William S. Burroughs: A Man Within

Director Yony Leyser’s rough but admiring documentary concentrates on Burroughs as cultural artifact — punk icon, namer of bands (Steely Dan), 1970s Bowery Yoda — more than on Burroughs as artist. It’s long on talking heads for whom the writer’s power to shock remains a touchstone (Patti Smith, members of Sonic Youth, Iggy Pop), but it’s frustratingly short on literary insight. “He was not easy to like,” John Waters tells the camera after listing the main ingredients of the Burroughs persona: homosexuality, drug addiction, the accidental slaying of wife Joan. Often harder to like was the writing itself, with its transparent obsessions — death, guns, drugs — and opaque style. Leyser attempts to mimic the books’ hallucinogenic convulsions by overlaying stock footage and music with the writer’s own voice heard reading from the work, but these moments are more Ed Wood than Naked Lunch. The effect underscores the lazy hazards of Burroughs’ “cut-up” technique instead of demonstrating its occasional transcendence.