The life of William S. Burroughs was a wild and wooly one. As a founder member of the Beat Generation, he and Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg road tripped, took drugs, had sex, and wrote about it all. Burroughs and Ginsberg were charged with obscenity. They did it all.
There once was a movie about the queer novelist-essayist-drug/drink enthusiast and Beat poet, and it was made by a handsome young film director named Howard Brookner. Burroughs: The Movie is the only documentary that had Burroughs's total cooperation and enthusiastic support. What began as Brookner's senior thesis project in 1978 continued for years, and Burroughs participated in the depiction of his life and travels, and with his contemporaries Allen Ginsberg, Francis Bacon, Herbert Huncke, Patti Smith, and Lauren Hutton. The film got great reviews from Janet Maslin and Roger Ebert, among others, when it was released in 1983. Then it was essentially lost after Brookner died of AIDS complications in 1989, interrupting a promising Hollywood career. And the documentary (on which a certain Jim Jarmusch worked as the sound guy) seemingly vanished.
Now Aaron Brockner, nephew of Howard, has new made a film about his uncle's work of biography--which was recovered from Burroughs' bunker 30 years later. Aaron's film Uncle Howard features Ginsberg, Jim Jarmusch, Sara Driver, Uncle Howards' partner Brad Gooch, Robert Wilson, Matt Dillon, and Madonna.
Check out the trailer and these newly released clips.
