Today, the Screengrab introduces a new semi-regular feature, in which we look at movie adaptations of high-profile novels. Movies based on books are a dime a dozen -- or at least they were before around 1998, when every single movie became based on a television show that originally aired between 1971 and 1983. But movies based on good books are still rare enough to warrant a closer look, possibly because the qualities that make a good book are rarely the same qualities that make a good movie. Great novels tend to focus on philosophy, psychology, and internal narrative, while great movies often emphasize action, movement and dialogue. All too often, the word "unfilmable" is applied to truly ambitious and complex fiction, as if the very idea of encapsulating on screen what so impresses us on the page is laughable on its face, and nowhere is this more obvious than in 1991's Naked Lunch. David Cronenberg, with his literary pretensions, obsession with mutated human bodies, and appetite for the grotesque would seem to make him a natural for making a movie version of William S. Burrough's infamous Beat-influenced black comedy; but even with a like-minded director, filming Naked Lunch would be an uphill battle. It's not a narrative novel in the traditional sense -- or any sense, really; it's more a series of vignettes, impressions, monologues and riffs, more like a heroin-soaked jazz fugue than a story. Even if Cronenberg could find a way to make Burroughs' masterpiece palatable to an audience without getting an X rating (Burroughs was rather fond of notions like talking assholes and rectal mucous), could he make any narrative sense out of a non-narrative novel?
WHAT IT HAD: A director who had read, enjoyed, and understood the novel, and who was writing the script himself to avoid any conflict of vision. A decent budget for an indie film. A studio willing to indulge the often-disturbing creative vision of its author. A built-in cult audience. A game cast, including a terrifically deadpan performance by Peter Weller as Burroughs' alter-ego, Big Bill Lee; a juicy, sympathetic turn by Judy Davis as Burroughs' wife and muse, Joan; and a hilariously fiendish, toothy ham-job by Roy Scheider as the nefarious Dr. Benway. A determination to make the most of its vision and to find clever work-arounds for the book's sometimes incoherent narrative structure. Moments of brilliance in the soundtrack by free jazz giant Ornette Coleman. And most importantly, a nastily sympathetic sense of humor.
WHAT IT LACKED: A mainstream audience that would make the whole thing worthwhile. A group of fans who would forgive any variance from their beloved source material. A willingness to turn over the reins entirely to Coleman, resulting in some plodding, ham-handed incidental music from Howard Shore. A budget big enough to keep some of the special effects from seeming hokey and cheap. A tight focus on how to involve all of the book's best moments, resulting in a somewhat fuzzy sense of direction at times. The will to completely overthrow narrative entirely and bring to the film a permeating experimental quality such as is found throughout the book. A critical audience who had any interest in seeing such a bizarre novel get made into a movie in the first place.
DID IT SUCCEED?: Mostly, yes -- and in a very unusal way. Cronenberg figured out early on that if he was going to make a movie out of Naked Lunch at all, he was going to have to make it something entirely different than the book, which, as trite as it is to say, is almost entirely unfilmable. So, after hammering out a script that he was happy with and securing a lead actor both capable and sympathetic to his vision, he proceeded not to make a film adaptation of the novel, but a clever and inventive metaphor for the circumstances of the writing of the novel. The result is less a literary adaptation than it is an extremely deceptive, but in no sense unsuccessful, biopic; if it fails to give us a faithful sense of Burroughs' work, it at least gives us a faithful sense of Burroughs, and that's quite a kick in itself.