Naked Lunch (film) Naked Lunch (film) Naked Lunch is a 1991 drama film co-written and directed by David Cronenberg and starring Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, and Roy Scheider. It is an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel of the same name, and an international co-production of Canada, Britain and Japan. The film was released on December 27, 1991, in the United States and April 24, 1992, in the United Kingdom by 20th Century Fox. It received positive reviews from critics, but was a box office bomb, garnering only $2.6 million out of a $17–18 million budget due to a limited
Naked Lunch title to refer to a three-part work made up of 'Junk,' 'Queer' and 'Yage,' corresponding to his first three manuscripts, before it came to describe the book later published as "Naked Lunch", which was based largely on his 1957 'Interzone' manuscript. Upon publication, Grove Press added to the book supplementary material regarding the censorship battle as well as an article written by Burroughs on the topic of drug addiction. In 2002, a "restored text" edition of "Naked Lunch" was published with some new and previously suppressed material added. "Naked Lunch" is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following