch (1991)

Yves Cloquet: I've seen you around,
but I had no idea you were queer.
Bill Lee: Queer?
Yves Cloquet: [leers] I saw you arrive with those
three Interzone boys. What an entrance.
You all looked very... familiar with each other.
Bill Lee: [gulps] Queer. A curse.
Been in our family for generations.
The Lees have always been perverts.
I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph
in my glands when the baneful word seared my reeling brain
--- I was a homosexual.
I thought of the painted simpering female impersonators
I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible
I was one of those subhuman things?
I walked the streets in a daze like a man
with a light concussion.
I would've destroyed myself. And a wise old queen
- Bobo, we called her - taught me that I had a duty
to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see.
Poor Bobo came to a sticky end
--- he was riding in the Duke Devanche's
 Hispano Suissa when his falling hemorrhoids
blew out of the car and wrapped around the rear wheel.
He was completely gutted leaving an empty shell sitting there
on the giraffe skin upholstry. Even the eyes and the brain went
with a horrible "shlupping" sound. The Duke says
he would carry that ghastly "shlup" with him to his mausoleum.

A happy 55th birthday to Julian Sands! His buggy fucking in this film would probably rank in my top ten movie scenes that disturbed me the most. Ugh. So instead of thinking about that anymore, shudder, let's think about him and Rupert Graves skinny-dipping in A Room With a View. Much nicer thoughts!



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think Naked Lunch is more than a little troubling, given that Cronenberg de-emphasized much of the homosexuality found in the book (because he - of all people - found homosexuality too alien a concept) while cheerfully adopting the notion of the homosexual as predator.