ΣΑΝ ΣΗΜΕΡΑ. ΓΟΥΪΛΙΑΜ ΜΠΑΡΟΟΥΖ

William S. Burroughs: A man within (Directed by Jonathan Leyser)

William S. Burroughs (5/2/1914-2/8/1997), heir to an adding-machine business and a family that lost its money, was Harvard-educated, conservative in his attire, and became famous before any of his peers, says director John Waters, "for all the things you were supposed to hide: He was gay; he was a junkie; he shot his wife. … " Burroughs was indeed a scandalous personality, but his literary works -- such as "The Naked Lunch," "Queer" and "Junkie" -- have become landmarks of American literature. And as the movie shows us, his influences ranged from beatniks to punks, from rockers to poets to performance artists, and to the language itself: "Heavy metal, "Blade Runner," "Soft Machine and "Steely Dan were all coined by Burroughs. "He was like another kind of Bible," says old friend Patti Smith.
He was also an inhabitant of the American drug culture when there really wasn't one, and really did shoot his wife: Drunk and doing a William Tell, he put a bullet through Joan Vollmer's head in Mexico. Although Burroughs' public persona was dour, his public voice a drone, and his hat and velvet collars in direct sartorial contradiction of the happy hippie-ish stylings of, say, his good friend Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs mourned. And he admitted that the shooting (for which he never served serious time) made him the writer he was. (variety.com)