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 (film) release. It won numerous honours, including the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director and seven Genie Awards, notably Best Motion Picture. "Naked Lunch" has since become a cult film. William Lee is an exterminator who finds that his wife Joan is stealing his insecticide (pyrethrum) to use as a drug to get high. When Lee is arrested by the police, he begins hallucinating because of "bug powder" exposure. He believes he is a secret agent with two handlers in the forms of a talking insectoid typewriter and an alien "Mugwump". The bug assigns him the mission of