Trivia for
Naked Lunch (1991) More at IMDbPro »

• Trailers for this film featured footage of William S. Burroughs shot in the 1960s, with an impersonator providing narration about the irony of how a book that was banned and censored has now been made into a movie.
  
  
• The movie is packed with characters based on real people and events from the life of Burroughs. Like Bill Lee, William S. Burroughs was an exterminator and drug addict who accidentally shot his wife during a drunken game of "William Tell." Joan Lee is based on Joan Vollmer, Burroughs' wife. Hank and Martin, Bill's fellow writers, are Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Burroughs moved to a section of Tangier, Morocco, known as the "International Zone," hence "Interzone." Tom Frost is clearly based on Paul Bowles, and Kiki was in fact the name of a young man Burroughs had an affair with in Tangier, while writing "Naked Lunch."
  
  
• The character name William Lee is the pseudonym William S. Burroughs used when he wrote his first novel, "Junky". One memorable segment from the original novel, "The Talking Asshole," is recited almost verbatim in the film. Early in the movie, a character utters the mangled phrase "No glot, C'lom Fliday" which is the final line of the novel.
  
  
• David Cronenberg first met up with producer Jeremy Thomas in 1981 with a view to making the film.
  
  
• This was originally going to be the first David Cronenberg film to be made outside of Toronto until a panicked Ontario Film Board offered the director unparalleled financial inducements and incentives. As it transpired, however, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait scuttled any plans to film in Tangier, Morocco, so the entire film ended up being made in Toronto anyway.
  
  
• An entire desert was recreated on a Toronto soundstage by pouring 700 tons of sand onto the floor of a former munitions factory.
  
  
• The shooting of the author's wife is not a fictional incident. William S. Burroughs did indeed accidentally shoot his wife Joan in the head in 1951 in Mexico in a "William Tell" stunt that went disastrously wrong. Mexican law at the time meant that Burroughs only served 13 days in prison for killing his wife.
  
  
• As the film couldn't be filmed in Tangier because of the war in Iraq, the film was shot completely in Toronto. As a result of this, some trans-light panes were used to represent the exotic backgrounds seen through windows. Trans-light panes are large translucent enlargements of a photo.
  
  
• David Cronenberg wrote the screenplay on a Toshiba laptop computer during the period of time while he was acting in 'Clive Barker''s Nightbreed (1990).
  
  
• According to David Cronenberg's DVD commentary, the main credits sequence is a direct homage to visual designer Saul Bass. The film takes place in the 1950s, when Bass was active as both a graphic designer and the director of main credits sequences for other people's movies.
  
  
• One of the "Mugwumps" creatures built for the movie still exists and is held by Recorded Pictures Company, the production company of Jeremy Thomas. Nevertheless, they are said to have degraded very fast, as they were not built to last (according to David Cronenberg on the DVD commentary).
  
  
• Peter Weller turned down the lead role in RoboCop 3 (1993) to appear in this film.
  
  
• When Lee buys the Clark Nova, the typewriter's vacant spot in the shop window is taken by a strange sculpture of a Mugwump clinging to a hanged man. While this sculpture seems to foreshadow Kiki's fate later in the film, it is also a reference to a notorious scene in the book where a Mugwump hangs a young man for sexual gratification.
  
  
• The Portland, Oregon-based video store Movie Madness purchased one of the Mugwump bodies, and has it displayed, hanging from the ceiling.
  
  

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