Some fresh Burroughs loot was just added to the mountain of treasure that is Ubu: the entirety of Howard Brookner’s Burroughs: The Movie.  Previously available on VHS only (a used copy on Amazon runs you 40 bucks), Burroughs: The Movie was released in ‘85 by poet, Warhol associate, and dial-a-poem instigator, John Giorno, through his Giorno Poetry Systems.

The film features such familiar-but-always-welcome luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Francis Bacon, Patti Smith, and Terry Southern.  And while there’s a new Burroughs doc just around the corner, there’s still plenty of juicy bits in Burroughs: The Movie.  Don’t miss Lauren Hutton introducing Burroughs as “the greatest living writer in America,” before his first appearance on Saturday Night Live (he reads an excerpt of Naked Lunch, by the way!).

Sadly—and unusual for Ubu—Burroughs: The Movie is unembeddable, but to quickly have your ticket exploded just click here.

Along with the Burroughs film link, want to say thanks for enlightening me with Ubuweb. Very nice site indeed.

As to Burroughs, it has also just come to my attention that he was a Scientologist. Which strikes me as weird.

He wasn’t a Scientologist. He spent some time involved with them, but it didn’t work out (their position on drugs, for starters). He wrote an essay on the subject: http://www.holysmoke.org/cos/books/naked-scientology.pdf

Yow!  Can’t wait for the next one…

Also check out these photographs of his stuff:

http://heypeterross.com/photography/burroughs/

Interview with an explanation: http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/galleries/william_burroughss_stuff/

For a night of extreme awesome, play Burroughs and Thompson documentaries back to back with a bowl of popcorn, a bead of opium and a hashpipe.

“Tea heads are a sociable lot. Too sociable for my liking.”—William S. Burroughs.